M&Ms are gluten free (except the crispy variety, which I haven’t seen in the northeast for some time now) and I noticed since Shrek came out they’ve really gotten on the bandwagon for special edition candies. The first ones I wasn’t so thrilled about frankly. Big fat ugly ‘ogre-sized’ chocolate candies were cute for about a minute but then I’m afraid M&M’s got on the bigger is better kick and Americans certainly don’t need to be scarfing down mammoth snacks. Why am I even complaining about this? For one, because their have been so many movie special edition candies that frankly they’re not special anymore. Remember those pastel Easter M&Ms and red/green Hershey Kisses? Those were cool until they started manufacturing 20 million other varieties that were pretty metiocre. Don’t screw up a good original.

And secondly, the candies are getting bigger and bigger. Good for you M&Ms, you’ve put the calories right there on the front of the package to save us all from even expending the energy to turn it over and look but there are less candies in the bag overall to stay within calorie limit. Dunno about you, but I think most people are used to a good handful and will just grab a second bag. (Smacks forehead with hand- Oh, I just caught on to marketing!)

So that brings me to the last couple of new editions I stumbled across in Wal-Mart: the short lived raspberry M&Ms (not the big egg-shaped ones in the special carton but actual raspberry-flavoured ones in a pink bag), Coconut and now Strawberry peanut butter (sold on its own or in a king-sized grey Transformers packet).  I could be mistaken but I thought a few years ago M&M’s tried the whole peanut butter/jelly thing but maybe that was another company.

I’m a sucker for coconut, which I notice is not a popular flavour in the American diet and yet every candy company gets on this little bandwagon every couple of years and makes a coconut edition of something that fades just as fast as it hits the shelves, ending up at the end of shelf aisles everywhere with red clearance tags. So of course, I didn’t just buy one and in a couple of weeks I’ll go grab a ton of them before they disappear.  My gripe with the coconut M&M’s is 1: they’re huge and 2. they’re not really all that coconutty. Putting some actual coconut shreds in there may have made a difference but you can just taste the flavouring in the aftertaste of the chocolate. Still, it’s coconut and GF so I’m gonna have to eat them.

Husband pointed out the Strawberry Peanut Butter bag on the shelf in Wal-Mart and we did find a packet in the checkout rather than trying the entire lb. bag. For one, he hates peanut butter but thought mistakenly that there were both separate strawberry and peanut butter candies you could just eat together for the combination. Wrong, but I think that may have been a better idea. As with the previous, these are monstrous and even higher in calories (230 cal per regular packet as opposed to 210 for coconut) and the taste is: eh. The strawberry flavouring is in the aftertaste and even the peanut butter’s not that strong. Basically they smell a lot better than they go down and our car is now M&M-y.

Tasty Factor: so/so. Think I’ll stick to plain chocky
Poopy Factor: so/so. Novelty is always good when used sparingly but sparingly is the word.