Go to Hell, Pretzel M&Ms!

If you've taken a trip down the candy aisle of your local Walgreen's lately, you may have noticed a new hue to the M&Ms packages. That blue package of chocolate candies with the thin candy shell that melts in your mouth, not in your hand, is the new Pretzel M&Ms. This new variety of M&M joins a host of other M&Ms, including regular, Peanut, Almond, Peanut Butter, Crispy, Dark Chocolate, etc.

These confectionery concoctions are roughly the size of Peanut Butter M&Ms, but more spherical in shape, and nestled within the milk chocolate and brightly colored candy shell is a little pretzel ball, no bigger than a blueberry.

This new variety of M&M is represented by the orange M&M, a seemingly neurotic anthropomorphized candy, and surly pretzel dude.



I've heard people rave about them. Well, I've tried them, and I'm here to say, "Go to hell, Pretzel M&Ms!" But please, allow me to elaborate.

1) Pretzel M&Ms really aren't that great. Sure, it combines two things that go great together, pretzels and chocolate, salt and sweet. Who doesn't enjoy a pretzel rod dipped in chocolate, or a chocolate-covered twist pretzel? Or maybe even a pretzel rod dipped in chocolate and then mini M&Ms. But I tell you, Pretzel M&Ms are nothing like a chocolate-covered pretzel. The M&Ms convey plenty of the sweet, but in my humble opinion, is lacking the proper amount of salt. Perhaps it is something in the chocolate coating process. More likely, the pretzel component just doesn't have that much salt to begin with. The lack of true saltiness in the candy is disappointing at best.

2) The amount of pretzel in Pretzel M&Ms is all wrong. The pretzel you get inside the candy is approximately the size of a pea. Wrong. It's too big and not dense enough. Sure there's a crunch, but then the center of the pretzel is light and airy, eliminating the hope of subsequent satisfying crunching during the mastication process. I believe that the M&Ms Mars Candy Co. should have chosen a smaller, denser pretzel to put at the base of their candy.

3) Related to point #2; because the pretzels are too big, the M&Ms are too big, and therefore, the actual number of M&Ms you get in a standard size bag are few. If the candy itself were smaller, you would get more in the bag. Instead, when you get to the end of the bag now, even though you can tell that the candy is smaller, you're left with a feeling of 'Is that really all there was?'

4) This is the most important. It appears that with the introduction of Pretzel M&Ms, Dark Chocolate M&Ms have been taken off the shelf. WTF? Dark Chocolate M&Ms are far superior to Pretzel M&Ms. The dark chocolate in Dark Chocolate M&Ms wasn't like that kind of dark chocolate that is as dark as the depths of space and bitter as a cup of extra, extra dark coffee. Instead it was a sweet dark chocolate, similar to that of Hershey's Special Dark. Dark Chocolate M&Ms were magical and wonderful, and now they appear to be gone. This is even more of a tragedy in that I can no longer create the Ultimate Thin-Candy Shell Coated Mix, that being one part Dark Chocolate M&Ms to two parts Reese's Pieces. (Go ahead and try it if you can you wont be disappointed.)

So Pretzel M&Ms can suck it. I want my Dark Chocolate M&Ms back on the shelf, damn it.