Are Caramel M&Ms any good?
M&Ms have been around since 1941 so I get that they need to keep coming up with new flavors to boost sales. But caramel M&Ms?? Are they any good?
You might know that in the UK they call M&Ms “Smarties,” but what I didn’t realize is that Smarties actually existed first (since 1937) and Mars just straight up copied them! (or maybe Mr. Mars was friends with the Smarties maker and Mr. Smarties just looked the other way. Unclear.) But really, the key point here is that M&Ms have been around for awhile and have come up with different flavor varieties over the years including peanut (classic), peanut butter, pretzel, and dark chocolate. And today, I’m trying the caramel flavor!
I don’t remember seeing this before, but they apparently were released in 2017. If you want to take something mildly exciting and have it make you cry with boredom, read that full CNN article. Here, I’ll give you a little taste:
Hank Izzo, vice president of research and development of parent company Mars Chocolate, said the brand regularly plays around with size, shape, color and texture. But caramel was especially of interest to the company in recent years.
"Caramel is extremely trendy," he said. "It's a $2.2 billion flavor segment and the fastest growing segment in food right now. We want to be part of this category."
And apparently they call M&Ms “lentils” over at Mars.
"It was a big technological challenge for us," said Izzo. "We never before had a M&M lentil with a true soft center
TIL.
I guess I’m on trend as well because I enjoy caramel and I was excited to see this bag at the rest stop.
How Does It Taste?
It’s fine. I think that the regular chocolate M&Ms are extremely underrated as candy. I know this might make me sound like an American with no respect for real chocolate, but I like what I like. However, that also means that unless these new varieties are good, they will feel lesser to me. That’s what is happening here. The caramel is certainly softer than chocolate, but it’s still not extremely soft when you initial bite in. And there’s no real caramel flavor at the start. As you chew, it warms up in your mouth and starts to develop a classic caramel taste, but at that point you’re already disappointed. The dynamic contrast of the candy shell with the slightly chewy caramel is pretty nice but not enough to really win me over.
Appearance and Expectations
Right on the front of the package, a caramel M&M is being ripped in half and gooey caramel is stretching across about 1/3 of the package. That set my expectations quite high. The reality was not even close to that. The caramel is certainly softer than, say, milk chocolate and would get a little chewy by the end, but I was hoping for caramel to ooze out if I bit one in half. That would never happen with these. Also, we’re cool with an M&M ripping one of its fellow M&Ms right in half? This gruesome scene is OK to have on display in the candy aisle at every convenient store across the country?
Overall Opinion
If you give me a bag, or they are in a bowl at someone’s house, I will eat them. But this will not be a candy I seek out on a road trip or at a convenient store. And I am shocked parents are not more upset their children are forced to look at M&M death every day in the candy aisle.
Rating
2/5 Adam Heart Eyes. If they found a way to get that caramel flavor stronger at the start, or made the caramel a bit more gooey, these would easily earn an extra Adam Heart Eyes.