Bucket List Accomplishment: M&M Pretzels

Awhile back, I added 'trying the new pretzel M&Ms' to my bucket list, because I just love trying out new candy flavors.  In some small way, it's a return to my childhood.  There is something special about the simple, pure joy of discovery, excitement and sugar all mixed together in one fun experience.  My love of trying new candy is yet another reason why I'm so excited to move to Japan in a few months.  Japan has completely embraced the excitement of new and silly foods like green, mint Pepsi or sushi pizza.  And there are literally dozens of Kit Kat flavors in Japan, including grilled corn, cantaloupe and soy sauce!  If you want to know more, NPR did a taste test of several crazy Kit Kat flavors last year and there's a great blog dedicated to reviewing Japanese snacks.

But until I move to Japan and become overwhelmed by new foods and flavors, I am content to try new American candies like cotton candy pop-rocks and pretzel M&Ms.

new M&Ms and very old water

Copyright Jeff Howick 2011 

The first thing that I noticed about the new M&Ms is how huge they are, almost the size of marbles.  If I had to, I think I could probably fit 60 or 70 standard M&Ms into my mouth at once, but I doubt that I could fit more than two dozen of these bad boys.  I know I got the same amount of candy as if I'd bought dark chocolate M&MS (because they measure by weight), but I still felt slightly cheated because I got so many fewer M&MS.  When it comes to M&Ms, bigger is not better in my book.  I guess that's why I like chocolate chip cookies better than chocolate chunk.

Copyright Jeff Howick 2011 

On the taste front, there were no big surprises.  I've had plenty of experience eating chocolate covered pretzels before, and they tasted like smaller, candy coated versions of those.  The pretzel quality was much closer to pretzels from the delicious snack Combos than classic bag pretzels, which I enjoyed.  Overall I'd say the new pretzel M&Ms are good, but not great.  They don't bring anything new to my snacking needs and there are already many other M&M flavors I'd rather purchase.  If you've had the new M&Ms, let me know what you thought in the comments.