Last summer I expressed my excitement over the new M&M’s flavor, Caramel, and discussed my love of all things chocolate. You can read about it here.
The Contenders
Each new flavor is a crunchy, dark chocolate M&M, with three different colored candies in each bag. The colors taste the same, it’s just for aesthetics. The “competition” is between Crunchy Mint, Crunchy Raspberry and Crunchy Espresso. They were released April 1st and voting is open until May 25, 2018. The winning flavor will be back on shelves in August.
The Tasters
44 Year old wife, mother and writer. Loves chocolate, especially Milk Chocolate M&M’s and has a massive sweet tooth.
45 Year old husband, dad and engineer. Will eat anything put in front of him except pickles, prefers salty over sweet but can murder a cheesecake.
14 Year old female, high school student. Pretty much eats anything and also has a sweet tooth.
11 Year old male, 5th grader and sports lover. Super picky eater, likes about 10 foods total.
The Process
We chose to start with the Raspberry as the ladies thought the mint would be too strong to start with, overpowering the other flavors. The tasting order was set as Raspberry, followed by Espresso, then Mint. All tasters drank water between flavors to help cleanse the palate.
All tasters enjoyed the Raspberry and felt there was a good balance with the dark chocolate. The raspberry flavor was a littler artificial and left a slight after taste. There was a family consensus of the score: 6 out of 10 points. We would all eat them again.
The Espresso was awesome, with the crunch giving the M&M a chocolate covered espresso bean like quality, minus the grit those leave in your teeth. The adults and teen (all coffee drinkers) scored it an 8 on the 10 point scale. Male child scored it a 2, but I dismissed that score as an outlier, cause what does he know? He survives on peanut butter and chicken tenders.
Crunchy Mint was the last contender and a nice follow up to the others. It was a lot like eating a small Thin Mint cookie. All the tasters enjoyed them and the family score was 7 out of 10.
Results
As you can see, with the exception of the boy child, Espresso was the big winner. We enjoyed all the Crunchy M&M flavors but the Crunchy Espresso were the ones that made me say “I could eat so many of these.” Mars Inc. are you listening? I still think the Milk Chocolate will always be my favorite but the Espresso is a close second. The Coffee Nut flavor never quite gave me what I was looking for so I have high hopes for the Crunchy Espresso being the mass produced winner in August.
