Bounty Dark review

In keeping with the new trend of "dark" chocolate bars here is another take of Bounty in the form of Bounty Dark.  Check out the video below and see what you think.

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M&M's Honey Nut review

M&Ms was trying out some different flavors and I was lucky to come across M&M's Honey Nut.  It is a bit of a different take on M&M's Peanut flavor.  It may be hard to find as it was a part of a contest and didn't win so I don't think it is available anymore but check out the video and see what you think!

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M&M's Caramel review

The folks who are responsible for bringing us M&Ms have come up with another wonder in the form of M&M's Caramel and I was able to get my hands on some to review.  Could this be your new chocolate treat or something not worth the time.  Check out the review and see what you think!

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M&M's Dark review

It is time to take a trip to the dark side with my M&M's Dark review.  I have reviewed most other M&Ms products but this looks like it only came out around 2005 so I am finally catching up. 

 

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Starburst Original Review

I should probably start by letting you know that Starburst is one of my all-time favorite candies, a close second to Skittles which really do top my list of sweet goodies.

Take a look at the video below and see what you think!

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M&M's Chocolate Bar Review

M&Ms don’t typically come in chocolate bar form  but they do when it is the M&M's Chocolate Bar.  Should they be consumer in this form?  Check out the review then judge for yourself!

 

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BRAND NEW Skittles Orchards review

An exciting review today, for the just launched Skittles Orchards.


Not a bad mix all things considered, and its sweet to see Lime back on the market again (outside of Darkside). What do you guys think? Have you gotten your Orchard on?

Don't forget to stay locked to the Candy Aisle YouTube for reviews posted at least twice a week.

Skittles Desserts review

Sorry for the long delay in posting. There have been a number of reviews published over on the YouTube Channel. To make sure you're getting all the Candy Aisle has please go over there and Subscribe.

In the meantime though, here is one of my favorite recent reviews, for the newest Skittles sku, Skittles Desserts.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Skittles Desserts - 2 / 5

Skittles are a Mars product, you can find more from them at - http://skittles.com/ Thanks for watching, please leave me a comment below and let me know what you think of these Skittles. I'll work to be back more often with some newer posts.

3 Musketeers Mint review

Mint freshness makes its way into a classic, its the 3 Musketeers Mint.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates 3 Musketeers Mint - 4 / 5

This is of course a Mars product. For more on all things 3 Musketeers please check them out online at http://www.3musketeers.com/-

M&M's Pretzel review

Back to M&M's today with a look at M&M's Pretzel.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates M&M's Pretzel - 3 / 5

M&M's are of course a Mars product. For more on M&M's Pretzel please check out the official M&M site at - http://www.mms.com/

Skittles Wild Berry review

Today we've got a new one for you, Skittles Wild Berry.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Skittles Wild Berry - 4 / 5

Skittles is a Wrigley brand, which is in turn a Mars company. For more on Skittles please visit - http://www.skittles.com/

M&M's Peanut Butter review

We've got a great one up for review today, its time to check out M&M's Peanut Butter.



Walking the Candy Aisle rates M&M's Peanut Butter - 5 / 5

M&Ms are of course a Mars product. For more on all things M&Ms please check out the website - http://www.mms.com/

M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn review

Here we've got a fun review to kick off a few very special Halloween pieces, this is M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn.



Walking the Candy Aisle rates M&Ms White Chocolate Candy Corn - 2 / 5

M&Ms is of course a Mars product, and for more on them please visit their official internet site here http://www.mms.com/

M&M's Milk Chocolate review

Another classic chits the Candy Aisle today with our review of M&M's Milk Chocolate.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates M&M's Milk Chocolate - 5 / 5

M&M's are a Mars product, and for more on them you can of course go to their website at http://www.mms.com/ Live it up and enjoy. These are some of the best chocolate candies on the market and I really love them. I hope you do too :)

Bounty review

Its time for more coconut here on the Candy Aisle with this review of Bounty.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Bounty - 3 / 5

For more on Bounty please check out the Mars chocolate page, although it is admittedly pretty utilitarian. OR you could just browse over to our Reviews Page for more fun reviews. And remember to keep it locked right here for more reviews twice a week!

Mars Dark review

Check it out, its time to have a look at Mars Dark.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Mars Dark - 4 / 5

For more on all things Mars please check out their site at http://www.marsbar.com/ and for more reviews please check our Reviews Page, or just subscribe to the YouTube channel.

Snickers review

Here we go people. Strap in, because its time to finally review the Snickers.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Snickers - 5 / 5

This is a true classic and one of the few heavy hitters that seemed to have slipped by me until now. For the next little while I'll be working to rectify that by addressing a few of the biggest candy and chocolates that I've missed, but remember you can always drop me an email, or post a comment below if you have a suggestion for a review.

Snickers is a Mars product, for more please visit the aptly named http://snickers.com/. And for more reviews please head over to our Reviews Page.

M&Ms Ads - Becoming Superstars

When last we talked about the M&Ms the little candy coated super-stars we're headed full tilt into the new Millennium. While other companies we're floundering to maintain clean cut mascots in a world full of cynical and way too smart kids the M&Ms managed to ride a tide of good will bolstered by smart mature humor and a constantly evolving sensibility that kept them fresh. Maybe what worked so well for them was that they stopped being aimed specifically at kids. The M&M characters left their pure cartoon roots with the introduction of the mixed media CG versions of the characters, and Mars stopped even making commercials without them. They reached a mass awareness that few mascots have ever achieved and kept on pushing, to become, and stay, the biggest of mega-stars in the candy world.

To be honest, figuring out how this all went down is pretty confusing so |I'm going to assume I will be getting some of this wrong. Lets be clear: I am not a historian. This is a light fun pop survey of the modern M&M characters as seen through their advertizing. There are other places on the web, or in print if you're looking for cold hard facts. Like Yellow, we're just here to have a good time :)

So as we got into the early 00s foreign markets expanded, the brand grew, and ads specifically targeted at non-western markets began to hit. This change alone makes sifting the chaff on the internet pretty complicated especially since some of the campaigns and ads were used in different countries at different times, or under different circumstances. Anyhow, suffice it to say the opening of foreign markets and ad campaigns, makes it extremely messy.

Lets take a step back though and have a look at some ads.  As the century ended, the M&Ms were interacting with celebs in new mixed media adverts, and establishing the core dynamic of the Red Yellow relationship that we all know and love.

The candies declaring themselves the Spokescandies of the new Millennium at end of '97, and I missed one ad they featured in one that I had to share. I love this one, and wanted to make sure I posted it.



Its great to see Dick Clark still young (youngish) and its nice that he was comfortable making fun of his age.

With the launch of Crispy M&Ms in '99 there were more than a few ads featuring the new character and flavor.



Oh Puddy. You always entertain me :D



And Red, you're always pulling fast ones...

As I said Red and Yellow especially we're developing the classic Laurel and Hardy playing off each other riffs, and the public loved it. Here are a few other turn of the century ads that feature the M&Ms just being their own funny selves.



That is a little disturbing. funny but disturbing. This next one just features Red, but its pretty cute.



And finally here's an ad from '99 that I think shows where all the ads were headed in the early '00s.



This is a really great one. The airport ad is awesome because it showcases Red and Yellow doing their thing. It's got them bickering lovingly, being funny interacting with our world. They even break the fourth wall directly, they acknowledge that they are in fact candy, and it all wraps up with a solid tag at the end. This is the shape of the ads to come.

Getting into the 2000s for real-sies now they launched a fun campaign at the start of the year.



This is great on a number of levels, but I think the most important thing to note is the solo color offering. This is one of the first time solo colors were offered for a promotion. AND this wasn't a promotion tied into a holiday like Easter or Xmas where they gave us specially colored (or flavored) editions of the candy. This was just for the heck of it.

Another fun thing came up in the year 2000. And the next very serious ad addresses it perfectly.



That's right. Plain has changed, and in 2000 M&Ms re-branded their classic candy as Milk Chocolate. Such an obvious thing, but remember back when M&Ms started it was really a different world.



One more cute one on this, because I as I've mentioned before I smile for Patrick Warburton and always want him to succeed.

2000 also saw the release of two new M&M video games: The Lost Formula and Mini Madness.



In 2001 M&Ms started a long and strange journey trying out a lot of weird and sometimes very interesting flavors. For this outing they tried their hand at Dulce de Leche in some 5 Hispanic countries. Although it was a valiant attempt and actually sounds pretty good there wasn't much interest apparently and the product line was discontinued by '03.



In 2002 the ads continued, only got a bit more sophisticated. The Laurel and Hardy routine that Red and Yellow we're perfecting still had to be tempered. As much as I like the Airport commercial above its also VERY 90s. Here's the kind of standard ad that typified the early 2000s. Even though it only has Red you can see that it shows a literal and quirky take on the candy. More importantly it's just plain funny.



Love that Bradley Whitford (and this ad is during the height of his run on The West Wing).

2002 also saw the return and update of a previous successful ad campaign. The Global Color Vote was essentially the same trick they'd pulled in '95 but this time it was between Pink, Purple, or Aqua as the new color.



Here's a French ad featuring some cheerleaders?!



After Purple won the contest, it became an M&M color for a limited time. I'm not sure why they didn't keep it around or give us a new mascot like they did when Blue made the scene but they did feature a nifty contest looking for the bag full of Purple M&Ms to win a prize.



In 2004 the M&Ms launched another cool color campaign, only this one was all about the missing color! The hunt was on to find Grey M&Ms this time and it all started with this funny ad.



Here's one that maybe explains it a bit better.



And I always loved this bloodhound one though. Great stuff.



One of the interesting things about M&Ms getting so popular in the 2000s is that they started doing huge tie in marketing promotions. M&Ms had a number of movie tie ins over the years  2004 saw the start of the cross media tie ins, And not just with The Wizard of Oz. No instead I mean this beauty below inspired by the Addams Family to promote another limited run on Dark Chocolate M&Ms.



That's not all from '04 though. M&Ms also got big, and I don't mean regular big, I mean OGRE sized!



I actually think this tie in with Shrek 2 is a great one. M&Ms and Shrek are a really perfectly paired brand. But since M&Ms were in the midst of experiments in size and shape 2004 saw the first appearance of the most radical change yet, the M-Azing chocolate bar!



It sounds like the M-Azing bar was only moderately successful. The bar apparently stuck around in some form or another straight through until today and was finally re-branded and re-launched in 2013 as the new M&M chocolate bar. A bit more on that in the next post.

Aside from featuring in the new M-Azing  bar, the M&M Minis we're also going strong in '04. I posted a few ads from this era of the Minis in my last blog post on this subject but here is another one to show you where the Mini advertizing was at the time.



At first I thought it seemed like a very 90s ad but then I realized that the M&M minis were being targeted at kids, while regular M&Ms were targeted at everyone.

Speaking of mass marketing the following year M&Ms teamed up with another film franchise that had probably the biggest mass market appeal possible. Watch the ad below to see the M&Ms join the Dark Side...



Watching this I have to wonder why Mars never just out and out put out a Dark Chocolate M&M on a permanent basis. I know they've got a few specialties at all times these days, but its weird that they kept bringing it back as a limited run.

2005 also saw the launch of Mega M&Ms. I'm guessing that the Ogre sized M&Ms went over so well that they decided to continue the line.



I know that ad didn't have the M&M characters in it but its pretty funny..

If the Chocolate M-Pire tie in wasn't the breaking point then it had to be the M&M tie ins for '06. These guys weren't just well known spokes-candies, they were true celebrities unto themselves. In 2006 Red and Yellow made a mark adjacent to Joan Rivers at the Academy Awards pre-show. To me this is huge.



Think about the number of eyeballs on that broadcast. Think about the fact that there are people who care about this from really all over the world. Its pretty serious stuff. I mean as serious as you can get for entertainers who aren't actually stars on the big screen.

They may be super-commercialized.... but can you blame them? I mean they are commercial characters. 2006 also saw ties ins for Pirates 3, and Shrek 3.


Pirates 3 in saw the launch of limited time white chocolate M&Ms, and Shrek the Third saw the return of Ogre sized M&Ms again, as well as this vacation contest.



I'm going to jump ahead a bit now, in 2008 M&Ms finally hit on a weird urban myth for their gain. At Valentines they launched a limited run of all green M&Ms. Green you ask? yes. I'm not sure how well known the rumor is now, but I totally remember as a kid hearing that green M&Ms we're for sexy time...



These also came at Christmas time that year. As good a time as any for an aphrodisiac (weather its true or not).

The summer of 2008 saw another side product launched from M&Ms. The M&M ice cream bar.




Its true...



That's pretty funny :)

 New limited time flavors also emerged in 2008. Wild Cherry hit the scene alongside Mint Crisp M&Ms as a promotion tied into Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.



The biggest promotion of 2008 though came with the launch of mymms.com. Now there was finally a chance to change things up, and get your face, or whatever you wanted printed onto your M&Ms. Very exciting stuff.


After this commercial Mars took a different tack making a bunch of pretty funny commercials letting regular people become an M&M.


That ones probably my favorite, but there are some other great ones.


ha, contacts...


Gross but funny.


ha, earholes...


Good stuff all around.

Before I finally wrap this very long blog post up I'll mention one more 2008 M&Ms item. The launch of Premiums. Ms Green finally got something all her own here and it turned out quite well.

5 flavors of premiums were launched. I know I ate a few of them. They had a 'high end' vibe to them and I suppose they were pretty decadent.


Of course we know that Mint has been around since this time in on again off again limited runs, but this is where I first had it. A few more of the flavors were Rasberry Almond, which is actually a current limited run flavor, and Triple Chocolate. Both sound great to me.



I've had these and they do taste great.



mmm... so delicious sounding.

When we come back to this topic, I'll pick up from 2008 and we can watch some more ads together. These crazy M&Ms just became superstars right under your noses...  pretty impressive.  Thanks all, later :)

Milky Way Midnight Dark review

Today we are back with yet another Milky Way review! You know I just can't get enough of these things :) Here we have a look at Milky Way Midnight Dark.


Walking the Candy Aisle rates Milky Way Midnight Dark - 4 / 5

This is a Mars product, and you can learn more about it on the internets right here.

For a look at the classics, please check out my review of the original Milky Way, and the Milky Way Simply Caramel. Both are stellar! Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more awesome reviews hitting the site and YouTube Channel twice a week!

The Big Bar Line Up - Dove and Godiva

Today we're back with the Big Bars, and we're starting to run through them now. I think probably one more post'll do it. For now though we're looking at the small entry into the big bar market by Godiva and Dove.

Starting with Dove, I should say I have a weird thing about them. I think the only time I've ever eaten a dove bar was for a review here on the site. No you didn't miss it. Although I shot the review it is one of the handful of 'lost' Candy Aisle episodes. And since I never got to officially review it, I feel kind of mixed about it. Maybe these big bars are the way to go though. Lets have a look at their offerings.

Yup. That's nothing to write home about. I mean I'm sure its all fine, but they could add some variety to the mix couldn't they? Are these the bars that will sell the most? Seems like these are the most generic ideas they could find. Maybe I'm cynical though.... I guess I just don't see why someone is buying this over a Lindt or something else right beside it.

At least Godiva has a very specific type of chocolate eater in mind. They are playing directly into the dark chocolate and gourmet chocolate connoisseur world. Something I admittedly know very little about... (I'm an everyman here people). Anyhow, lets have a look at what they've got.

One Milk variety, and then its right into the Dark.

Frankly I'm a little surprised that they don't have anything higher than 85%. Those are already serious bars and I certainly don't think I could handle anyting stronger... but those dark chocolate aficionados can be very demanding.  This is at least in part probably a good alternative to the Lindt offerings though.


Anyhow, next time we'll pick up the remainder big bars for a final post on this topic. Until then I'll see you in the aisle.