Tag: Mars

REVIEW: Pretzel M&M’s

Kayla 6 Comments

M&M’s are quickly turning into the American version of what Kit Kats are in Japan.

With so many variations and flavors, I honestly can say that I haven’t had Plain… Oh, excuse me, Milk Chocolate M&M’s since they nixed the beige color that reminded me of the nurse’s office at my elementary school minus the ethnically diverse posters about how head lice affects everyone and how it’s good to wash your hands after pretty much everything you do, except after washing your hands because then you’ll end up on that show Obsessed.

Before even trying the new Pretzel M&M’s I knew I was going to like them, because Mars used my favorite M&M’s character to pitch them — Orange M&M.

He isn’t a sleaze like Red M&M, who I swear on the Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M’s package had a rapey look in his eyes and was about to slip something into my drink. As for Yellow M&M, he’s simply Red’s lackey. And even though I’m far from being a feminist, my mother’s crazy burn-your-bra 1970s values rubbed off on me a little bit, because I find it’s morally wrong that the only female M&M is one ad away from becoming the first mascot to be on a Girls Gone Wild DVD.

I like Orange M&M because he’s on edge most of the time. Plus, he’s awkward and endearing, similar to Woody Allen. Although I don’t think Orange M&M would marry his adopted daughter (Red M&M probably would though). I also like Orange M&M because he always pitches the flavor of M&M’s I enjoy, including Crispy and Pretzel M&M’s.

Pretzel M&M’s are spherical and they probably could be used as emergency ammunition in a paintball gun battle, not only because they’re about the same size but because they’re as hard as the Red M&M gets when the Green M&M gives him a candied-coated lap dance.

I usually let an M&M melt in my mouth, because like a good little consumer, I listen to what ads tell me to do. However, I felt it was extremely difficult to do so with these M&M’s when I knew there were pretzels hiding in them. Pretzel M&M’s have a nice crunch factor as well as a delicate salty taste that might be too delicate for pretzel purists.

I can’t really call the rat dropping-sized nugget a pretzel; it’s more like a little, semi-salty ball that could be a serious choking hazard when popping them in your mouth during your commute, or when realizing there’s a sex scene between Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head in Toy Story 3 (Sorry if I ruined it for you).

Like the balls themselves, the package is quite small, but it’s just enough chocolate to tide you over until M&M’s releases another new flavor. Maybe they’ll take a page from Kit Kat’s book and make a wasabi pea-flavored M&M.

One can only hope and dream.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 bag (1.14 ounces) – 150 calories, 5 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 150 milligrams of sodium, 24 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 15 grams of sugar, 2 grams of protein, 2% calcium and 2% iron.)

Item: Pretzel M&M’s
Price: 74 cents
Size: 1.14 ounces
Purchased at: The Store That Ironically Doesn’t Sell Walls
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Nice blend of savory and sweet. Orange being the spokescandy for the product and not feeling threatened by him. My mother’s feminist values. Lower in fat than other flavors of M&M’s. Woody Allen movies. Could be used as backup ammunition.
Cons: Might not salty enough for some. No wasabi pea-flavored M&M’s. The lack of a Brown M&M mascot (Seriously, that’s fucked up and maybe a little racist). Choking hazard for those not used to small balls in their mouth.

REVIEW: M&M’s Premiums Raspberry Almond

Kayla 21 Comments

Chocolate is one of those things that people either gorge on or enjoy a little piece once in awhile. I fall into the latter. I have friends who obsess over chocolate. Of course, they are all female, because as marketing dictates to us, chocolate is generally for women (with the exception of Yorkie in the UK which prides itself on being NOT for girls). Names like Bliss and Fling (which, by the way, has a site pumps out more estrogen than The View and they call their chocolate “fingers” — use your imagination) allude to the sexy, flirty nature that apparently my fellow sisters act like under the influence of chocolate (and sometimes appletinis). The folks at M&M’s/Mars have jumped on the bandwagon with their new line of “premium” chocolate.

I love chocolate and raspberry. It’s probably my favorite classic combination, besides steak and potatoes; dingoes and babies; and NASCAR and drunk rednecks shameless corporate sponsorships. However, I don’t like just any chocolate uniting with raspberry. It should be just dark chocolate, but unfortunately the M&M’s Premiums Raspberry Almond says that there’s raspberry flavored white chocolate and SOME dark chocolatey goodness in it (their website also tells you to enjoy them while you have your afternoon pedicure, because you know we all get those every day),

The M&M’s Premiums Raspberry Almond have a really cool metallic shell that’s eye catching if you’re the type of person who puts candy out in crystal bowls for your lovely guests, but I think that might be the only premium thing about them. The chocolate is good (if you like white chocolate and a light dark chocolate taste), but I can’t really call it premium. The size of the individual pieces aren’t even larger than the standard M&M’s with Almonds (which are getting harder and harder to find), but I guess that’s the folks at M&M’s/Mars saying, “You gals need to keep your figures slim.”

When opening the box, and the little baggie they come in, you get a huge whiff of artificial raspberry goodness, but when popped into the mouth, the raspberry flavor wears off rather quickly. It’s similar to the Fruit Stripe Gum conundrum; where you’re excited by the smell and you get that burst of flavor, but then it vanishes, like 80% of the people who were on American Idol. For the price, there’s a heck of a lot more choices to satisfy a chocolate craving, including great European chocolates from Lindt (those truffle balls are bangin’) and Toblerone, both of which are in the same price range as the M&M’s Premiums.

And a note to all chocolate manufactures: Just because it’s pink and has a cute name or package, we are not going to buy it. We will buy chocolate purely on the idea that it is chocolate.

(Nutrition Facts – 1.5 oz (about ¼ cup) – 240 calories, 17 grams of fat, 7 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 25 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 3 grams of fiber, 15 grams of sugar, 4 grams of protein, 6% calcium and 6% iron.)

Item: M&M’s Premiums Raspberry Almond
Price: $4.99
Size: 6 ounce
Purchased at: CVS
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: Aesthetically pleasing for fancy candy dishes. Nice raspberry scent. Being able to get away with innuendo in marketing. Fresh almonds.
Cons: Way too expensive for what you get. Flavor isn’t that strong. Overuse of the word premium. No green ones to make you horny.

Twix PB

Marvo 19 Comments

When you need to make an important decision or come up with the next big idea, there isn’t a better or more useful tool than a monkey throwing poop.

Need to come up with a new twist on an old product? Need a name for your shitty Metallica cover band? Want to know if someone loves you or loves you not, but all the flowers you pick have an even number of petals? Still can’t decide if Rosie was an upgrade, a downgrade, or about the same when she replaced Star Jones on The View? Do you need to develop a new reality TV show that doesn’t involve singing, surviving, sexy singles, or selecting a briefcase?

If you’re faced with any of these situations, a poop-throwing monkey is what you need.

The only things I can think of that are almost as effective with making decisions for someone are Lee Iacocca, the Magic 8-Ball, and overprotective parents.

So how does a poop-throwing monkey work?

It’s actually very simple. First, get a monkey, which you can steal from a zoo, South American jungle, the Playboy Mansion, or animal testing laboratory. Then you need to stick the monkey in a room with targets on the walls. Each one of those targets will represent an idea or a decision.

Then you have to get the monkey to throw its own poop at the targets. You can do this by getting the monkey angry, but in a humane way, because I saw the movie “28 Days Later” and I don’t want to end up infected.

A humane way of making a monkey angry enough to throw poop is to make it watch all the episodes of “Flava of Love” which will make the monkey reject evolution and denounce the belief that humans are “superior,” since it will believe that it is more advanced than anyone on that show.

The new Twix PB possibly smells like the result of a feces-throwing monkey. I created possible targets that were used to come up with the idea of Twix PB, which are below.


Click image to enlarge

Apparently, the monkey flung its poop to hit the targets for milk chocolate coating, chocolate cookie, and peanut butter filling and let me tell you that the monkey’s poop sure knows how to pick a good combination. The Twix PB has a stronger peanut butter taste and is more flavorful than the regular Peanut Butter Twix, which has a regular cookie instead of a chocolate one.

The Twix PB proves once again that the combination of just chocolate and peanut butter can’t go wrong and that poop-throwing monkeys shouldn’t be feared, they should be rewarded with food, because more food means more poop.

Item: Twix PB
Price: 59 cents
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pros: Stronger peanut butter taste and more flavorful than regular Peanut Butter Twix. Usually can’t go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter. Using a monkey to help with decisions and new ideas.
Cons: Cleaning up after the poop-throwing monkey. Watching “Flava of Love.” Shitty Metallica cover bands. Getting a monkey from a South American jungle.

REVIEW: Limited Edition Snickers Xtreme

Marvo 37 Comments

If peanuts were the measurement of being xtreme, elephants would be doing Mountain Dew commercials and Mr. Peanut wouldn’t be wearing a top hat and holding a cane, instead he would be wearing a helmet, riding a skateboard, and constantly cracking his nuts (or himself) while trying to do railslides down a set of stairs.

The Limited Edition Snickers Xtreme has an xtreme amount of peanuts. As you can see in the picture below, it’s frickin’ full of peanuts. It’s perfect for someone who loves peanuts so much that if it were legal, they would marry them, despite the fact it would be REALLY difficult to consummate the marriage.

To figure out how much more xtreme Snickers Xtreme was than regular Snickers, I decided to dissect each candy bar like it was a frog in a biology class, a cadaver in an anatomy class, or a female contestant on The Bachelor.

However, before I started cutting open each candy bar, I thought just dissecting them wouldn’t be xtreme enough. After all, I was dealing with a Snickers Xtreme. So I decided to try and do an xtreme dissection that involved me blindfolded. underwater without oxygen, surrounded by sharks, and using a live swordfish as my cutting instrument. Unfortunately, the bill of a swordfish doesn’t cut very well, but does stab very well, and I can only hold my breath underwater for ten seconds, so I had to settle for a regular dissection.

As you can see in the picture above the inside of a Snickers Xtreme is nothing but an xtreme amount of peanuts and caramel. In order to make room for the xtreme amount of peanuts, the Snickers Xtreme no get nougat, which a regular Snickers has.

Get it? Nougat! No get! Hahahaha! Oh, I think I just caused each my former creative writing professors to die a little inside.

Despite the xtreme amount of peanuts, I thought the Snickers Xtreme didn’t have a strong peanut taste due to it being kind of drowned out by the xtreme amount caramel. Regular Snickers has peanut butter nougat, which probably would’ve helped with the peanut flavor, but it would probably be hard to try and stuff some in the Snickers Xtreme, since doing that is much like trying to put a hat on Donald Trump’s head, because his head is the size of a blimp and his toupee uses its strand to keep hats away.

There really isn’t anything else xtreme about the Snickers Xtreme itself. Its nutritional value is almost the same as a regular Snickers. A regular Snickers has 280 calories, 14 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 5 mg of cholesterol, 140 mg of sodium, 35 grams of carbs, 1 grams of fiber, 30 grams of sugar, and 4 grams of protein. A Snickers Xtreme has 290 calories, 16 grams of fat, 6 grams of saturated fat, 10 mg of cholesterol, 110 mg of sodium, 33 grams of carbs, 2 grams of fiber, 27 grams of sugar, and 5 grams of protein.

However, after eating a Snickers Xtreme my life became a little more xtreme. You would think the probability of my life getting more xtreme because of the Snickers Xtreme is about the same probability of having a good time with someone whose number you found in a public restroom, but for a short time the most mundane parts of my life became xtreme.

For example, eating ice cream. After eating the Snickers Xtreme, I wasn’t chowing down on my favorite dairy product with a spoon, instead I took it to the xtreme by eating it with a ladle. My ironing was even taken to the xtreme. I didn’t just iron on my ironing board, I ironed on top of my ironing board, riding it like a surfboard with me ironing my clothes while wearing them.

Now that’s xtreme!

Item: Limited Edition Snickers Xtreme
Price: 59 cents
Purchased at: 7-Eleven
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Good. More peanuts, if you LOVE peanuts and want to be together through sickness and in health.. Kinda crunchy. Temporarily made mundane parts of my life xtreme. Eating ice cream with a ladle. Xtreme ironing.
Cons: More peanuts, if you’re allergic to peanuts. Despite an xtreme amount of peanuts, it didn’t have a strong peanut taste. No get nougat. Not really more xtreme than regular Snickers. Not being able to do an xtreme dissection. Xcessive use of the word “xtreme” in this review. Donald Trump’s toupee.

Smoothie Mix Skittles

Marvo 67 Comments

Smoothie Skittles

I’m not a fan of pastel colors, because I don’t look good in pastels.

If I wore pastel colors, I would look like a snotty, country club membership owning, private school graduated prick or a rejected J. Crew catalog model.

Plus, there’s something emasculating about pastel. Maybe it’s the brightness of it, after all, my wardrobe and soul consists of mostly dark colors.

It was this dislike of pastel that had me second guessing my purchase of these Smoothie Mix Skittles. I was afraid the bright colors of the Skittles would do something strange to me, like direct me towards the nearest Gap to look at their spring collection.

That fortunately didn’t happen after I ate the entire bag of Skittles.

In each bag of Smoothie Mix Skittles, there are five flavors: orange mango, peach pear, strawberry banana, lemon berry, and mixed berry. My favorite was the peach pear flavor.

With most of the combinations, I felt that one flavor really overpowered the other. For example, with the orange mango flavor, I could mostly taste the orange. With the pear peach flavor, I could mostly taste the pear.

However, with the strawberry banana flavor, I really couldn’t taste either.

Overall, I thought the Smoothie Mix Skittles were good. If they didn’t come in pastel colors, they would be slightly better.

Well folks, now that the obligatory review is out of the way, we can now focus our attention towards this month’s prize drawing.

This month, the Impulsive Buy will be giving ONE lucky reader a $15 iTunes Gift Card, which we reviewed last month.

Yahtzee! (BTW, “Yahtzee! is now the official Impulsive Buy catch phrase, which we stole from a particular board game company.)

To enter the drawing, just leave a comment for THIS review with the words “Tune Me On” in it and whatever else you would like to say. Or, if you think we’re crusty, drunk, smelly, and cheap comment whores, you can also enter by sending us an email with the phrase “Tune Me On” in the subject field.

If you leave a comment, don’t forget to fill out the email field, because we will be emailing the winner for their mailing address. Don’t worry about the shipping, we will take care of all 37 cents of it.

We will start accepting entries for the drawing on March 11, 2005. We will stop accepting entries on March 16, 2005. Only one entry allowed per person. The drawing is ONLY open to those in the United States. (Sorry to the rest of the world, the card can only be redeemed at the U.S. iTunes Music Store)

The winner of the prize drawing will be picked in the following way:

I will dictate each entrant’s email address, which will be recorded by my computer. The dictated email addresses will be turned into individual MP3 files. I will import all of the MP3s into iTunes and create a playlist containing all of the dictated email addresses.

Then I will click the shuffle button in iTunes fifteen times, which will mix up the order of the MP3s. Finally, I will play the MP3s and the fifteenth email I hear will be the winner of this month’s prize drawing.

Hopefully, there will be more than fifteen entries.

So for those of you who’d like some free music, here’s your chance.

Yahtzee!

Fine Print: We promise your email address will not be used to send you spam about getting free Starbucks coffee for a year. We also promise your mailing address will not be used to send you offers for an airline frequent flyer credit card. Bribes will not be accepted. We will not be responsible for lost mail.

Item: Smoothie Mix Skittles
Purchase Price: 50 cents
Rating: 3 out of 5
Pros: Cheap. More sugar than a can of soda. Interesting flavor combinations. I’m not a country club snob or a rejected J. Crew catalog model.
Cons: Emasculating pastel colors. One flavor seemed to dominant the other with most mixed flavors.