M&M’s M*Azing Peanut Butter Bar
Guest Chocablogger Terry Scannell is back with something a bit nutty…
I’m actually not quite sure what the official title of this bar is. The wrapper is a mish-mash of words, the words ‘now even better chocolate!’ always make me a little nervous. How is it better? I looked at the ingredients and saw my old friends Sugar, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Flavours and… Sugar again… wondering around at the top of the list, so how is this better than what it used to be?Anyway, the premise of this bar is an ordinary milk chocolate slab that has mini peanut butter M&M’s thrown into it. It sounds promising, but personally I feel it could have been done better, but I’ll get into that later.
So opening the paper wrapper and the foil (can anyone tell me why Mars went for foil here?) wrapper reveals a thin bar that most likely will be a bit broken, as I’ve had this bar 3 times and it’s been like that everytime, sitting there. The bar is extremely thin in fact, normal M&M’s would have been too big for it, so instead you get these tiny M&M’s, which of course have a tiny amount of peanut butter in them.
And that’s where the problem lies, the flavour is just not there. Ordinary milk chocolate with a tiny hint of peanut butter. Now I mentioned earlier that the M&M’s were thrown in, and that’s no joke, there are a load of them in here. But the bar is just milk chocolate, and these M&M’s are so tiny, that they just don’t lend enough of their flavour to the bar to give a noticeable peanut butter taste, so it’s extremely plain.
My opinion is that a thicker bar with ordinary peanut butter M&M’s would have been a better idea, or a bar with a peanut butter filling (ala Reese’s) with chocolate M&M’s in it would have been better ideas, but what do I know? Mars have gone for this and it’s a shame really. A bar with unfulfilled promise, stick to the normal peanut butter M&M’s as far as this product line goes.
The bar has 230 calories (120 from fat), 3g Protein, 25g Carbohydrates (23g of which sugars) and 13g Fat (8g of which saturates).
Information
- Filed under m&m’s, mars, milk chocolate, peanut butter.
I don’t think Mars’ chocolate is good enough to be in a full bar form. I tried a couple of these varieties a few years ago and then didn’t see them anymore and felt satisfied that they were discontinued.
Looks like they’re back.
What do you have against soy lecithin? Is lecithin not used on chocolate in Europe as much? (There are a few American high-end brands that don’t use lecithin, but I don’t know of any consumer ones that don’t.)
I’m curious – does your calling them “tiny M&Ms” mean that there are no M&M minis in the UK?
Cybele – We do have Soy Lecithin, but as they said it was improved chocolate then I was hoping not to see it. The point was that I couldn’t tell what was improved, especially when the same old ingredients are at the top of the list.
Rosa – No, we don’t. Simple enough answer really. 😉