Comparative advantage is the only winner here
A McSweeeney's contributor has recently review the Dark Chocolate M&M's. The reviewer (scroll down) finds nothing more noteworthy than how the chocolate with a candy shell actually melts in your hand this time, exploding. And this review is fair.
The key to dark chocolate is time, triggering a whole tongue effect, and time is what M&M's don't have. Your tongue hits one side. You're immediately at the other. Your teeth get going. You've taken a handful, and you work at the candy shell level more than you get into the chocolate. The taste is the sum of its parts, one part experience. Dark chocolate requires more.
In the smallest lonely bites, dark chocolate is the experience. And you have to give Hershey's credit here. The dark chocolate Minis created the taste for everyday Americans, and I'd challenge you to find another recent food sensation that started out popularly tiny. A gum flavor, maybe?
But let's be fair. Dark Chocolate M&M's are the Mars response to Hershey's Kissables, the candy-coasted mini-Kiss. There's a whole essay waiting here on the destructive rise of cultural pretense in romance, but anyone could write it. What we have here, really, is the worst candy skirmish ever. If you've ever tried Kissables, swallowing game pieces has never been so boring.
Time for breakfast and a return to strengths. In your free time, consider the M-azing salvo and the almond wars.
