More M&M gossip!
Around September/October this year, we'll see Mars' new seasonal release for 2012/13 come into shops. This year's new flavour will be milk chocolate orange - yum!
In the same time period Mars will be introducing new packaging for their 180-200g M&Ms bags. The bags will have a gusseted bottom and stand upright on their own, plus be resealable (a la Cadbury Crunchie Rocks and the like - fold-over resealable, not zip-lock). Interestingly, the pack sizes, barcodes and images are not changing, just the packaging shape. I don't have pictures just yet, but will share as soon as I do.
There is also whispers of a new Snickers variety, Three Nut, but I don't have any more info besides the name just yet.
Are Almond M&Ms seasonal? Can't find them around me anymore.
ReplyDeleteIf they are, it's so frustrating that we only have a few varieties, while the US seems to get so many more varieties released at the same time as stalwarts (Peanut Butter, Dark Chocolate, Almond etc).
I believe the almond M&Ms are seasonal, though Mars opted to keep them around a little longer since they were selling quite well.
DeleteUnfortunately we won't ever see peanut butter M&Ms here. I did ask my Mars rep about this some time ago, and was told that the US peanut butter M&M recipe (or some of its ingredients; I'm not sure which) doesn't actually meet FSANZ standards and so can't be produced here on a large scale. I was also told that Mars had experimented with trying to produce an Australian version that met FSANZ standards, but were unable to come up with a product that tasted similar to the US version. Plus, I believe there were issues with equipment; producing a peanut butter line would have involved shutting down production of all other flavours due to allergy concerns just to produce the PB range, if my memory serves me correctly.
And before anyone asks, my Mars rep and I theorised that the reason FSANZ hasn't gone after importers of the peanut butter M&Ms is because they are 'small fish' on the grand scale of things. *shrug*
Thanks! You're right about the Almond ones, I heard back from Mars today about them and they pretty much said they were a limited edition.
DeleteI'd actually prefer Dark Choc here, rather than PB, but I know a lot of people like the PB ones.
Is it my imagination or have Orange M&Ms been around before here?
Orange is one of the seasonal M&Ms flavours, yes. I think that is the next seasonal release. Dark chocolate and mint/crispy mint are some of the other seasonal flavours, though I'm not aware of the full range off the top of my head.
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