All right, then kiss, marry, kill, milk, chocolate, peanut or crispy?
Kiss, milk, chocolate, marry, peanut, kill, crispy.
Really?I'd kill milk chocolate.I'd kiss, we're both marrying peanut.Well, yeah.And yeah, I'd, I'd kiss crispy.
Yeah.Well, we get, we agree that peanut's elite.
Peanut is just God tier. Hi, you're listening to Ingridipedia, the milk chocolate food podcast covered in a thin crisp shell.My name's Ben Birchell and I'm joined by Emily Naismith.Hello, Em.
This is really one of those ones that you suggested just because you want to eat a lot of M&Ms, right?
Actually, I have something to work through.I'll explain.Oh, God. Then I sometimes use this podcast as a form of therapy and I really need that today.
Okay.And the reason is, you know, I'm not qualified for this, right?
The reason is work trauma.So I think, you know, a little bit about this, but I used to manage the M and M's Australia social media accounts a long time ago. And I loved it.
It was actually the perfect job for me while I was at an advertising agency that you were also working at.But it was a lot of thinking about M&Ms for years and years, like three whole years every day thinking about M&Ms.
So yes, we were working together.You were my boss for part of that, technically, I guess, even though I taught you everything you know about social media.
You turn the emoji keyboard on one person's phone and all of a sudden you taught them everything about social media.
Yes.Yes.Okay.I did.I did.But today I would like to share some insights with everybody from someone who's been way too close to M&Ms.I'm treating this as a form of talk therapy, I guess.Can you help me?
Do you bulk bill?I do bulk bill, yes.Okay.So I have five M&Ms related stressful moments for us to unpack.Okay.Firstly, I actually went insane managing different Twitter accounts for each of the M&Ms characters.
Oh, and each character has their own 20 page persona and tone of voice Bible with celebrities or film characters that have the same vibe and personality to draw from.
And then I'd have to make them tweet at each other, like having five way conversations from my one little brain too much.How do I get through this?I think the only answer is to work out who I'm most related to.
Did you ever relate to an M&Ms character?
Some are a bit cranky.Yeah.Okay.I think I would relate to like the thickness of peanut the most.Yellow, yeah.Or the anxiety of crispy.My second trauma point.I won't get those weekends back.
I went above and beyond for this job, above and beyond, unpaid.Like on the weekends I'd take home tubs of M&Ms and on the floor of my parents' house, I'd put down coloured cardboard and make elaborate designs with M&Ms and take photos.
And the one that broke me was making a tennis court out of blue and white M&Ms for the Australian Open.Like it was impossible to get that baseline straight.Dumb.I hate it.Then the dog would walk through it. The worst.
I assumed you were using like a hot glue gun to like stick them down, no?
Oh, that would have been smart.
Maybe I should have made that suggestion to you when I was your boss.
God damn it. You really should have told me that like eight years ago or however long ago it was.Probably 10 years ago.I don't know.Okay.Third point.When I see the Christmas or Easter M&Ms in store, I still feel viscerally anxious.
Like I just feel like someone's going to pop up from behind the shelf and ask me to write 40 M&Ms Christmas posts in August.And that would be you.
I think the peak of this was when I constructed like an entire gingerbread house and decorated it with red and green M&Ms on the weekend, just to post a single photo of it to Facebook with like a stupid line.
Like, I can't remember the actual line, but it would have been like, fun fact, M&Ms are actually an effective roof tile or something.
That's pretty good.I would have approved that.
Okay.Fourth point.I ate a lot of M&Ms.Stress eating.They're on tap and I was under pressure and I would just inhale them, but not only inhale them, pair them with potato chips.
Uh, the other snack that we had on tap and I'd create concoctions that I thought paired well through my insanity.And my favorite was pineapple M&Ms, which was a special release paired with red rock deli lime and black pepper chips.
It was actually really good, but you need to tell me a better combination that I can replace that in my mind with.
Uh... Peanut and... light and tangy fins.
Oh, that's disgusting.What's wrong with you?Oh my God.
No, peanut and some of those po, uh, like Malaysian rendang.Cause yeah, you're getting peanut.
That'd be really good.Yeah.Yeah.Okay.That's a good idea.I actually really want to do that right now.Thank you.So to end on a good note, I got to go to the Mars factory in Ballarat and it was incredible.
And you get to see all the M&Ms, how they get their individual colorings in these machines that look like clothes dryers.And you can see like all the red ones spinning around together.It's truly beautiful.
So I've got four trauma points, one happy thought.I thought I need to renew my love of M&Ms.So I thought a great way to do that would be to eat some peanut butter M&Ms, which are obviously the best flavor.
Are they?Are they better than peanut?
I think so.I think so.Let's see.You can only get them from like American places, I think, but yes, let's do it.Exposure therapy.Thank you.Oh my God.Yeah.They're so good.
Jury's out.I still think peanuts are god tier.
Emily, what are M&Ms to you?Like what, what, what? What role, maybe before you worked on them, what role did they play in your life?Were they an extravagance?Were they kind of a comfort?Were they?
I would say they're something that I ate at a party.Like at home, we kind of had more like fun sized chocolates that came in like a multi-pack.Sure.Never really had M&M bags.
That would, that would be like, if we were watching movies on a Friday night and we got pizzas, like we might get some M&Ms or something.
I feel like that would maybe something you got from the video store.
Um, but above all that. They were consistent to me.They were really, you know, the, the same bright colors, the same crunch, the same sweet chocolatey comfort.
I feel like they're cooler than Smarties.Like I grew up probably eating Smarties and then I kind of moved on to M&M's.That's right.
I mean, they've been around since 1941 in the US.They launched in the 1980s in Australia.And I remember them coming out and disrupting Smarties' hold on the market and being like, Oh, well, what are these ones?
To be honest, the colors of Smarties are brighter.
And I love Smarties because they're really nostalgic.
They're real compoundy chocolate.
Yeah.And sometimes that's good.It's like birdie beetle vibes.
That's true.But yeah, to me, consistent.And they come in my mind in two varieties.That's all I can think of.Regular milk chocolate, fine.And the God tier, peanut.In my mind, I think M&Ms.I just think two varieties.
But I went to the supermarket this week and there's like eight, like now.
And then I delved a little deeper. And I discovered a dark underbelly of flavors that will make your head spin and your stomach churn.Welcome to the strange, occasionally grotesque universe of M&M's variants.
Now you're somebody who's worked on them, so you're going to be aware of them, but I feel like. There's a lot of people out there that might not know about the 66 varieties of M&M's that I found on the wiki fandom site.
So there might be more, but on the M&M's wiki fandom site, there was 66 listed, including birthday cake, bubble gum, there's a couple of sound really good campfire s'mores.
Coffee nut.I guess that's coffee flavoured with peanut in it.Sure.
I don't remember any of these.
No, I mean, a lot of these, um, in the States, I mean, you mentioned pineapple that's on the list, crunchy espresso, which I guess is like coffee with crunchy bits in it.Uh, there's dulce de leche caramel, intense peanut.
I don't know what makes intense peanut more intense.There's M&M's caramel cold brew. Um, yeah.Uh, strawberry peanut butter M&Ms.Sure.Uh, strawberry shake, toasty vanilla.I like the sound of that one too.I don't know how it's different from s'mores.
Maybe, maybe they just brought it out like six months later, rebadged.There's just so many variants.Literally there's 66 there, but that brings us to today and all of the variants that are on the shelves of my local supermarket, including these.
cookie dough M&M's in a pink packet.
I've seen them.I noticed that there's only a few left in the packet.
There's, uh, I think, I think they spilled.I didn't eat that many.Uh, I'm going to give you a little try.
I'm intrigued.Well, what?I hope they're doughy.
Give it a try because what I thought was, I mean, you know, you can buy M&M's cookie dough and that's a delicious thing and you make cookies out of it.That's on, it's in the like deli aisle of your supermarket.
But it's quite possible that according to productreview.com.au, these might be the worst M&M's variant of all time.So.
I'm not really getting much.I'm just getting like wetness in the middle.
Wet and it just tastes like a normal M&M around the edges.
For me, I'm getting wet.I'm getting wax.There's a real waxiness about it.I'm getting like a lot of coconut.
There's no, yeah, there's no joy in the middle.Like after going straight from like peanut butter to this, it's quite underwhelming.
Yeah.Well, let's, let's go a little bit further than underwhelming and go to some of the reviews, the one-star reviews of which there are more one-star reviews than any other review.Some people say tastes like licorice.I'm not a licorice fan.
Horrible.Worst M&M flavour so far.They tasted like soap, which I kind of do get that.There's a waxiness, it's a soapiness about it.Kind of coats your mouth.
I kind of want to like suck all the, all the like coating off and see what's in the middle.
Yeah.Uh, they taste and smell like chemicals.I had to throw them out straight away and my family eats almost anything.Avoid these.Absolutely rancid and tastes nothing like cookie dough.I ate one and threw the bag out. Sickly sweet disappointment.
Yet more people have thrown them out.Literally the worst thing I've ever tasted.I almost vomited after trying these things.They taste like medicine.Thank you, Jessica in Melbourne.Nothing like cookie dough.And just the final one.
Do they not taste these things before they sell them?
Okay, I've got the shell off.I want to look at what it looks like. It's like something fudgy, fudgy and tasteless.
So they, and they've got like a central kind of core that's chewier than the rest of it.
Yeah.That's what it is.It's like fudgy nothingness.
That's really disappointing.I'm so, so glad I don't manage the social accounts.
Um, look here, I've got a present for you after that.Have a peanut M&M.
Ooh. Well, thanks for listening to our excuse to eat M&Ms as an episode.You can vote for whose M&Ms facts you found the most interesting on our Instagram, which is Ingridipedia.
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