August 30th: M&M's Premiums Triple Chocolate

Kcal 230 Fat 14.0g Fat(sats) 8.0g Carbs 25.0g (per 43g serving)

Ever since rounding off my full sweep of the original M&M's range I have literally been dieing to dip into the new 'M&M's Premiuims' - thanks to my new friends at **I SHOP 4 YOU II** I have to wait no longer! Today as you will have gathered from the title, I sampled the first of five different variants - the 'Triple Chocolate' flavour - a combination of milk, dark and white chocolate all packed into each M&M!

The packaging for the 'Premiuims' range looks simply awesome. The boxes have a modern looking inverted design that is both unique and aesthetically pleasing. Inside the boxes are resealable plastic bags ...ok they maybe could have done with being foil, but then the sheer beauty of the M&M's themselves would not be able to be seen. As you can already ascertain I thought the M&M's looked fantastic, they were an attractive purple colour with a nice marble paintwork effect...they certainly looked the business. I must take a moment to stand up and applaud Mars here ... for once an M&M's product had a great aroma!! As soon as I opened the bag I was met with a terrific cocoa scent that smelt absolutely fantastic. I must say that despite my initial scepticism that the 'Premiuims' branding may have just been a gimmick, I was really impressed with the product presentation.

So onto the taste...did this let them down!? Oh hell no!! Mars have done away with the usual crispy shells and replaced them with a coating comprised of a 'confectionary glaze'. This glaze simply contains the colourings and a lick of oil. Rather than the usual crunchy texture of standard M&M's the texture was super smooth... and I mean super smooth. Ok I admit the coating composition doesn't sound like the greatest formulation ever ... but believe me it works.

Rather than the usual overpowering sweetness of the sugary shells, the initial flavour I got was an intense but smooth chocolaty one. As you can see from my picture above the M&M's were layered structurally. The outside layer contained the dark chocolate, as I have said this provided quite a strong initial chocolaty hit ... it certainly wasn't a bitter dark chocolate taste but it was noticeably more cocoa rooted than milky. The next layer was the white chocolate that provided a nice mellow creaminess to the taste. The middle milk chocolate layer was hard to distinguish because of the other two layers being more pronounced in their flavours ... the milk chocolate was mostly noticeable in its dominance of the aftertaste which was far more milky than the initial dark chocolate outer layer.

When eating these I found both letting them melt away on my tongue and alternatively just chewing them equally as pleasurable. Letting them simply melt allowed each of the different layers to unfold in their flavours slowly, whilst chewing them literally gave off an explosion of chocolaty flavours ... as I said both methods were equally as satisfying.

Overall Im must say I'm very impressed with my first dip into the 'Premiuims' line. The new smoother coating allows the inner flavours to express themselves more as the taste is no longer dominated by the sweetness of the crunchy shells. All three chocolate layers were equally accomplished in their flavours, each had a distinct impact on the overall taste - the 'Triple Chocolate' description really lives up to it's billing. My only slight criticism would be that I found I easily ate the whole pack over two sittings ... thats over 85g worth of product each sitting, they simply just weren't that filling as a snack. Certainly satisfying tastewise, though I wouldn't recommend them on their hunger fulfilment potential. This is only the smallest grumble, there is simply no getting away from the fact these are a great brand extension from Mars - I cant wait to try the rest of the variants. A must for M&M's fans ... these truly are M&M's but with a touch of luxury.

8.5 out of 10

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