The big M&M test

M&M's are the ideal counting-candy, because they do not only come in different colours, they also contain chocolate! And to make this test more extensive then the previous tests, I counted both the regular version (brown bag) and the peanut version (yellow bag).

[ in total I had half a kilo of M&M's to count... ]

With and without peanuts mixed...

The results had some surprising elements:

Regular version: 280 pieces

Brown: 42
Blue: 46
Yellow: 26
Green: 36
Red: 83
Orange: 47

Peanut version: 111 pieces

Brown: 36
Blue: 27
Yellow: 16
Green: 15
Red: 17
Orange: 0

In both the peanut as in the peanutless bag, the colours were not equally distributed. In the regular version of the M&M's, the colour Red had a very dominant presence in the sample. This colour was almost in there twice as much as any other colour (which were approximatelly equally distributed).

[ with yellow being the least popular of all colours... ]



For the M&M's with a peanut, you can conclude that the Brown and Blue colour was in there twice as much as the Yellow, Red or Green sweets. And the most shocking thing of all: there are no peanut M&M's in the colour orange!!!

No orange M&M's visable on the peanut package...

After some research on the internet, I found the American M&M website to fully understand my counting-obsession. For both the regular M&M's as for the peanut version they have listed the to be expected colours in a bag in percentages.



Besides the surprsing confession that some colours are more popular than other, I see something far more disterbing on their site: Orange M&M's with peanut!

[ I really should write an angry letter to the Dutch M&M makers... ]





Oh, something else, M&M's used to have a slogan: "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand". Well, I needed to test this, and I have to admit, it is pretty true. After holding some M&M's in a closed hand for a full minute, they were still intact.

[ only the blue M&M left a visable print on my hand... ]

But when I extended the test period to about five minutes, the chocolate inside the brighly coloured shell of the sweet started melting. This caused the sweet to 'cave-in' and break-up completely...

You need to be patient, but they do melt...