As with most of my impulse candy purchases, I knew little about these coconut flavored M&Ms, only happening to see them while checking out at Tops and only adding them to the pile of groceries because the premise sounded too interesting to pass up.
I generally am a fan of coconut in most of its forms. Sometimes the coconut flakes used for baking can be a little too intense slash artificial tasting for me, but overall I always look forward to coconut flavored foods (especially Almond Joy) and find myself enjoying coconut variants most of the time. Especially Macaroons. Homemade ones. Mmmmmmm.
After dinner I ripped open the M&Ms bag and gave them a try while watching some television. These are medium to large M&Ms with a uniform shape and come in three colors: Brown, White, and Green. I found the color scheme very attractive and it seems appropriate for the M&Ms. Some of the M&Ms have small tropical pictures printed on them next to the “m”. These include such classics as an umbrella, a shining sun, some leaves, and a palm tree. Obviously they add nothing but aesthetics to this limited edition M&M variant and probably around half of mine were partially rubbed off and hard to identify, but this could very well have been due to poor handling, and I still appreciate the effort of including them.
Biting into the M&Ms delivers a pleasant experience to my taste buds. They are chocolately, for sure, but the coconut flavor is the star here and it comes on early and remains at a near constant level throughout the chew; never giving up the flavor battle with the chocolate. The coconut flavoring seems to have been added directly to the chocolate as there is no coconut substance to be found in here. A lick test of the shell reveals that the coconut flavor resides here as well. These M&Ms are well permeated with coconutty flavor. The chocolate itself seems a bit airier than normal M&Ms, as if it was whipped, perhaps when the coconut flavor was added. All in all I found the flavor of these M&Ms to be quite pleasant. Perhaps just a touch too sweet for my personal tastes, I still enjoyed the coconut flavor without any worry of odd coconut textures. They make me think of some sort of pre-packaged travel style macaroon.
In September of 2009, Coconut M&Ms were bestowed with a permanent seat on the M&Ms lineup. This means that they have graduated from Limited Edition to Permanent Member, and you should be able to find them whenever you want them. If you like coconut, I suggest you give them a try. I wouldn’t buy them regularly, but I would pick them up occasionally when I need a quick escape to a tropical island.