Birthday Cake M&Ms

Aw, M&Ms, it's not even my birthday! You shouldn't have.

Oh, it wasn't even that much effort? They're kinda just regular M&Ms with vanilla extract or something? Oh well...I guess then it's not a big deal. Thanks anyway, it's the thought that counts.

Sorry, final thoughts ahead of the meat of the review - but I guess I'm the fool for thinking these M&Ms would taste much like birthday cake. Chocolate is always going to be an overpowering flavor, and birthday cake flavored things I've had that translate well are always vanilla based - so things like birthday cake ice cream, the cream of birthday cake Oreos, and frosting.

I'm a supporter of the birthday cake flavor emergence in the American snack market, but it's a very USA flavor so I can see why it hasn't made it over here. Don't people have like...Victoria sponges for their birthdays here? With..."icing"? Pah! As a person who requested a cheesecake one year to the shock & horror of my family, I'm not a great traditionalist...but a plain sponge cake with a little bit of cream and jam? No thank you! Wait, I take that back - I'll have it for everyday cake-eating, but a birthday requires frosting. Let's get real. Put some frosting on it, and I'll start listening. I need to get that printed up on some tote bags.

M&Ms is no stranger to 'strange' flavors in the USA, and I've loved & lost many. The PB&J M&Ms to promote Transformers, the coconut variety, pumpkin spice (reviewed here by me previously), candy corn, carrot cake, and my personal favorite - Wild Cherry which as far as I knew was discontinued but it looks like it can be ordered online in bulk!

M&Ms kind of seem to have taken over for Kisses as America's go-to weird flavor distribution chocolate...The problem is that you can't really 'fill' them with anything like you can a Kiss, so it makes a lot of these flavors get a bit lost in the strong taste of Hershey's style milk chocolate.

These Birthday Cake M&Ms suffer from that - they smelled just like regular M&Ms, pleasantly sweet chocolate, but there was no hint of a different flavor to come.

I was surprised by this, but crunching them actually made the birthday cake flavor stronger - sucking them is the same experience as with regular M&Ms. Even when crunching though, it just tastes a bit like vanilla-hinted chocolate M&Ms. Generally, if someone gave you these and said "Enjoy these regular, plain ol' M&Ms" you'd eat them and ask no further questions.

Not really the experience I was looking for, I think if white chocolate was used instead it would've been a bit stronger & more like classic American 'birthday cake'. As it stands, it tastes like a decorative M&M on a cake that had a bit of icing stuck to it.