Have you seen the new Black & White M&Ms yet?

Of course you have. I first spotted these while i was doing the last rounds of my Christmas shopping, and bought a few bags. I'm tempted to play Go or Othello with 'em.

I bet Steve Ditko would love them. (That's a joke about his worldview concerning good & evil as stark absolutes, with no shades of gray.)

You could tell fortunes with 'em, or play a kind of "She loves me, She Loves me Not". Just pick a yes-or-no question you want answered, or a decision you need to make, and let the color of the last M&M in the bag be your guide. White for yes, Black for No, or vice versa if you would feel ethnic guilt associating black with a negative.

I even like the commercial for these. The one where Dorothy Gale wakes up at the end of "The Wizard of Oz", and all the M&M characters are in her bedroom, in Black & White. "...Oh Aunt M (funny funny!), i had the strangest dream, and you were there, and you , and you, abd you were all in color!..."

I almost did a spit-take the first time i saw it, when she called the one "Aunt M".

But last week I went to a movie, and had a pack of these in my pocket.

I was sitting in the theater munching on the M&Ms, when it hit me. Sitting there in the dark, eating my Black and White M&Ms, I realized that they taste the same as the colored ones. They'd also taste the same if they were in shades of gray. The flavor's not in the shell or the color. It's the chocolate and/or the peanut or peanut butter inside! That's what really matters.

I wondered if blind people care what color their M&Ms are. I wonder if anybody that ever did concert prep for Van Halen, and had to provide those bowls of M&Ms with all the orange, yellow, and brown ones removed, ever considered saving those unwanted candies for the next Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder concert. To a blind person, I bet all the M&Ms taste the same, except for that occasional one with a rotten peanut.

M&Ms aren't Skittles, after all. With Skittles, you can taste the rainbow. Blind people can taste the different skittles. Even the monochrome mint skittles, that are all different shades of blue, or green, have a subtle taste difference for each shade.

if they wanted to do Black & White Skittles, they'd have to take the flavors out, too. Maybe they could make the skittles Licorice and Vanilla for a limited time. Mmmm.

I wonder what Deaf and blind people think of Black and White M&Ms. Maybe they should explore a way to make the different colors of M&Ms make different sounds when you crunch them. They could vary the thickness of the shell, maybe. Or they could put that fizzpowder into the coating. It'd be funny if they could have random M&Ms make a fart noise when you bit them. Or a Howler Monkey or Kookaburra call.
Or the sounds of light sabers. George Lucas should have his FX wizards get to work now devising a way to make the M&Ms provide the sound effects for the next Star Wars film.

That would really show up those folks at Hershey. M&M/Mars could finally make up for letting Reese's Pieces be "E.T.'s Favorite Candy"

Yeah. That would be SWEET.