Pitting up with Cherry M&M's

I think the people at M&M's got their letters flipped with the new "Wild Cherry M&M's."

No, I'm not going to claim that some of my candies said "W" instead of "M" on them. For some reason that always happens, whether or not they're the new cherry variety.

But they shouldn't be "Wild Cherry" -- they should be "Mild Cherry."

Aside from their dark red wrapper, Wild Cherry M&M's are different from their original brethren in several ways. They're larger, they only come in two colors -- red and maroon -- and they smell like cherry candy.

Occasionally they also taste like cherry candy, too. But most of the time they just taste like bigger M&M's stuffed with creamier chocolate. There is no actual cherry at the center of Wild Cherry M&M's, and for the most part there's no actually cherry flavor, either.

Yet in every bag, a few M&M's do taste like cherries. Here's what it's like to eat them:

You tear open the packet and a strong, obviously fake cherry scent fills the room. Then you start eating, and five pieces in you don't taste any cherry. You just smell it. Suddenly you pop one piece into your mouth and it almost tastes like you bit into a chocolate-covered cherry. And then the next six or seven M&M's won't have any of the flavor.

I got several packs to confirm the phenomenon. Either the batch of M&M's in the vending machine was defective, my tongue is damaged, or these M&M's are only intermittently cherryish.

Perhaps the fact that there are only two or three highly cherry M&M's in the pack is what makes them wild. Or maybe my tongue really is broken. Neither would surprise me, but it isn't a bad eating experience. The mild candies have a very tasty, creamier chocolate than regular M&M's.

But they're still a bit more mild than wild. And no matter how good something is, if it's misnamed, it can't get a great score. Three sporks out of five.