What a great way to celebrate a special event like a wedding (imagine a photo of the bride and groom), birthday, graduation, anniversary, or even a holiday!  Or you could use it as a promotional item for your business with your logo on each m&m.

Start out by picking your favorite m&m color.  There are currently 20 different color choices ranging from various shades of white to all the usual m&m colors, to aqua, light pink, and a shimmering golden color.

Then, depending upon the option you choose, you can upload your favorite photo, most likely in whatever format you can pull off your digital camera including .jpg, .bmp, and .tif formats.  The higher the resolution the better you’ll see the detail.  Or enter the text you’d like to have displayed.  Or select and upload a logo.

Once you have the m&m designed then you can even pick out the packaging; bags, boxes, and tins round out the selection.  In the case of a business promotion you can get packaging that is personalized to the business extending the promotion beyond the candy.

For those of us who have enjoyed m&ms since our childhood, the personalization makes them just a little bit more “ours.”

This is really cool!

To  learn more about all the different options, and a discount offer, click here:  www.ChocolateUniversityOnline.com/goto/getmms.html.

Back in May, Mars put up a website at www.realchocolate.com that is giving away chocolate on Fridays through October.  I just discovered this today!

In their words, “Times are tough and we at Mars want to help. How, you ask? Every Friday through October, Mars will give away free real chocolate to 250,000 people.”

If you are one of the first 250,000 to register on the site on a particular Friday they will send you a coupon for a free M&M’S®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®, 3 MUSKETEERS®, MILKY WAY®, or DOVE®— for free!  That’s pretty exciting.

The website has emphasis on the “real chocolate.”  By clicking the “why real chocolate” button you’ll get a little bit of education on the U.S. standards of identity for chocolate.  This is good information that every chocolate lover should understand.  Afterall, you don’t really want something that just kind of like chocolate, do you?  I don’t think so.

So, it’s July now, and I have, for the first time, submitted my registration for a free candy bar.  Given the choices I think a dark chocolate Dove would be my choice.  Dark M&Ms are good too, but sometimes hard to find. 

And, I’m not exactly sure why, but my tastebuds do give some favor to the Twix bar even though I’m not much of a fan of milk chocolate.  The Twix is best if it first spends a few hours in the freezer.  It’s cold, it’s crunchy, and the caramel develops a nice snap.  Yum!

Be sure to get your chocolate relief next Friday.