M&M Merchandising

So I must admit that I'm an M&M character fan. I'm fairly sure, if I dig through my art portfolio, there's a blue M&M (maybe it's yellow) somewhere in there. Actually, thinking about it, it might even have been a middle school art poster (in which case it was most definitely yellow and not blue).

Anyway, I've always been a fan. I think things that are round with a face on it are cute, and they're even funnier when they talk and are personified.

This shouldn't be all that surprising, after all, the baby-face bias is a well known design principle (things that look like babies will naturally appeal to us - it's an evolutionary instinct - after all, if we found babies ugly, we wouldn't protect it, and the human race wouldn't be able to continue).

Therefore, when I walked into the M&M World store in Time Square and saw this giant Blue M&M dressed like Elvis rotating on a disco floor I couldn't pass up the chance to really act like a tourist and get my picture taken with it.

I have to bow to the absolute genius of the toy designers when I saw the Lady Liberty M&M dispensers in the store.

Of course it makes sense to have a Lady Liberty dispenser when you're in NY.  Integrating it with the Green M&M, which, up until the beginning of this year, was the only lady M&M, is pretty ingenious.

I actually saw this on a previous visit, but didn't buy it because (1) I had not seen the real Statue of Liberty yet (2) if I had an M&M dispenser, then I would be eating lots of M&Ms.

But since I made it to the real Statue of Liberty this time, I could justify the purchase.

This is the genius of M&M merchandising. I'm envious of the toy designers who were in the position to create such an ingenious product. If only I trained in industrial design, I might have had a shot at working as a toy designer for them! Oh well, I'll admire with my pocket book instead.