One of the several reasons why I don't get along with corporations is that they tend to stifle a great amount of innovation. Once a "new" idea is presented to the corporation, it has to be run by the manufacturing department (to see if they can make it), and then the marketing department (to see if they can sell it). Afterwards, focus groups and test markets become involved to see how much interest and profits can be had. By the time a "new" product is introduced, the uniqueness is long gone, battered by the development process.

Not all corporations and companies do this, but enough of them.

I bring up this generalization, as I want to introduce you all to two new products, to illustrate the above point.

Somewhere in Hershey, Pennsylvania, it was decided that the corporation needed to make more money, and that a new product should be introduced. After running through the above process, and after an extended period of time, a product was released to the general public. Called Kissables, They are "miniature candy-coated versions of one of the world's most recognizable brands. These colorful, fun-able candies, blue, red, yellow, green, and orange, come in convenient, single-serve packaging."

What you have is a corporation that has spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars on a product which sounds eerily like M&M's.

Now people may run to the defence of Hershey's, saying that there's precious little one can do in the field of chocolate. Once you've dealt with caramel, nuts, shredded coconut, marshallows, maybe a little peanut butter in your products, you've covered about 80% of all chocolate products already out there.

But then you look at Jelly Bellys. They take up a far smaller segment of the candy market. As a company, they wish to increase how much money they make. So what do they come up with? A product called JBz. As their product page states, JBz's are "chocolate centers with candy shells with twelve delectable flavors such as Chocolate Cappuccino JBz and Chocolate Caramel JBz, as well as classically delightful pairings of chocolate in Chocolate Coconut, Chocolate Vanilla, and Chocolate Fudge Brownie."

Sounds like M&M's, but with a new twist, doesn't it? Granted, it probably wasn't a stretch for the Folks at Jelly Belly's to go "Hey, let's add flavors to an M&M style candy!", as they have already done this with their Jelly Bean line. But they have added to the diversity of the candy marketplace, something Hershey's didn't do with their Kissable line.