This Friday will see a number of movies hitting theaters that create a number of interesting questions. Can Ratchet and Clank be the first truly successful theatrical adaptation of a video game? Are Key and Peele on the verge of the same success on the big screen that they had on television? However, the one question that has us scratching our heads is this: Why is this vending machine like half full of M&M’s?
What you’re looking at above is an officially released still from Mother’s Day, the new Garry Marshall ensemble comedy which follows in the footsteps of its holiday themed brethren Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve. The scene has two of the film’s stars, Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston, standing in front of a vending machine which Aniston has just used to get herself some Skittles, because her character apparently has excellent taste in candy and this is important for viewers to know. But we’re not looking at her. It actually took us several glances to finally notice that Sudeikis is on crutches, and that's probably pretty important. And yet, all we can see is the metric fuck-ton of M&M’s in that machine. Why is there an entire row of the machine dedicated to two flavors of M&M’s?
This sort of thing doesn’t occur in nature does it? As somebody who used to spend a lot of time traveling and staying in hotels for business, I have spent some quality time with vending machines over the years. I’ve never seen more than two spaces dedicated to the same candy. It’s possible that this scene was done on location and this machine was already here, but if so, it was loaded by the world’s single laziest employee in the history of vending machines.
The more likely solution, of course, is that the Mars corporation paid the studio for the product placement. Both M&M’s and Skittles are made by the same company, so they get the double wammy of having the machine full of their candy, and having the lead character chose one of their items. "Jennifer Aniston likes Skittles, don’t you want to eat Skittles now?" But even if that’s the case, couldn’t they have been just a little bit more subtle about it? There are so many different flavors of M&M’s they could have easily distributed the bags in such a way to make this less obvious. There are four additional spaces underneath which contain two other flavors. All they had to do was mix those in. This isn't complicated.
It’s like they want us mesmerized by the yellow and green bags because we can’t see anything else. Is the next scene in the movie really bad, and so they wanted to drive the entire theater to the concession stand for the next 10 minutes?
Finally, can we talk about the Skittles for a second? Skittles come in bags. At convenience stores, and in vending machines, they are generally seen in bags. The only place we tend to see Skittles in boxes are in movie theaters. Why are the Skittles in this machine the $4 movie-theater type? They couldn’t get this minor detail correct. Who in the blue hell was in charge of the set decoration on this scene?
We can only hope that this is some kind of a plot point, and there are a whole series of jokes in this scene about all the M&M’s in the machine, although if there are we have to assume Mars paid for those, too.
Ok, I’m done now. Sorry, I take candy very seriously, and this entire thing really upset me. I mean, I’m glad crispy M&M’s are back too, but this is ridiculous.
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