Chocolate shop face off: M+M's vs Hershey's

The M+M's shop in Times Sq. Although there were a few long tubes of various colour M+M's to buy, the store seemed to be predominantly all manner of M+M merchandising; clothes, hats, soft toys, famous landmarks, and more. Why on earth would anyone want to buy this stuff? Admittedly, there were plenty of people in the store but I didn't see them buying anything. Perhaps M+M see it as an experience store. But I can't get inside a huge M+M nor see how they are made (Hershey factory in PA is very good for that), nor dive into a sandpit full of them. The brief for this store must have been something like "create maximum merchandising experience".

Across the road is the Hershey store. I believe it was there before the M+M store. I have heard that a smart ad creative, when asked to do more ads for Hershey, retorted "you don't want any more ads, you want a store", which may be a tad unoriginal nowadays but apparently was revolutionary at the time. Hershey did it. Good for them. Now the store doesn't have huge areas of space, like the M+M store, but nor does it have a lot of superfluous nick-nacks either. It has chocolate, and lots of it. OK, it may be a little gaudy and very busy, but it feels like a chocolate shop, and I can buy many varieties of Hershey's. The brief for this store really could be "make it feel like a kid in a candy store".