"'M&M's Mega' To Have Three Times More Chocolate." Oh brother here we go again. http://t.co/zrBE5tZ3Al /cc @dandersod

— Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) May 16, 2014

3x the Chocolate?

What a great Calculus activity (hint: rotational volumes).
Cross sections with an exacto:

M&M

M&M Mega

What shape fits best? Click on image to get directly to the desmos interactive.

Pretty good fit.
Here’s the data for each type. I used a caliper to measure the dimensions.

To account for the candy shell you can measure pixels in an image manipulation program. If you’d like to follow along at home, the M&M Mega has a thickness of 404 pixels, and the chocolate only (no shell) has a thickness of 333 pixels. The regular M&M has a thickness of 251 pixels, and a chocolate thickness of 210 pixels.

You have enough information to do some damage, go ahead and see if the M&M’s Mega truly have 3x the chocolate of the regular M&M’s.

Results

M&M Mega volume of 1,423 mm^3.

Regular M&M volume of 474.8 mm^3.

Fun. Great activity for calculus.
Phew, no fox news.