In a turn of events that could’ve been lifted straight from the Seventies classic film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, two workers found themselves stuck fast after they fell into a vat of chocolate at the Mars M&M factory in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. The waist-high (Augustus) gloop was so thick that lifting them out the way they came in proved impossible. A fire crew had to resort to cutting a hole in the side of the tank to rescue the pair, who were sent to hospital for checks.
Ever wondered what M&M’s stands for? The answer is Mars and Murrie, referring to Forrest Mars (the son of the founder of Mars, Frank Mars) and Bruce Murrie (the son of longtime Hershey President William Murrie). The unlikely pair went into business together at the start of the Second World War in 1939. Nowadays, the brands are archrivals.
In the beginning the little candies were made with Hershey chocolate. Murrie was able to promise Mars a reliable cocoa supply despite wartime rationing, so the duo agreed to collaborate. However, post-war Mars bought back Murrie’s 20% share and eventually stopped using Hershey chocolate.
To understand where the idea came from, we have to rewind a few years. Fed up with his father, Forrest Mars moved to Europe to set up his own business and, on a trip to Southern Spain (possibly accompanied by Rowntree who launched Smarties) he saw soldiers eating chocolate. At the time, warm weather was a problem for the chocolate industry, but these candies had sugar shells that prevented them from melting. This is where Mars got the ingenious idea from and the slogan “melts in your mouth, not in your hand”.
When M&M’s Limited was set up, its factory was in Newark, New Jersey. Then, in 1958, it moved to Hackettstown, New Jersey, to respond to a greater demand. The factory is still there today and one of the largest producers of M&M’s in North America.
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Though you’re used to seeing M&M’s in a plastic packet, they came in a brown cardboard tube when they were first launched. You popped open one end and they poured easily into your hands. Also, the lid could be snapped back on if you only fancied a few. The brown bags came into play in 1948.
Another surprising fact about the candy favourite: in the beginning it was only available to the military. The tubes of chocolate were included in soldiers' rations and were ideal as they didn’t melt and could be resealed. It wasn’t until later in the decade that civilians could get their hands on them.
The first M&M’s came in six colours: brown, yellow, orange, red, green and violet. Then, in 1949, violet was switched to tan. Later, the company asked customers to vote for which colour they wanted in the pack and the winner was blue. Nowadays, you’ll find brown, yellow, orange, red, green and blue. But, as fans of the candy will know, they all taste the same: the shell doesn’t signify a flavour.
For the first decade, M&M’s shells were bare and indistinguishable from similar candies. It wasn’t until 1950 that they got their signature “m” stamp and the slogan "Look for the m on every piece" was born. In fact all of Mars’ chocolates have a way of identifying them without their wrapper. Have you ever noticed the ripple on top of a Mars bar?
Forrest Mars was a stickler for quality control. He was known to call up sales associates in the middle of the night and order a batch be recalled if he so much as saw a candy where the “m” wasn’t printed directly in the centre. Meanwhile, the level of bacteria on the floor in a Mars factory is apparently less than an average kitchen sink.
The ever-popular M&M’s Peanut Chocolate Candies were launched in 1954 and M&M’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Candies were launched in 1989. However, Mars denies that the latter’s inspiration was Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces, which shot to fame after appearing in Steven Spielberg’s E.T.. To make matters worse, Mars was offered the opportunity first and turned it down.
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In the 1970s a rumour started that green M&M’s were an aphrodisiac. In schools across America, students could be found rummaging around for the offending shade and feeding them to their crush. At one point you could buy packets that consisted purely of green M&M’s (sold by an unofficial company). Later on, Mars capitalised on the hearsay and launched the flirtatious green M&M’s character Ms. Green.
Between 1976 and 1987, there were no red M&M’s – but not because Mars ran out of food dye. At the time Red Dye No. 2 was thought to be carcinogenic and the FDA banned it. Even though it wasn’t used to make the chocolate candies, Mars decided to remove the colour from the packet to avoid confusion.
Very few brands can say they’ve sent their products to space, but M&M’s is one of them. In 1981 the chocolate treats were included on Space Shuttle Columbia in the astronauts’ food supply and they’re still taken on space missions today – astronauts use them as entertainment, throwing them into the air and catching them in their mouths.
Ready to go global, M&M’s paid £3.5 million ($5 million) to be named “the official snack food of the 1984 Olympic games” held in Los Angeles. It needed a brand that could be recognised in every nation (at the time Snickers was called Marathon in the UK). With worldwide recognition, M&M's expanded into Asia Pacific, Australia, Europe and Russia.
By the 1990s M&M’s sales had dropped and the company needed a plan. It hired ad agency BBDO and gave them a small budget to turn things around. The solution? Turning the candies into characters with distinct personalities, voicing them with comedians and making them appear in adverts with celebrities. Red was sarcastic, Yellow the goofball, Blue the cool one, Green the seductress and Orange the neurotic one – America loved them.
Hitting the big time, M&M's used the Super Bowl to debut its second female character, Ms. Brown, the brains of the gang. The 30-second spot cost as much as £2.8 million ($4 million) and was seen by an average of 111.3 million viewers back in 2012. Since then the comedic characters have made a number of reappearances to entertain fans at halftime.
Thought M&M’s options were limited to plain, peanut and peanut butter? You’d be mistaken. You can get myriad varieties including caramel, crispy, mini, pretzel, mint, fudge brownie, white chocolate, coffee and almond. However, the original three are unsurprisingly the favourite.
Fancy personalising your favourite sweet treat? An online service launched in the 2000s allows you to add custom messages and images to M&M’s. You can choose colours outside the classic six, such as Blue Lagoon, Hot Pink and Emerald Green. People use the novelty candies to celebrate graduations, birthdays and even weddings.
In Bloomington, Orlando, Las Vegas, New York, Shanghai, London and Berlin, multi-storey M&M’s Worlds are big tourist attractions. Here you’ll find candies in every shade imaginable, different flavour varieties, personalised sweets and merchandise such as mugs and t-shirts.
A tradition that started with Ronald Reagan, the White House is stocked with M&M’s with the presidential seal and the president's signature. Initially it was to encourage people to snack instead of smoke in meetings, but they're now given as gifts to visitors. Presidents since, including Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden, have carried on the tradition.
Four to eight hours sounds like a long time to make a teeny tiny chocolate, but the factory starts from scratch with milk, cocoa butter and sugar. After the chocolate is processed, it’s rolled into M&M’s shapes which are coated in a sugar shell. Finally, the individual candies are weighed out in the packaging room and sealed into bags.
The world has a serious appetite for these colourful candies and there are factories in both Hackettstown, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Tennessee. According to an employee at the Hackettstown branch, the NJ factory produces approximately two billion M&M's every eight hours.
Next time you see the colourful M&M's characters, look closely and you'll notice a small difference in each one. That's because in January 2022, the new mascots got a subtle makeover. Their arms and legs are now a faded tint that matches their candy shells, while their shapes have also slightly changed. In the shoes department, the height of Brown's heels are much lower, while Green (pictured) now has sneakers instead of high-tops. The new look was part of Mars, Incorporated's "global commitment to create a world where everyone feels they belong". Whatever they look like, we think they're still as delicious as ever.