Company For the Production of Sweets – M&M’s History
How many of you like M&M’s? I’m sure a lot of you do, but do you know how they were introduced to us? Well, let me tell you. Forrest Mars came up with the idea of creating the now famous M&M’s. Mars saw soldiers eating pieces of chocolate covered with a hard sugary coating. The coating preventing the candy from melting in the hot sun. In 1940, he made his first, independent move into the candy business in the United States.
Somewhere in his travels, Mars had come across a candy that was essentially tiny chocolate pellets surrounded by a sugar shell. He may have seen soldiers eating them during the Spanish civil war; no one seems to know for sure. What is known is that in 1940, Mars concocted his own version of candy-coated chocolate drops and took them to the Hershey Corporation. There he proposed an 80-20 partnership to Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey executive William Murrie, where Bruce would be the 20-percent partner.
At the time, World War II was developing, and chocolate would be rationed during this period. The Hershey Corporation, however, already had a deal to provide chocolate for the troops. Bruce Murrie helped create this candy. M&M’s got their name of the abbreviation of their inventors Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie. In 1941, the first M&M’s were introduced to American GIs serving in WWII. The first wrapper that they came out in was a cardboard tube and in 1948 it became the brown bag we now know.
In 1950, the first “m” was imprinted in black, now giving them a trademark. In 1954, chocolate peanut M&M’s are introduced and also the black m on the candies was changed to white. They get their own logo “melts in your mouth, not hands” and animated characters made a television debut. Throughout time more and more different types of M&M’s came out like the peanut butter, pretzel, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, dark chocolate peanut, coconut, mint chocolate, almonds, wild cherry, among other special lines he brought out.
