Archive for July, 2010

I am happy to say I have finally got my hands on Hostess Ding Dongs and
Ho Hos  !!

Also I have just taken delivery of some Pretzel M&M’s !!

The new warehouse is really taking shape now and the shop will be open as soon as I can get it done. Having said that don’t let that stop you paying me a visit if you are in the area.

New address is Alexandria Court, Alexandria Drive, Off Lord Sheldon Way, Ashton Under Lyne, Lancashire OL7 0QN

Just thought I would give you some info on M&M’s which I have just finished researching the history of.

M&M candies were originally created back in 1941, when Mars Company founder Forrest Mars, Sr. got the idea from seeing the chocolate pellets that soldiers would while fighting in the Spanish Civil War.  Mr. Mars filed for a patent for his own take on chocolate candies and put them into production in 1941.  Due to rations that were put into place for chocolate at the time, so Mars joined up with Hershey, which was in control of the rationed product.  They were originally sold in tubes made of cardboard and came in various colours, including violet, red, yellow, green and brown.  Over the years, new varieties have been added to the line-up which include Peanut M&M’s and M&M Peanut Butter candies.

Even though director Steven Spielberg initially approached Mars about using M&M’s in his film E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, when they declined, he went to Hershey and asked about Hershey Kisses instead.  They said no to one of their leading chocolate creations, but did let him use Reese’s Pieces for product placement instead, which increased sales by a whopping 65% when the film came out.  In 1990, the Mars Company released their own peanut butter filled creation with M&M Peanut Butter candies.

One of the original colours, violet, was replaced early on by tan.  In 1995, the Mars Company let customers decide what new colour would replace tan.  They got to choose from purple, pink and blue, with blue ending up as tan’s replacement.  Around the same time the blue M&M came about, the company changed up their commercial strategy, replacing traditionally animated characters with computer generated mascots.  Each of their different varieties of M&M candies was represented by a CG character in their commercials.  Red was a traditional milk chocolate M&M.  Yellow represented the bigger peanut M&M’s.  Green, the only female character of the group, represented the M&M Peanut Butter candies, as well as dark chocolate and mint.  Blue represented the almond M&M’s and Orange represented the now defunct Crispy M&M’s.

Newer versions of the candy include things like M&M’s Minis, which came about in 1996.  These miniature candies were much smaller and thus came a tube rather than a bag.  Crispy M&M’s were released in 1999, which had the traditional milk chocolate coating, but had a rice centre.  This type was dropped 2005 in the US, but can be found in some places in Europe and Asia.  The traditional milk chocolate and peanut M&M’s, as well as M&M Peanut Butter candies still exist and continue to be best sellers.