#1566 What are the Ms in m&m’s?

What are the Ms in m&m’s? The Ms in m&m’s stand for Mars and Murrie, the two makers of the confectionery.

If you have never tried them, m&m’s are a sugar coated chocolate candy made in the USA and sold around the world. They come in many colors and there are different kinds of fillings available. The name of the product is m&m’s, which stands for Forrest Mars Sr., son of the head of the Mars company, and Bruce Murrie, son of the head of the Hershey chocolate company.

The Mars company and the Hershey company are two very large and very famous multinational confectionery companies. The Hershey company owns several other confectionery and cereal companies. Mars owns a vast number of companies that span confectionery, drinks, food, and a large number of pet related companies. Oddly, for such a large company, the Mars company is completely owned by the Mars family, and there are no shareholders. The current president is John Frankly Mars, the son of Forrest Mars Sr., although he is 90 years old at the time of writing.

M&m’s were started because Forrest Mars Sr. had a fight with his father and moved to the UK, setting up his own Mars company. Mars was started by Franklin Clarence Mars in 1920. He sold Victorian Butter Creams, but he didn’t have many customers and had trouble making ends meet. In about 1921, he invented a chocolate bar with caramel and peanuts that he called the Mar O-Bar, which slowly became more popular, and he earned more money. By this time, he had divorced his first wife, Forrest’s mother, and Forrest had grown up and become a travelling salesman. Father and son rarely met. Then in 1923, Forrest was arrested, Franklin bailed him out, and they started to talk again. Legend goes that they went to a soda fountain (before sodas were bottled and could be drunk at home). Forrest was drinking a chocolate malted drink and suggested that his dad put that flavor in a chocolate bar. Franklin experimented for a while and ended up adding nougat, which was just egg whites and sugar, to his chocolate bar. It was a huge success. The nougat was airy, and it made the chocolate bar look much bigger; it didn’t cost much to make. It flew off the shelves. It was called the Milky Way Bar (Mars Bar in the UK).

With the success, Franklin was able to build a factory to produce the chocolate bars, and his company grew. However, he wasn’t the best manager, and Forrest tried to persuade him to streamline and improve the business. Franklin refused. Finally, Forrest asked Franklin for 30% of the business, and Franklin refused again. They had a fight, and Forrest ended up leaving the US and setting up in the UK. Franklin gave Forrest $50,000 and the international rights to sell the Milky Way bar. Franklin called his company Mars. Inc, and Forrest called his Mars Limited. In America, Franking invented the Snickers and the 3 Musketeers. In the UK, Forrest sold the Mars bar, invented Maltesers, came up with a way to process rice, which became the Uncle Ben’s food company, and bought several pet food companies. Forrest Mars would end up moving back to the USA and, after a lot of fighting with other members of the Mars family, he ended up consolidating the US and the UK halves of the company, making the enormous Mars Inc that we know today.

Just before World War 2, Forrest Mars was in Spain, and he saw British volunteer soldiers eating a candy called Smarties. These are colorful sugar coated candies. The hard sugar shell kept the chocolate inside from melting, which meant sales continued through the summer months as well. Forrest realized that his company could make something similar, and he quickly patented a method of producing them. The only problem was that chocolate was heavily rationed during the war in both America and the UK. The only company that was allowed to produce and sell chocolate was the Hershey Chocolate Company. Forrest Mars returned to the USA, and he approached Bruce Murrie, the son of the head of Hershey, and offered him 20% stake in the new product if Hershey would supply the chocolate. Murrie agreed, and m&m’s were born. Mars & Murrie’s. Forrest managed to get m&m’s put in the ration packs of American soldiers, which ensured sales once they got home.

As soon as the war ended and he could get enough of his own chocolate, Forrest bought Bruce Murrie out of the deal. The name of the candy was already cemented in people’s minds, so he couldn’t change it, but he could change the label on the chocolates themselves. Each individual m&m is only stamped with a single m, for Mars. And this is what I learned today.

Sources

https://fortune.com/article/the-sweet-secret-world-of-forrest-mars-fortune-1967

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Inc.