The M&M's are small pieces of milk chocolate covered with sugar and are produced by Mars Incorporated.
This brand was based on the English "Smarties", since during the Civil War Forrest Edward Mars saw that soldiers ate chocolate balls covered with sugar, which prevented them from melting in their hands due to the heat. Later, in 1939, Forrest Mars and R. Bruce Murriec bought the rights of Smarties and introduced the product to the United States, but they were forced to change the name because a candy called Smarties was already being sold in the United States, so they decided use the initials of their last names; the first M for Mars and the second for Murriec. That´s how the name of one of the most important brands in the candy store was created, M&M's.
Initially the M&M's were made in six colors; red, orange, yellow, green, brown, and blue, and were first sold in the United States in 1941.
By the early 50's, the M&M's achieved great popularity thanks to television, and because of this they had to find a way to differentiate themselves from the imitations, so they decided to add the famous M in each candied bit along with the slogan "Look for the M on every piece", but 1954 wouldn´t be far behind and it would be a year of great changes for M&M's, since in this year the presentation that included peanuts inside was introduced to the market, in addition the M&M's characters along with the famous slogan "Chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand" appeared, and the color to print the m changed from black to white.
The 60's and 70's wouldn´t be of great changes for M&M's, since in the 60's only the M&M's Fruit Chewies were launched on the market, which would later become Starburst, and in 1972 They decided to place their ad icons in the wrappers. In addition, in that same year the red color was eliminated due to the controversy that arose with red dyes in food.
On the other hand, the 80's would cause a great impact on the company since in 1981 Mars became the first candy to go to the space, because the astronauts of the first space shuttle decided to include M&M'S in their food supply. In addition, at the beginning of this decade a special line of M&M's was launched that included Christmas motifs in its packaging such as red and green, and pastel colors for Easter. Similarly, in 1984 the M&M'S Plain and Peanut became the "Official Snack of the Olympic Games" this year, and also, in 1987 red was back in the catalog by popular insistence, while the M&M's Peanut Butter was launched in the United States in 1989, and finally, throughout this entire decade, they managed to make the leap to the international market, expanding to Asia-Pacific, Australia, Europe and Russia.
The 90's wouldn´t be far behind, and like the 80's they had big changes for M&M's, since in 1990 they became the official sponsor of the World Cup in Italy, and in 1995 a campaign was launched to choose a new color, in which consumers were asked to vote for blue, pink, purple, or that directly, there wouldn´t be changes; at the end of this campaign blue won with 54% of more than 10 million votes and for 1996 the M&M's minis were launched, in addition, in this same year the advertising campaign in which the characters appeared was ranked first among more than 60 campaigns rated by the USA Today newspaper, causing the characters to exceed popularity of Mickey Mouse or Bart Simpson.
In addition, one of the most important moments for these characters began in 1997 with the debut of Green, the first female character of M&M's, which was promoted with the slogan "I don't melt for no one", while in that same year the inauguration of the M&M's World located in Las Vegas was relaunched. Finally, the M&M'S Colorworks Peanut were launched on the market in 1998 in the M&M'S World stores.
With the arrival of the year 2000, the M&M's became "The official candy of the new millennium" because the double M (MM) is the equivalent of 2000 in Roman numerals.
For 2002, another global vote was held to choose an M&M'S color. Voters chose between purple, aqua and pink; resulting in purple as the winner.
For 2004, M&M'S launched My M&M'S, a new online service that allowed customers to design their own personalized message to print on M&M'S, and in 2008, the launch of "Faces" allowed customers to add personal images to their personalized drops.
For 2012 another female character appears in M&M's, Ms Brown, having her debut in Super Bowl 46.
For their 75th anniversary in 2016, M&M's rebooted their most famous song, Candyman (by Sammy Davis, Jr.), composed by Russian DJ Zedd and performed by Aloe Blacc.
In 2017, the M&M'S Caramels were launched, while M&M'S finally arrived in India, 75 years after they began to be sold in the United States.
And finally, in 2018, a vote was held to decide on a new flavor of M&M’S, which was won by Crunchy Mint, which beat Crunchy Espresso and Crunchy Raspberry.
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