M&M Candy: Reigning Queen for Decades

With its unique look and yummy taste, the M&M candy has acquired an iconic status in the hearts of millions of candy lovers all over the USA. They were first introduced during World War II with the objective of saving the soldiers from the troubles of getting their hands sticky from eating chocolates.

The brand was introduced to civilians in 1945 under the name of "Mars & Murrie”. In those days air conditioners were not a common item either in the households or in the stores, and eating chocolate could get messy during the warmer months. That’s part of the reason why these candies earned huge popularity within a short period of their introduction. Their hard candy coating solved the problem of the mess created by melting chocolate. Thus the journey that M&M began long way back in 1945, still continues with an even accelerated pace. The M&M brand of candy coated, uniquely shaped chocolates in fact have become a way of life of the American people, a part of their existence.

Originally these candies came in six colors: red, orange, yellow, green, brown, and violet. Peanut candies were available in all these above mentioned colors, except violet. Following the controversy regarding unhygienic dye, red was withdrawn from the collection in the 1970s. In1987 however, the red candies once again appeared. In 1995, a new color scheme in blue was introduced which is quite popular today.

The most loved M&M candy are, of course, the plain and peanut ones, which are sold more in vending machines than the plain ones and consist of rich milk chocolate and peanut encapsulated in their classic candy shell.

Lesser known but truly delicious varieties are mint chocolate, dulce de leche, toffee, peanut butter, white chocolate with and without peanuts, and dark chocolate. Recently these have become quite rare to get, and even more rare are the Crispy variety, which has been terminated from the US market.

Produced by Mars Incorporated they have become famous in the other parts of the world too. In fact one whoever tested an M&M candy is sure to return to the store for a few more handfuls of them.

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Chocolate | Candy