M&M’s candies settle on 6 principal colors…and characters

What’s your favorite M&M’s candy color? Today, the six standard colors are red, yellow, green, brown, orange and blue. 

The colorful chocolates with a “hard confectioner shell” are supposed to have the same milk chocolatey taste inside, but many M&M’s fans aren’t so sure about that.

 

One fellow who was vocal on the subject is Bill Haslam, former governor of Tennessee (2011-19). Gov. Haslam visited the Mars Incorporated manufacturing plant in Cleveland, Tenn., in 2013, to applaud the company’s $67 million investment to expand the facility in order to produce more M&M’s. 

James Harrison was there reporting for the Chattanooga Today online news service. Harrison said that Gov. Haslam described himself as an “interested user of Mars products, eating M&M’s almost every day.” 

“I’ve always been a green M&M’s guy,” Gov. Haslam said. 

Green is one of the five “original” M&M’s colors along with purple, brown, red and yellow. 

For some reason, purple was bumped from the mix in 1949, replaced with tan.

 

Red was “suspended” in 1976, when there were scientific studies linking red dyes to cancer. Mars voluntarily removed red M&M’s from the bag, adding orange as a replacement.

 

The red dyes were “cleared” in 1987, and Mars reintroduced red M&M’s, while opting to keep orange in the bag as well. 

For some other reason in 1995, the company decided to boot tan out of the lineup. It conducted a contest, inviting voters to decide whether to reinstate purple or go with blue or pink. The public picked blue. 

Lara O’Reilly, senior business correspondent for Business Insider.com, said that “momentum flatlined” after blue was added to the M&M’s family…for some reason. Mars tasked advertising agency BBDO Worldwide (based in New York City) to revitalize the brand. 

Susan Credle, BBDO’s creative director at the time, told Business Insider: “They’d become just candy. An aisle store candy brand versus an icon brand.” 

BBDO set about changing that, O’Reilly said, “by taking the colors of the candies in the bag and developing each into a character to make a comedic ensemble.” 

“Mars didn’t have a great reputation creatively,” Credle said. “M&M’s had established (in the mid-1950s) two sickly sweet characters who shilled for the company.” 

They were known simply as Red and Yellow. Red, a “blustery schemer,” was a regular round M&M’s guy, and Yellow, a “lovable dullard,” was bigger and lumpy, since he was a Peanut M&M’s representative. 

“When we started to think about how to evolve these two characters, we kept coming back to the fact that there were six colors in the bag. Six. A comedic ensemble.” 

Credle said it “seemed obvious” to have Blue “be the confident, unflappable cool character, like Snoopy, Bugs Bunny, Sam from ‘Cheers’ and Hawkeye from’ M*A*S*H.’” 

“There was an urban legend about the green M&M’s. They were supposedly an aphrodisiac.” So, in 1996, “Green would be the first female character – the sexy, confident, in-control femme fatale. Like Candice Bergen from ‘Murphy Brown’ and Dixie Carter from ‘Designing Women.’” 

Rounding out the field are Orange, an anxious, paranoid, shy little fellow, and Brown, a bespectacled, intellectual, boss lady-type figure.

 

“As the team established and developed each of the M&M’s characters,” Credle said, “we were always guided by one goal: to make people believe that the characters were real. In fact, we even wrote a Christmas spot in which Santa Claus and the M&M’s characters meet and can’t believe either actually exists.”

Red and Santa fainted upon sight of one another.

 

Moving forward, M&M’s characters redefine their roles

Green, the first female M&M’s candy character to emerge in 1996, became the favorite of Susan Credle the creative director of the team that brought the comedic ensemble to life for Mars Incorporated. 

“We put Green in a pair of white go-go boots because we couldn’t figure out how to give her ankles,” Credle said. “All the early drawings made Green look as though she had shapeless, tree trunk legs – not in-fitting with her seductress character.” Go-go boots definitely were “in fashion” in the mid-1990s.

 

Brown, the other female character, would appear wearing a pair of high heels. (Green was seen occasionally slipping into a pair of heels, too – the strap would hide the lack of ankle, Credle said.)

 

Students at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., who enroll in the course “Chocolate, Culture and the Politics of Food,” learn about “the sociohistorical legacy of chocolate, with a delicious emphasis on the eating and appreciation of the so-called ‘food of the gods.’” 

The instructor is Dr. Carla D. Martin, a social anthropologist with interdisciplinary interests that include history, agronomy, ethnomusicology and linguistics. In 2016, one of her students posted research online about Green M&M’s adventures, while appearing as the “back cover girl” for Sports Illustrated magazine’s annual swimsuit editions from 2009-14.

 

Hence, it came as big and shocking news in January 2022 when M&M’s “anthropomorphized chocolate characters” underwent a makeover, wrote Danielle Wiener-Bronner of CNN Business. 

“The most noticeable change to the six M&M’s characters: new shoes,” Wiener-Bronner said. 

“Green has swapped her go-go boots for sneakers. Brown is sporting lower, more sensible heels. Red’s and Yellow’s shoes now have laces. Orange’s shoes laces are no longer untied.”

Blue’s shoes now resemble what a high-ranking Mars’ executive – Anton Vincent – described as “a bad version of Uggs” – a brand of Australian sheepskin boots.

 

Vincent said that M&M’s is trying to make the characters – particularly the two female ones – more “current” and “representative of our consumer.” 

The changes may be subtle, but even small shifts can help brands avoid falling out of fashion, said David Camp, co-founder and managing partner of Metaforce, a marketing company based in New York City. 

“Every brand has to continuously reinvent itself to remain relevant,” he said.

So, here we go: 

The new Red still comes across as being a bit brash and conceited. He tells his fans that his best qualities are “my charisma and my smarts. And, of course, my humility.” 

The new Yellow is still a big, huggable goofball with his happy-go-lucky, one-day-at-a-time, live-life attitude. 

The new Blue, who see’s himself as a “cool dude” in his Peanut M&M’s costume, is also a jokester. A fan asked: “Do you suffer from sleep walking?” Blue replied: “I’m not big on multi-tasking, so when I sleep, I sleep.” 

The new Orange continues to try to overcome his natural instincts to panic when he steps out of his comfort zone. But it’s a constant struggle, for Orange believes “something will go wrong at any moment.” The other colors form his support group. 

The new Green is toning down her sexuality and lightening up on the eye makeup and lipstick. She’s trying to reach out to Brown and grow their woman-to-woman bonding relationship. 

The new Brown is trying to maintain her professional woman image, but she is approaching the “fine line” between female assertiveness and aggressiveness. Her mantra is: “Not bossy. Just the boss.”

M&M’s candies helped win a war and conquer space

One of America’s favorite candy products is “a little bit Southern,” so to speak. The Mars Incorporated manufacturing plant in Cleveland, Tenn. (near Chattanooga), is the company’s largest producer of tasty M&M’s treats.

 

M&M’s are part of Americana. History.com reported that the “beloved M&M’s chocolate candies have been to war and space and back again.” Can any candy product match that resume? 

The article was written by freelancer Laura Schumm. (How appropriate with her double “m” surname.) 

To begin, Franklin Clarence Mars learned how to hand-dip chocolate candy from his mother while he was growing up in Minneapolis, Minn. He opened a candy company there in 1922 and introduced the Mar-O-Bar – a treat that was essentially a chocolate bar with a whipped cream center.

 

Shortly thereafter, Franklin’s son, Forrest Edward Mars, although not yet age 20, joined the business as a partner. It was the younger Mars who invented the Milky Way candy bar in 1923. Its creamy nougat of whipped egg whites, sugar syrup, malted flavoring and air, was lighter and cheaper to produce than solid chocolates – and it was an instant hit.

 

Forrest said he came up with the idea for the Milky Way as he and his father “talked business over malted milk shakes at a soda fountain.” Milky Ways were advertised as “a double malted milk in a candy bar.”

 
The company became Mars Incorporated and other successful product introductions included Snickers and 3 Musketeers bars. Forrest wanted to expand overseas. Franklin objected, so they parted ways. 

In 1932, Forrest Mars moved to Slough, England, a large town west of London. He introduced the Mars bar, a variant of the Milky Way, made of caramel, nougat and milk chocolate. 

“During the Spanish Civil War (in 1936), he observed British soldiers eating what they called ‘Smarties’ – small chocolate beans encased in a hard sugar shell, which prevented melting,” Schumm wrote. 

“In an age when sales of chocolate typically dropped off during summer months due to the lack of air conditioning, Mars was thrilled by the prospect of developing a product that would be able to resist melting in high temperatures.” 

Germany started World War II by invading Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Forrest Mars was inspired to return to America and improve on a product that “would melt in your mouth but not in your hand.” 

“Upon Mars’ return to the United States, he approached Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey chocolate company executive William Murrie, to join him in a new business venture,” Shumm reported.  

“Anticipating a shortage of chocolate and sugar as World War II amped up in Europe, Mars sought a partnership that would ensure a steady supply of resources needed to produce his new candy,” Schumm said. 

The new product became M&M’s, short for “Mars and Murrie.” Production began in March 1941 in Newark, N.J. 

“M&M’s were covered with a brown, red, orange, yellow, green or violet hard candy coating,” Schumm wrote. “After the United States entered the war, the candies were exclusively sold to the military, enabling the heat-resistant and easy-to-transport chocolate to be included in American soldiers’ rations. 

“By the time the war was over and GIs returned home, they were hooked,” she said. 

“The same qualities that M&M’s durable wartime rations made them perfect for space travel. So, on request from the crew aboard NASA’s first space shuttle, Columbia, M&M’s became the first candy to rocket into space,” riding along with Commander John Young and Pilot Robert Crippen on April 12, 1981, Schumm reported.

Front porches can ‘carry a tune’

Some of the most popular songs in country music are about the simple life. 

“Fans love songs about rocking or swinging on the front porch, screen doors slamming, corn stalks growing and faded jeans,” commented music historian Barbie Craft. 

For more than 50 years, Mary and Dave Morris have been “front porch rockers.” They’ve built a business together in Nashville, Tenn. – Front Porch Ideas and More.

 

Go online to learn how to build or add on porches, how to decorate them and how to enjoy them to the maximum. 

“Porches are the first thing you see on a home,” the Morrises said. “Ever pass a home with a great porch and notice your eyes linger just a bit? A great porch stands out. So much so that you may not be able to describe the house later, but you will remember the porch!” 

“Country music songs and lyrics often include references to front porches and front porch swings,” they said.

 

The couple has compiled an inventory of “front porch” tunes from recording artists such as Garth Brooks, Elton John, Dolly Parton, Lonestar, Kenny Rogers, Pam Tillis and Little Big Town. 

One of the favorites mentioned by Mary and Dave Morris is “If The World Had A Front Porch,” which was recorded in 1984 by Tracy Lawrence. Here’s a bit of it:

 

It was where my mama sat on that old swing with her crochet.

It was where granddaddy taught me how to cuss and how to pray.

It was where we made our own ice cream those sultry summer nights,

Where the bulldog had her puppies, and us brothers had our fights.

 

If the world had a front porch like we did back then,

We’d still have our problems but we’d all be friends.

Treating your neighbor like he’s your next of kin…

Wouldn’t be gone with the wind.

 

I’m partial to “Swingin,’” released by John Anderson in 1983. It goes like this:

 

There’s a little girl, in our neighborhood,

Her name is Charlotte Johnson, and she’s really lookin’ good.

 

I walked over to her house, and this was goin’ on:

Her brother was on the sofa eatin’ chocolate pie;

Her momma was in the kitchen cuttin’ chicken up to fry;

Her daddy was in the back yard rollin’ up a garden hose;

I was on the porch with Charlotte feelin’ love down to my toes

And we were swingin’….

 

Little Charlotte she’s as pretty as the angels when they sing,

I can’t believe I’m out here on the front porch in the swing.

 

More recently, Tony Jackson tugged at a lot of heart strings with his 2017 hit “Old Porch Swing” that starts like this:

 

Mamma used to love to reminisce.

She sat out on the porch on nights like this.

She’d tell me about her favorite things in life.

Like honeysuckles, rain and fireflies.

 

Out on that old porch swing,

I learned everything.

How to laugh, and how to love,

And who I am and who’s up above.

And everything in between.

Out on that old porch swing.

 

Just for fun, listen to “The Porch,” composed in 2010 by singer/songwriter CJaye LeRose.

 

She wrote a song about her man who isn’t spending enough time with her. She boots him out of the house with the edict:

 

I’m locking you out tonight;

You’re sleeping on the porch.

Vote for ‘cool’ local products in statewide contest

News Flash: Carteret County is represented by a pair of entries in the online contest to determine “The Coolest Thing Made in North Carolina.” The field of 80 nominees was released Aug. 25 by the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. Let the voting begin! 

The products with local ties are Crab Pot Christmas Trees, which are homegrown in Smyrna, and the Shibumi Shade, which was invented in Emerald Isle.

 

The popular competition is a just-for-fun way to “spotlight” North Carolina’s important manufacturing sector, which employs more than 10% of the state’s workforce,” said NC Chamber President Gary Salamido.

The NC Chamber boasts: “What’s made in North Carolina is what makes North Carolina.” 

Crab Pot Christmas Trees are manufactured in Smyrna by Fisherman Creations. The holiday products were invented in 2003 by Neal “Nicky” Harvey of Davis. He was just tinkering in his shop one day when the idea hit him. 

“We just cut up some scrap pieces of the green vinyl-coated wire into triangles,” Harvey commented, “and then we started putting lights on them. When we got all our crab pot orders filled, we start making trees.”

 

“The important thing,” he said, “is that we came up with a way to make it fold flat” with the lights still attached, for easy storage.” 

It was just a cottage industry until 2009, when Harvey sold the upstart business to Don Acree. He formed a company known as Fisherman Creations to brand, produce and market Crab Pot Christmas Trees.

 

Trees come in various sizes from 1.5 feet to 8 feet tall. They are available through national chain retail stores in every U.S. state as well as through online outlets. More than a million crab pot trees have been sold since 2003, the NC Chamber commented. 

Acree said the company uses American-made “hexagonal wire mesh,” that is both strong and pliable. Reviews from customers rate the trees as “lovely, beautiful, practical and ideal for indoor or outdoor use.” 

Part of the reason for the popularity of crab pot trees is their simplicity, Acree said. “No dropped needles, no watering, no stringing of lights and no struggling with a stand.” 

“We hope anyone who enjoys our trees will be sure to cast a vote for us” in the NC Chamber contest, he added.

 

The Shibumi Shade was hatched in 2016 by three 20-something entrepreneurs – brothers Dane and Scott Barnes and their friend Alex Slater. Their quest during family vacations spent at Emerald Isle was to improve on the standard beach umbrella.

 

Alex, Scott and Dane

Today, the bright blue and teal Shibumi Shade, a simply designed flap-in-the-wind product, is “everywhere” you look on the beaches of the Crystal Coast…and beyond. 

The NC Chamber said: “The Shibumi Shade changed how people experience the beach by working with the wind, not against it. The free-flowing design works with the slightest ocean breeze to cast ample shade.” 

It’s the “most portable, easy to set-up beach shade on the market…providing enough shade for six people to sit comfortably.”

 

Shibumi Shade is headquartered in Raleigh and products are hand-sewn in Asheboro and Asheville. 

Now, it’s up to us. 

Go to coolestthingmadeinnc.com and vote “early and often.” You can cast one vote per day. The field of candidates will narrow with each round of voting. 

Windows are very narrow. By Sept. 8, only 10 of the 80 nominees will be left standing. 

The competition is fierce within the “small business category.” 

Other formidable contenders include George’s BBQ Sauce, Buck Stove, Ashe County Cheese and E.M. Walton’s Premium Salted Caramel Whiskey.

Life is good…just a ‘settin’ on the pizer’

In the Down East section of Carteret County, they call a porch a pizer. Storyteller Rodney Kemp tells us a pizer is a shortened form of the fancy Italian word “piazza.” 

Down Easters often truncate words, change vowel sounds and sometimes add “r” after vowels. Such is the case in the formation of the word “pizer.”

 

For the record, great Americans George Washington and Thomas Jefferson referred to their majestic porches at Mount Vernon and Monticello, respectively, as piazzas.

The most famous front porch in America is here at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in northern Michigan.

Porches continue to be an important structural feature in the South, and several initiatives have been formed to “promote front porch culture as a way to build and strengthen communities.” 

The belief is that “with front porches, neighbors know each other better, which leads to greater community cohesion. Front porches increase friendliness and decrease isolation.”

 

“Porching” is the proper term for the activity known as sitting on the porch and socializing with family, friends and/or neighbors. 

Julia Steffen of the Woodsong neighborhood in Shallotte, N.C., said: “If the kitchen is the heart of our house, the porch is its soul. Inside the house is where the tasks of daily living that seem to grow by the day get checked off the list. But outside, we porch to return to those things that really matter.” 

Some of the best front porches in Carteret County are found within the historic district of Beaufort. It is here that one is introduced to the color of “haint blue.” It’s a pale blue shade that is often seen adorning the porch ceilings of coastal homes.

 

“Haint” is a Southern variation of haunt, meaning a ghost or spirit. Beaufort is “ghost central.” Martha Barnes, queen of the local hospitality industry, tells visitors: “Many of our old homes are haunted. This is such a wonderful place to live, that when people die, they still want to hang around.” 

According to paranormal legend, “frustrated spirits, caught between life and death, cannot cross water. Hence, pale blue ceilings that mimic the color of water keep spirits from entering a house.” 

Anne Roderique-Jones moved from New York City to New Orleans, La., in order to have a porch. She told readers of Town & Country magazine:

 

“In New York City, a person can go an entire lifetime without speaking to another human in their building,” she wrote. “That came as something of a shock to me, having been raised in the Ozarks, where everyone on the block knows your business.” 

“The porch is an arm of your home that extends to the outside world; it’s often how you meet neighbors and make friends. The first order of business was to hang a swing, made by a woodworker in Alabama. He painted it bright white and carved in the most genius invention: a slot for wine glasses on each arm,” Roderique-Jones said. 

“We fashioned an outdoor living space layered with a rug, tables, rocking chairs and colorful pillows.” 

Several years ago, Stephen Elmore of Pfafftown, N.C. (in Forsyth County), became a “professional porch sitter” and formed an organization. Membership is free. The group’s motto is: “Whatever you’re doing, it can wait. Take a load off and come sit (or set) a spell.”

The sixth annual Conference on the Front Porch is coming up Oct. 28-30 in Taylor, Miss., near Oxford and the University of Mississippi. Topics address all various aspects of “better porching.” 

It should come as no surprise…country music is interlaced throughout the entire conference schedule of events.

Longing for a simpler life: Time spent on the porch

Johnny Long of Morehead City, N.C., grew up in the Beulah community in Surry County, N.C., and as a recent guest columnist for The Mount Airy News, he wrote about summertime living “on the porch.”

 

To get your bearings, Surry County abuts Virginia, and the rolling, foothills countryside is rural in nature. 

Remembering what it was like during childhood, Johnny said that in the early evening “our family would just naturally migrate to the porch. We didn’t plan it, we didn’t talk about sitting on the porch. It just happened. Porch living was our way of life. 

“Dogs played around in the yard but soon walked up on the porch to be petted and rubbed. We talked to them just like they were humans. I think they probably understood most of what we were saying.”

 

“Neighbors would often drop off a ‘mess of beans,’ several ears of corn, a basket of apples, a blackberry pie or other assortments of food. Mom and dad always had a pitcher of ‘iced tea’ for anyone on the back porch. Now, tea meant sweet tea. There was no such thing as unsweetened tea. That would be unheard of; it just didn’t exist,” Johnny said.

 

“Of course, there was also a Pepsi Cola, a Big RC, a Big Orange (Nehi), a Cheerwine or another bottle of pop that was available for the neighborhood kids. Yes, it was ‘pop.’ The word soda or soft drink wasn’t in our vocabulary.” 

“A front porch wasn’t quite a public room, but really close. It was a meeting ground between our family with friends and neighbors. Everyone could be seen; you could hear the sounds of neighborhood life. Neighbors knew one another and what was happening in our community. And because neighbors talked, laughed, and enjoyed each other’s company, news traveled fast,” Johnny wrote.

 

“When Dad heard about a plumbing problem, a leaky roof, a sick cow or horse or someone in need of help, he just got up, jumped into the truck and took off to offer help. Dad was really hesitant to ask for help, but eager to provide help. It was just a way of life. I think all of the families in the community really lived with this type of independence, but with compassionate hearts.” 

Times change. Decks and patios with their jumbo-sized gas barbecue grills aren’t the synonymous with the porch. Johnny added that the “proliferation of television,” caused families to “move indoors where rooms were air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter. The living room recliner and the remote control eventually replaced back and front porch living. In fact, porches are now mostly little more than architectural decor.” 

“Now, it’s usually the den, basement or family room…where families gather and relax in private. It is rare that neighbors and friends drop by for uninvited chats and sharing of neighborhood news.” 

“In many ways, the faster the pace of life, the more wealth a family accumulates, the more isolated and lonely we become. We won’t admit it, but our family, our children and our friends are the biggest losers. We need our community far more than we are willing to admit.” 

Johnny concluded his column by expressing hope that “the joy of front porch living is still alive and doing well in some areas of North Carolina.”

 

Well, there have been “porch sightings” in the Down East section of Carteret County, according to local storyteller Rodney Kemp. Except they don’t call ‘em porches. 

They’re pizers. We’ll go there next time.