Snickers has seen its share of highs and lows and come under fire more than once for its
high-calorie content. From its early beginnings to its most recent milestones, here's everything
you ever wanted to know about this American candy bar giant.
The Snickers candy bar was introduced to the public in 1930. Its creators, Frank and Ethel
Mars, were already incredibly successful. Frank had started out life quite poor to the
point that his first wife left him because his candy business was going nowhere. But
he eventually hit it big in 1922 with the Milky Way. That chocolate treat was so successful
that it made Frank and Ethel bona fide candy moguls.
With all the money rolling in, Frank took up some pretty pricey hobbies, one of which
was horse breeding. He and Ethel purchased a 3,000-acre farm in Tennessee called Milky
Way Farms that employed 100 people. One of Ethel's favorites on the farm was a prized
racehorse named Snickers, who died shortly before Frank's new version of Milky Way, with
added peanuts, went into production. As a tribute, the couple decided to name the new
candy bar after the horse.
Americans may have been eating Snickers since 1930, but Brits didn't start enjoying them
until 1990. This is because for years in the United Kingdom, it wasn't called Snickers,
but rather, the "Marathon" bar.
"Comes up peanuts, slice after slice."
"Marathon!"
The reason behind all this is particularly British. The Mars company was worried that
people would think the Snickers name was a joke, since it rhymes with "knickers," a British
term for women's underwear.
In 1990, the company decided to use one name for the candy bar throughout the world. They
phased the Snickers name in with packaging that read both Marathon and Snickers so as
not to confuse customers. Eventually, "Marathon" was dropped altogether. In 2019, in a tribute
to the candy bar's past, Mars reissued a throwback run of Marathon bars for a limited nine-week
run. The candy bar itself was exactly the same, only the wrapper was different.
Snickers isn't the number one most popular Halloween candy. That distinguished title
belongs to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. But it's nevertheless a ridiculously hot item
on All Hallow's Eve. Snickers rakes in millions in sales every October, and in order to make
sure there's enough peanut and chocolate goodness to go around, Mars has to start making them
months in advance. According to Mars Wrigley's chief operating officer Vic Mehren, Halloween
is the Super Bowl for Snickers. In 2018, he told Today,
"We're thinking about Halloween well before [it] happens, so it is a constant all year
long preoccupation for us, for sure."
The Mars factory in Oak Park, Illinois starts making Snickers and other candy that will
be sold at Halloween the spring before trick-or-treaters take to the streets. It pumps out Snickers
over the course of the entire summer in order to have everything shipped out and on store
shelves by September. Mehren didn't note any specific numbers about how many Snickers bars
are sold during the Halloween season, but it's been reported that more than 400 million
are sold over the course of a year.
Halloween is always a great day for Snickers, but it tends to be even better when October
31 falls on a weekend instead of a weekday. So in 2019, Snickers joined a movement to
officially make Halloween the last Saturday in October by supporting a Change.org petition
from the Halloween & Costume Association. As the official Snickers Twitter account tweeted,
"A Thursday Halloween? Not Satisfying. Halloween on the last Saturday of October? Satisfying.
If the [federal government] makes it official, we'll offer 1 million free SNICKERS to America.
Join the petition!"
Suddenly the push to move Halloween didn't sound so terrible anymore. One Twitter user
enthusiastically replied,
"Signed!! Totally down for this with 3 school-aged kids!!"
Others, however, weren't so cool with the idea, as one person tweeted,
"This is a horrible take. [October] 31st is sacred. I thought my love of Snickers was
sacred, but we just broke up over this."
Obviously, Halloween is still on track for October 31 each year for the foreseeable future.
Nice try though, Snickers.
In 1984, Snickers and M&Ms were designated the official snack food of the 1984 Olympics.
Nutritionists were less than pleased. As dietitian Edward C. Goodstein said at the time,
"The present labeling is misleading in that it leads consumers to believe that these candies
are endorsed by the Olympic Games as a nutritious snack food choice."
Mars secured the official snack endorsement of Snickers by paying the Olympics $4 million
along with free candy for all of the competing athletes. Goodstein and other nutritionists
were concerned that the promotion would lead to kids believing that if they ate Snickers
or M&Ms, then they would become athletes. It was an understandable concern, especially
when Snickers had Olympians promoting it in commercials.
"After I eat a Snickers bar, it takes away that hungry feeling and allows me to concentrate
on downhill."
Snickers didn't back down from the criticism, though, as Mars nutritionist Dr. Daniel Rosenfield
insisted,
"Athletes do have greater demand for energy and candy is one way to get it."
Despite what the sponsorship of the 1984 Olympics would have you believe, Snickers is by no
means a health food. This might sound obvious for a lot of people, but the Mars company
has been blasted by nutritionists for years, and that criticism reached a boiling point
in 2012. Spurred by public health movements like Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" campaign,
Mars decided that it would work to help combat the childhood obesity epidemic, rather than
contribute to it. This meant reducing the size of the standard 280-calorie Snickers
bar by 12 percent.
The company also rolled out the standard public relations response about how its products
should only be enjoyed in moderation. But this did appear to be a genuine attempt at
making a positive change. In addition to shrinking the regular Snickers, Mars revealed that they'd
be swapping its hefty King Size for a "2toGo" version that contained two Snickers bars of
220 calories each in a resealable package. Whether or not customers actually save the
second bar for later is up to their own willpower.
Snickers' early TV commercials were animated spots geared towards kids, but these days
they're better known for ads with hangry celebrity icons like Joe Pesci. These "you're not you
when you're hungry" commercials helped reverse a downward trajectory that the brand was facing.
The first of the ads featured Betty White and Abe Vigoda in a football game that aired
during the 2010 Super Bowl. It ended up being the highest-rated commercial on USA Today's
annual Super Bowl Ad Meter. More commercials followed with everyone from Robin Williams
to Aretha Franklin. Even fictional monsters the Gremlins found their way into a spot.
Popular commercials with celebrity cameos are often pretty good for business, and Snickers
accordingly saw their sales increase by nearly 16 percent. That's not too shabby for a brand
that was 80 years old at the time.
"Ms. Monroe, eat a Snickers."
"Why?"
"You get a little cranky when you're hungry."
"Better?"
"Much better."
One recent Snicker product removed the peanuts altogether while swapping in creamy peanut
butter. As brand director Josh Olken said in a press release,
"We listened to our consumers' desires for new tastes like almond butter and paired it
with an innovation on texture. With Creamy Snickers bars, our fans can discover new tastes,
and can now get Snickers satisfaction in both crunchy and smooth."
Unlike the regular Snickers candy bar, the peanut butter version came in small square
sizes. It was clearly designed to steal some of the thunder away from ever-popular Reese's
Cups, but reviews were a bit lukewarm. The Spruce Eats tasted the version that came with
both peanut butter and peanuts and declared that the combination of peanut butter and
nougat made the taste of the caramel virtually undetectable and that it had a gritty texture.
It should go without saying that "gritty" is never a positive way of describing a chocolate
candy bar. The new Snickers also came in almond and maple butter versions that got a bit of
a mixed reception as well. Taste of Home's reviewer, for example, really liked the peanut
butter and almond butter versions but thought the maple butter was a bit too sweet.
The folks at Mars are always experimenting with ways to add new twists to Snickers. Sometimes
that means simply adding more of what's already inside like caramel and peanuts, while other
times it gets a bit more bizarre. And the strangest Snickers to date has to be its attempt
to transform itself into a caffeinated energy bar in 2008. In addition to the usual peanuts,
Snickers Charged also included taurine and 60 milligrams of caffeine. As Mars Vice President
Michele Kessler described it,
"[It] offers consumers a bar of substance and a delicious and satisfying way to tackle
the afternoon hours when one needs to repower."
Snickers Charged contained slightly less caffeine than a cup of coffee, but dieticians were
concerned more about the 250 calories of sugar that it also included. This wasn't the only
time a candy bar tried to take on Red Bull and other energy drinks, as Butterfinger tried
it a year later with Butterfinger Buzz. Snickers Charged was only meant to be a limited-time
product unless sales really took off. But, as you can probably tell by their absence
from your local candy shelves, that didn't happen.
As Snickers has demonstrated on multiple occasions, its food engineers aren't against thinking
outside the box and getting a bit weird with their concoctions. And one of the weirdest
examples to date was the time that they decided to change the color of nougat inside their
candy bars to green. In 2007, Mars wanted to get people hyped about the third installment
of the Shrek film franchise, so they created a limited run of Snickers that were the same
color on the inside as the Mike Myers-voiced ogre. The wrapper's message promised Snickers
fans that the candy bar still delivered on the "same Snickers taste" only now "with green
Shrek filling." You could be forgiven if reading that makes you think that poor Shrek himself
was actually cooked into the candy bars.
While Shrek fans might've been on board with this idea, others were more critical of a
promotion that associated a beloved animated character with candy. An editorial piece in
The New York Times, for example, noted that Shrek was sending a mixed message to kids
by appearing in public service announcements that encouraged kids to exercise while also
promoting junk food like Snickers and Twinkies.
Nothing makes for good brand marketing like securing a place in the book of Guinness World
Records, and Snickers kicked off 2020 by doing just that by becoming the world's largest
chocolate nut bar. Mars set out to create a candy bar that would make every other candy
bar look like a puny fun-size version by making one that weighed in at over two tons. Just
like a regular Snickers bar, this giant version consisted of peanuts, caramel, and chocolate,
just a lot more of those ingredients than the regular version. It was made with 3,500
pounds of milk chocolate and 1,200 pounds of peanuts, caramel, and nougat to help celebrate
two different anniversaries for Snickers. As director of sales Josh Olken explained,
"We're not only celebrating the 90th anniversary of the brand, but the Super Bowl will also
mark ten years since the iconic 'Game' spot launched the award-winning 'You're Not You
When You're Hungry' campaign. What better time than the Super Bowl to satisfy something
on the biggest scale yet?"
"It was a good challenge. You know? But we make Snickers every day."
This giant edition was the equivalent of 41,000 regular Snickers bars, and it was set to be
consumed by the 600 Mars Wrigley workers in Waco, Texas who helped make it, along with
probably everyone else in Waco. Unfortunately for Snickers though, they didn't hold the
record for long, as Reese's Take 5 stole it away just a couple weeks later.
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