If there’s one candy company that many on the right love to hate, it’s M&M’s. Currently under the fourth largest private company in the US, the Mars brand has been a part of American food culture for more than 70 years. Consumers don’t just love the little candy-coated chocolates, many also know and love the iconic characters assigned to each color: pensive blue, neurotic orange, and sassy green.
A year ago, M&M’s heard long-standing criticism of how the two female characters were obviously sexualized: In older ads, Green and Brown were sometimes portrayed as “competing” for the male M&M’s, while Green struck “sexy” poses.
In January 2022, M&M’s announced that it would be giving the M&M characters a new “look, personalities, and backstories” to be more in-line and “representative of today’s society.”
Some new packets of M&M candy for women
While the changes were as small as giving Green sneakers instead of high-heeled boots (Brown still wears heels, but they’re less dramatic now) and reworking some of the poses they strike in ad campaigns, outrage came quickly. .
Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that M&M don’t stop until each character was “deeply unlikeable and utterly androgynous” and that fairness would only be achieved when “you’re totally out of touch.”
Carlson’s responses were the subject of much ridicule, but they also sparked a flurry of media coverage of Mars and M&M’s. Then, in September, the company announced that it would be adding another color to its line of six candies. An M&M peanut who wore combat boots and believed in “acceptance and inclusivity,” Purple was initially just a part of ads and online campaigns.
This week, M&M’s once again shook up conservative sensibilities by announcing the release of a limited-edition candy pack that includes green, brown and purple in an “all-female” lineup.
The packages will be available in milk chocolate, peanut butter, and peanut varieties and mark the first time that Purple can be purchased as real candy. Bundles are a limited edition product that will not be available once supplies run out.
M&M Spokescandies Are Irking Fox News
“Women around the world are changing the way they define success and happiness while challenging the status quo, so we’re thrilled to be able to recognize and celebrate them, and who better to help us in that mission than our own powerful spokeswoman Green , Brown and Purple? Gabrielle Wesley, director of marketing for Mars Wrigley North America, in a statement.
The outrage was as swift and predictable as last year. Fox News host Martha MacCallum spent a portion of Monday’s newscast making wildly dramatic statements about how this type of package “undermines” the US on the world stage.
“If this is what you need for validation, an M&M that is the color that you think is associated with feminism, then I’m concerned for you,” MacCallum said. “I think that makes China say, ‘Oh, good, keep focusing on that.'”
But given the taunt wave Y news coverage which takes place whenever a Fox host decides to go into battle against a sweet treat, the pundits have largely achieved the opposite effect and helped reinvigorate a sweet treat that many haven’t eaten in years back into the national discussion again.
“The M&M Company is just trolling Fox News right now,” Twitter user Brad Grenz wrote of the new packages.
