One of comedian Megan Amram’s hilarious tweets made Martha wonder about how M&M’s got their name. In 1940, Forrest Mars and an heir to the Hershey fortune, Bruce Murrie, created a candy similar to the European chocolates called Smarties. The American version takes its name from the initials of the candymakers’ last names, Mars and Murrie. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “M&M Name”
Grant, I know that you’re a fan of the comedian Megan Amram, who tweets wonderful things on Twitter. One of the things she did recently was, what if the brown ones are just clear M&Ms? Yes! Perfect! Yes! Perfect.
Well, that got me to thinking about the product name M&Ms, and it turns out there’s an interesting story behind that name. Ooh, do tell.
Well, Franklin Mars was a Minnesota candy maker, and in 1923, he invented the Milky Way, which you and I have both enjoyed, followed by Three Musketeers and Snickers. Yum, yum.
And his son, Forrest Mars, moved to England to make and distribute the Milky Ways there. And in 1939, he moved back to the U.S., and he brought with him the rights to a British candy called Smarties. Now, these aren’t the Smarties that you’re thinking of, not the little tart ones. He bought the rights to Smarties in Britain, which are little round pieces of chocolate with a hard candy shell. And because there was already another candy by that name here, he had to come up with a different one. And he went into business with a guy who was an heir to the Hershey fortune, our Bruce Murray. And so Mars and Murray just put their names together and produced M&Ms.
Well, that’s an interesting story, and I have one for you as well. Okay. It’s related to Smarties. You just made me think of this. In my family, my brother and my sisters and I developed this method of telling your fortune with the American Smarties.
What? They come in these little cylindrical cellophane packages that you can see through. Right. And there’s a bunch of different colors. Right. And each color has a value. So red means love and green means money and orange is a negative. So if orange comes before another color, it means the opposite of it. So if you have orange and greens, it means you’re going to lose money. And red, since red means love or pink means love, if you have one of those before green, it means you’re going to get a lot more money. And you can just go through the roll left to right.
You’re going to buy companionship. Yeah. Well, no. We were kids. You can go through the roll left to right and tell your fortune. That’s hilarious. You made up your own little language. You probably set yourself up at the county fair telling fortunes, right? What it meant was that when Halloween came around, you would just dig through the package of Smarties to find the one that had the best fortune. You’d look for the one with the most pinks and greens.
Oh, my gosh. This is, I’m starting to understand you more and more as we work together. 877-929-9673. Words@waywordradio.org.
