Mars history

By 1920, Mars had returned to his home state, Minnesota, where the earliest incarnation of the present day Mars company was founded that year as Mar-O-Bar Co., in Minneapolis and later incorporated there as Mars, Incorporated.

In 1932, Mars introduced the 3 Musketeers bar.

In 1940, Forrest Mars founded M&M chocolates which would later come under the Mars Corporation.

Its first candy success was M&M's, introduced in 1940.

1943: Mars begins making parboiled (instant) rice for the United States Army.

In 1943 Mars began exploring new territories and began producing frozen rice, whole grain, instant rice, etc.

By 1952 they were selling the country's number one brand of rice and the name "Uncle Ben" was adopted after a locally famous rice grower known for producing high quality crops.

M&M's Peanut Chocolate Candies were introduced in 1954, the same year the famous slogan "the milk chocolate melts in your mouth--not in your hand" was first used.

In 1968 a small, fun-size version of the candy bar became available; two years later, the Snickers Munch bar, a candy bar modeled after peanut brittle, was launched.

In 1968 Mars acquired Kal-Kan Foods, making the already largest dog food packer in the world even larger.

Skittles began manufacturing in the United States Originally produced in the U.K., Skittles was first imported to the United States in 1974.

“Our Most Important Ingredient Is Quality,” McLean, Va.: Mars, Incorporated, 1980.

1986: Mars enters frozen snack business with purchase of Dove International.

Pasta offerings, including spaghetti, tortellini and ravioli, launch in Australia under the name ALORA®, later rebranded as Dolmio in Europe in 1986.

Around 1988 Ethel M. Chocolates was purchased by Mars.

Doveurope was established in 1988.

In 1989 the company entered the vast market of the Indian subcontinent when it opened a $10-million factory in India.

Johnson, Bradley, “Kal Kan Goes Upscale,” Advertising Age, September 24, 1990.

Steinhauer, Jennifer, “America’s Chocoholics: A Built-in Market for Confectioners,” New York Times, July 14, 1991.

“Mars Merger Talks Denied by Nestlé,” New York Times, September 20, 1991.

In 1991, rankings in the United States candy wars changed again, with Mars coming out on top with its percentage of the total candy market increasing from 16.7 to 17.9 percent.

Mars launched 12 new products in 1991, including a dark chocolate candy bar under the Dove name, mint and almond M&M's, Milky Way Dark, and Peanut Butter Snickers.

Also in 1991 Mars introduced Expert, a superpremium dog and cat food line meant as an alternative to Hill's Science Diet and Iams, which are sold only in pet stores and feed shops.

Sprout, Alison L., “Milky Way Light,” Fortune, February 24, 1992.

Hwang, Suein L., “Peanuts and Caramel Combine to Create Sticky Competition, ”Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1992.

In late 1992, Mars began testing Mahogany, a line of premium chocolates, in Germany.

Mars, Inc. is a diversified international company ranked in 1992 as the leading manufacturer of candy and confectionery products.

Mars, Incorporated, becomes the single worldwide food sponsor of the 1992 Olympic Games.

Mars also explored healthier alternatives for its traditional snack products when, in 1992, the company became the first customer of Proctor and Gamble Co.'s caprenin, a low-calorie cocoa butter substitute.

The 1995 color-vote promotion caught the attention at least 10 million Americans, who chose blue to enter the mix.

In 1995 Mars' campaign to promote its new blue M&Ms with animated M&M characters resulted in double-digit growth for the company.

To celebrate the launch of the blue M&M® in 1995, the Empire State Building featured blue lighting.

In another attempt to meet the needs of those consumers who were turning away from chocolate to reduce their fat intake, Mars introduced Starburst Fruit Twists and Starburst Jellybeans in 1996.

It acquired a small organic foods marketer, Seeds of Change, in late 1997.

They moved together to TBWA\Chiat\Day's Los Angeles office in 1997, where they won assignments for Taco Bell, Sony PlayStation, Infiniti, Levi's, and Nissan.

George Lazarus, writing in the Chicago Tribune in May 1998, said insiders were reporting that a new, crispier M&M formulation would likely appear on store shelves before the end of the year.

A version of M&M’s with crisped rice added to the chocolate center was much more successful; it began shipping in late 1998.

The Uncle Ben’s division, once the leading rice producer in the United States, let market share fall to Quaker Oats’ Rice-A-Roni and Carolina and Mahatma rice from Riviana Foods until it actually lost money in 1998.

To feed the seemingly insatiable American (and world) appetite for chocolate candy, Mars was expected to introduce still another variation of its very successful M&M candy brand late in 1998.

With the 1999 acquisition of Iams, the company immediately and drastically increased advertising spending on behalf of all Iams products for dogs and cats.

Mars spent $195 million on United States confection brand advertising in 2000, much of that concentrated on its three top brands, which generated 67 percent of sales.

In 2000 M&M's Spokescandies, introduced 50 years before and evolving ever since, were on their way to becoming iconic characters.

And so, as the year 2000 approaches, many grow anxious about an uncertain future.

M&M’S® chocolate candies become “The Official Candy of the New Millennium.” MM is the Roman numeral for 2000

In 2001 Ralston Purina, the manufacturer of Cat Chow, Meow Mix, and Purina O.N.E. in addition to leading dog-food brands and other pet products, was purchased by Nestlé, the corporate owner of the Friskies brand.

Nestlé, meanwhile, significantly scaled back total expenditures on its brands Cat Chow, Friskies, and Purina O.N.E. after the 2001 merger that placed them all under the same corporate umbrella.

"Inner Beast" represented not just a conceptual shift in Whiskas' advertising but also a return to its pre-2001 levels of ad spending.

In 2001 Hershey's share of the United States confectionary market was 30.3 percent, nearly twice that of Mars (16.9 percent) and well above Nestlé (6.3 percent), according to Information Resources, a Chicago research company whose figures did not include sales at Wal-Mart.

The "Global Color Vote" achieved results in the first three months of 2002, with growth reaching double digits for M&M's, while the category as a whole only grew by 3 percent.

In 2002, however, Mars had reason to be concerned when reports surfaced that Hershey was for sale.

Profit details for the privately held company were rarely disclosed, but Investors Business Daily reported in 2002 that M&M's accounted for more than $2 billion in company revenue, up from $1.5 billion the previous year.

In 2002 Mars introduced the Snickers Almond Bar.

Parpis, Eleftheria. "The Tao of Clow: How a Surfer from West Los Angeles Became the Art Director of His Generation and the Soul of Chiat/Day." Adweek, November 17, 2003.

The campaign the agency created, "The Energy You Crave," began in fall 2003 with teaser print ads in health and fitness magazines.

In 2004 its total sales neared $13 billion.

By the end of 2005 there were eight Snickers Marathon bars to choose from that were in three nutrition categories: energy, protein, and low carbohydrate.

BBDO New York also picked up accolades within the advertising industry, winning a Silver EFFIE Award (Snacks/Desserts/Confections category) in 2005 for its "The Energy You Crave" campaign.

In 2005 Hershey introduced a new product called Kissables that was remarkably similar to M&M's candies.

In 2005 Mars continued to expand the brand by introducing Dark Chocolate M&M's and Mega M&M's with adults in mind.

In 2005 Mars launched KLIX® Outlook vending machines in the UK, France and Germany.

With $20 billion in sales in 2006, and operations in 100 countries on five continents, Mars will continue to grow and prosper for years to come.

The company announced at the end of 2007 that all business units were adopting the name Mars.

The company spent more than $1.8 million on lobbying during 2008, almost all of it at Patton Boggs, where it has long been one of the largest lobbying clients.

In 2008, Mars and theBelGroup has conducted research study which resulted in resurrecting the famous Mars slogan “Work, Rest & Play”. Packaged and led global launch of Mars Refuel Sports drink.

Mars’ Cocoapro®-processed cocoa extract approved as a novel food ingredient in the EU, enabling the launch of COCOAVIA™ capsules in the U.K. and Ireland in early 2017.

In 2017, the company's confectionery segment announced a return to its roots, and opened a new office in Newark, New Jersey.