The Food That Built America Recap for Planet Mars
-Tonight’s The Food That Built America focuses on the evolution of Mars candy.
-Forrest Mars is a college dropout who illegally posts billboards. He gets caught and is arrested, calling his estranged father to help. Things are tense with them.
-Frank Mars, Forrest’s father is trying to break into the chocolate business without much success. Hershey is his biggest rival and Frank is determined to become his biggest competitor. The Mars men go out for milkshakes and Forrest comes up with the idea of making a candy bar tasting like a milkshake. The two decide to take the idea and run with it. They have trouble coming up with a successful bar, but soon mix the nougat with malt flavor and come up with a successful bar….but now need chocolate to make it all come together.
-The bar, which also has caramel to go with the nougat and newly obtained chocolate becomes what we now known as the Milky Way. Snickers and 3 Musketeers soon follow, allowing them to take the candy world by storm.
-The father/son team run into some tension when it comes to running the business. Forrest convinces Frank to think bigger so they become a global company. However, despite Mars becoming a multi-billion dollar company, only one of the Mars men would see the success.
-The father and son continue to fight and end up falling out. Forrest walks out and moves 4,000 miles away to prove that he has the power to be as successful as Frank.
-Forrest ends up in Switzerland and applies for a job with Nestle, an international candy company. He noticed that chocolate there was different than chocolate in America and experiments with new recipes. The Mars Bar was soon invented….as was Forrest’s new empire. By 1934, he was the third largest company in Britian and was determined to become the world’s biggest. He would soon invent the So Big bar and a pineapple flavored Mars Bar. Both were flops, so he was determined to turn the tables and invent another successful candy bar.
-Forrest decides to take a different approach, by inventing dog food.
-Sadly, at this point, Frank had passed away due to illness. His company is in a crossroads and it is unclear if he and Forrest made up before his death. The company was split between Forrest, Frank’s wife Ethel and his daughter Patricia. Forrest wanted control of the company, but isn’t sure how to make it happen.
-While on vacation in Spain, he notices soldiers eating candies called Smarties, chocolates coated in sugar and in tiny pieces. He notices they didn’t melt while they were in their hands….so he used this as inspiration to invent M&Ms.
-Forrest returned to the USA to work on the new candy, but runs into a roadblock….needing milk chocolate. He meets with the president of Hershey, William Murrie, and shows him the Smarties. They decide to collaborate, with William’s son Bruce becoming Forrest’s business partner.
-As they work on getting the candy off the ground, WWII is taking place, with Pearl Harbor putting a damper in their plans.
-The soldiers need rations, so Forrest sends them M&Ms. It becomes a success for them, but they soon faded in popularity once the war was over. He ends up fighting with Bruce, causing him to resign. Forrest buys him out so he could never takes his ideas.
-Forrest realizes that he has to appeal to children if he wants to keep selling M&Ms, so thanks to one of his advertisers, a campaign was born, giving us the slogan and characters we all know and love.
-The peanut M&M soon followed, with the red and yellow M&Ms becoming the official mascots. The candy would top $40 million dollars in sales, making it one of the most popular candies in America. It becomes so iconic that it ends up a staple on Air Force One.
-As the company grows, Forrest is still determined to buy out his father’s company. He talks to his sister, who is dying. She agrees to let him buy her out and he finally gains ownership, merging the company. He completely rehauls the company to increase efficiency and productivity. He then decides to invent his own milk chocolate and expands the kind of candy he sells….giving us the fruit chewy candy we now know as Starbursts….originally known as M&M’s Fruit Chewies.
-The new candy initially flopped, so they pull it off the shelves. He rebrands it to what we now know and love today, capitalizing on the space craze with the Starbursts name. It would be become a billion-dollar candy.
-Forrest began rebranding European candies for an American audience, soon coming out with Skittles, which became the most popular non-chocolate candy in America.
-Mars is now a worldwide company, selling everything from candy to pet food….and is worth over 50 billion dollars.
