On Monday, international candy-maker Mars announced it would no longer make use of its M&M “spokescandies” in advertising campaigns for the brand.
First introduced in the 1950’s, the colorful characters have been attracting cirticisms of late, so the company is retiring them, according to a statement by Mars.
The M&M’s Twitter account posted, “In the last year, we’ve made some changes to our beloved spokescandies. We weren’t sure if anyone would even notice. And we definitely didn’t think it would break the internet. But now we get it – even a candy’s shoes can be polarizing… Therefore we have decided to take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies.”
The spokescandies had undergone several makeovers as the company adjusted its advertising campaigns to appeal more to younger generations. Some of the characters received makeovers in January of 2022, which attracted criticism. The female green had her high-heeled boots swapped out for sneakers, and the move attracted immediate criticism online.
Then M&Ms added a purple candy in September 2022, which was advertised as personifying body-positivity and self-acceptance. Then more recently the brand began a new campaign targeting women, called Flipping the Status Quo. It featured only female spokescandies.
The campaign was designed to raise money for women who worked in creative industries. However it ended up featured on an episode of right wing talk show host Tucker Carlson. He did an entire show focused on the campaign, examining the characters and attacking their sexual orientations and their images. Clips of the show went viral online, and M&Ms appears to have not liked the publicity.
However now Mars appears to be getting even more criticism for letting the characters go. Many of the 20,000 comments on the tweet announcing the spokescandies’ departure were critical of the company for giving in to pressure from “sexists and racists.” Others ridiculed the entire controversy.
M&Ms also announced its next campaign would replace the spokescandies with actress and comedian Maya Rudolph.
