In 1995, Actor John Goodman Was The Original Voice Of “Yellow”

Today is National M&M’s Day.  M&M’s are colorful little sugar-coated chocolate pieces that have stolen the hearts of generations in over 100 countries.

Invented in 1941, these tiny little bits of candy-coated chocolate have made a huge impact on American history throughout their more than 80 years of life!

• 1930s – ​After seeing soldiers carry Smarties — chocolate pellets protected by a shell to keep them from melting —during the Spanish Civil War, Forrest Mars Sr., son of the Mars Company founder, pitched the idea of the candy we know today as M&M’s
• 1939 – During the war years, M&M’s were sold only to the military, so everyday chocolate lovers couldn’t sample the candy until the war ended in 1945.
• 1941 – ​Forrest Mars Sr. started producing M&M’s at a factory in New Jersey
• 1949 – ​The popular M&M tagline, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand,” was released.
• 1949 – Violet M&Ms were switched to tan. Later, the company asked customers to vote for which color they wanted in the pack and the winner was blue. Nowadays, you’ll find brown, yellow, orange, red, green, and blue
• 1950 –  there were no letters printed onto the pieces, and between 1950 and 1954, the letter ‘m’ was printed in black. The color was changed to white in 1954 – the same year that peanut M&M’s were introduced.
• 1954 – the world-famous M&M characters made their first television appearance.
• 1970s – Red M&Ms were replaced with orange.
• 1970s – A rumor started that green M&M’s were an aphrodisiac. In schools across America, students could be found rummaging around for the offending shade and feeding them to their crush. At one point you could buy packets that consisted purely of green M&M’s (sold by an unofficial company). Later, Mars capitalized on the hype and launched the flirtatious green M&M character, Ms. Green.
• 1976 – 1985, there were no red M&Ms
• 1980s – ​M&M’s went on sale in Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong.
• 1982 – M&Ms were taken along on the first space shuttle voyage.
• 1982 – A university student founded the Society for the Restoration and Preservation of Red M&M’s, a campaign to bring back the Red M&M’s.
• 1987 – The popular red color was back on the shelves, and many customers were happy to hear that the orange pieces would remain there too.
• 1990s – M&M’s sales had dropped, and the company needed a plan. It hired ad agency BBDO and gave them a small budget to turn things around. The solution? Turn the candies into characters with distinct personalities, voice them with comedians, and have them appear in adverts with celebrities. Red was sarcastic, Yellow the goofball, Blue the cool one, Green the seductress and Orange the neurotic one – America loved them.
• 1995 – Blue M&Ms were introduced
• 2006 – M&M’s became the official chocolate of NASCAR
• Over 400 million M&M’s are produced daily.
• The original M&M colors were red, yellow, violet, green, and brown.
• Since 2020, M&M’s have been available online in 24 colors.
• They also come in many flavors, including milk chocolate, dark chocolate, mint chocolate, orange chocolate, crispy, peanuts, almonds, caramel, hazelnuts, peanut butter, and coconut.
• A typical 1.69-ounce bag of plain M&M’s contains about 56 candies.
• M&M’s was the first candy in space. The first space shuttle astronauts chose them for their food supply.
• M&Ms are the most commonly eaten chocolate in NASA’s space program.
• Do you know those commercials where oversized red and yellow M&M’s candies banter for 30 seconds? Well, one of those voices sounds familiar: J.K. Simmons voices the yellow M&M. Simmons has voiced Yellow since 1996 and even created a backstory for the goofy peanut candy. The Whiplash star is only the second to voice Yellow. John Goodman originally voiced the candy.
• Billy West, the actor behind Futurama’s Fry, currently voices the red M&M’s candy.
• Before President Ronald Reagan, most presidential products were matchboxes and cigarettes. These were often handed out on Air Force One or to visitors at the White House.
• They’re now given as gifts to visitors. Presidents since, including Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump and Biden, have carried on the tradition.
• M&Ms are also one of the many official food sponsors of the NFL
• Though you’re used to seeing M&M’s in a plastic packet, they were first launched in a brown cardboard tube. You popped open one end and they poured easily into your hands. You could also snap the lid back on if you only fancied a few. The brown bags arrived in 1948.
• Forrest Mars was a stickler for quality control. He was known to call up sales associates in the middle of the night and order a batch to be recalled if he so much as saw a candy where the “M” wasn’t printed directly in the center. Meanwhile, the bacteria level on the floor of a Mars factory is apparently lower than in an average kitchen sink.
• Ready to go global, M&M’s paid £3.5 million ($5 million) to be named “the official snack food of the 1984 Olympic Games” held in Los Angeles. It needed a brand that could be recognized in every nation (at the time Snickers was called Marathon in the UK). With worldwide recognition, M&M’s expanded into Asia Pacific, Australia, Europe, and Russia.
• Hitting the big time, M&M’s used the Super Bowl to debut its second female character, Ms. Brown, the gang’s brains. The 30-second spot cost as much as $4 million and reached an average of 111.3 million viewers in 2012. Since then, the comedic characters have made several reappearances to entertain fans at halftime.

Sources:

Days of the Year

Fact Site

Do You Remember

Listverse

Spoon University

Love Food

National Today