Say goodbye to both sexy green M&M and her feminist, sneaker-wearing counterpart. Mars Wrigley, the maker of the colorful chocolate candies, has pulled M&M’s “Spokecandies” mascots from its marketing and branding “indefinitely”. Instead, M&M’s will be represented by real-life comedian and actress Maya Rudolph.
The news comes after a rebrand to make the characters more inclusive, and the subsequent fallout, after far-right conservative pundits like Fox News host Tucker Carlson condemned the change. The statement, tweeted by M&M’s official account, reads:
Over 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 polarize.
The confusing chain of events has inspired an endless stream of internet commentary. At the time of publication, the tweet announcing the change has been quoted and tweeted over 14,000 times. The reactions ranged from plenty of anger to funny jokes. That’s how we got to this point.
Why are the Spokescandies leaving M&M?
About a year ago, Mars Wrigley updated the look of his Characters from M&M, when the company announced an initiative to adapt the mascots to a “more dynamic, progressive world”. As part of these changes, the company introduced new designs for some M&M characters wrote oddly elaborate backstories for others. Above all, the company did green M&M less “sexy” by shortening her legs and replacing her high-heeled boots with sneakers.
At the time, the change drew criticism from both feminist activists (being hot isn’t a problem in itself) and far-right conservatives, who portrayed it as just another battle in the culture wars. January 2022, Tucker Carlson criticized the renaming during a show segment.
Carlson has more recently revisited the subject as a topic on his show and ended up reigniting discussion about it. In the episode, he said: “Woke M&Ms have returned. Green M&M got her boots back, but maybe she’s a lesbian now? And there’s also an oversized, obese, purple M&M.”
We don’t know why Carlson decided to talk about M&Ms again. Mars Wrigley hasn’t made any changes to the M&M characters recently. On the show, Carlson uses two images as a reference to critique the new branding. The first is a picture of brown and green M&M from 2015 and the other was from Purple M&M, which launched back in September. None of this is new information. However, Mars Wrigley teased that the brand would make one Appearance in the upcoming Super Bowl.
After Carlson talked about the characters again, users on TikTok started creating the audio clip of his voice weird videos where people are lip syncing and imagine what it is was like being in the studio that day. An audio clip alone has has been used over 9,000 times since publication on January 12; Many of the TikToks using the audio clip were posted and viewed extensively over the past weekend.
It’s hard to tell if the social media shitstorm following Carlson’s comments prompted Mars Wrigley to stop using the mascots. It’s also possible that this could be a very weird marketing ploy pushing the Super Bowl, much like how Planters killed Mr. Peanut and replaced him with baby nut.
As for next, well, Maya Rudolph was optimistic about the brand deal with Today. “I’ve been a lifelong candy lover and I feel honored to be asked to be a part of the campaign for such an iconic brand.” Let’s just hope she doesn’t show up on stage in plain old sneakers, instead of in high-heeled boots.
