If you thought the M&M’s “scandal” couldn’t get any stranger, it turns out you were wrong.
For those who don’t pay close attention to candy wrappers or tune in to Fox News for your daily dose of unnecessary outrage, M&M’s have come under fire in recent weeks for temporarily changing some of their packaging to only include the female-coded M&M characters. This was to be part of a brief endeavor to partner with charities that support women.
The move followed a redesign of several of the characters last year, including giving the green M&M sneakers and adding a purple peanut M&M meant to represent body-positive inclusivity.
Naturally, Fox News got extremely worked up over every single one of these changes, from Tucker Carlson raging against the green M&M no longer being sexy enough to other hosts calling a female empowerment campaign part of the “woke” agenda.
A rational person might expect this to all blow over, but for whatever reason, the candy brand decided to respond by taking “an indefinite pause from the spokescandies” with an announcement shared on Monday.
“America, let’s talk. 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,” they wrote. “But now we get it—even a candy’s shoes can be polarizing. Which was the last thing M&M’S wanted since we’re all about bringing people together.”
Instead, Maya Rudolph will be taking over as the spokesperson for the brand for the time being.
It’s difficult to tell from the tone of the copy whether this is a genuine response to the backlash, or perhaps poking fun at it a little bit. And leaving it open to interpretation may have even been the point, but it’s…weird.
Of course, people also pointed out there’s a good chance this is also just another stunt for an upcoming Super Bowl commercial, which seems like the most likely scenario. Watching the “go woke, go broke” crowd think they achieved anything at all in the meantime is tiresome, but at least we’re getting compensated with Maya Rudolph — and the likely outrage that will happen as soon as the spokescandies make their return.
What is M&M short for?
M&M is short for Mars & Murrie, for the deal Forrest Mars Sr. made with Bruce Murrie, the son of the president of Hershey, that created the candy.
Why is there no purple candy?
The M&M colors have been the same since 1995, with no purple added despite a purple candy being added as a spokescandy.
Which M&Ms are female?
The brown, green, and now purple candies are characterized as female.
