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But I host a podcast that can fix that. It's called The Seven. 7 Stories Every Weekday by 7 a.m. Eastern. And here's the other thing.
It's short, less than 10 minutes in fact. I'm Hannah Jewell. The Seven podcast will turn around your morning and get you caught up. Check it out and follow The Seven wherever you listen to podcasts. And we continue with our American stories.
The world-famous Mars Corporation is a multi-billion dollar confectionery giant. This once small time family run sweet shop Is now a bigger brand than McDonald's, Kellogg's, and even four times as big as Hershey. their biggest competitor. Here to tell the story of Mars Candy. is Simon Whistler.
From the Today I Found Out YouTube channel and its sister, the Brain Food Show podcast. Let's take a listen. Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three.
The legendary Roll Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from 1964 and its subsequent two film adaptations from 1971 and 2005 told the story of a magical candy factory and its eccentric and mysterious owner Willy Wonka. A chocolate river, a gum that is a whole turkey dinner, never-ending gobstoppers and of course the singing and dancing umpa lumpers are just a few of the surprises that waited inside the doors of the famously secretive factory. Of course, in a real-life candy empire, there are a lot more failures, a lot more hard work, there are father-son disputes, and an unfortunate lack of umpalumpas. The story of Mars Candy starts in Newport, Minnesota, southeast of St. Paul, with the birth of Franklin Clarence Mars on September 23rd, 1883.
Frank was the son of a grist mill operator grinding grains into flour, who only moved to Minnesota from Pennsylvania with his wife Alva months prior to Frank's birth. When Frank was little, he battles polio, which left him disabled for the rest of his life. As you might imagine from this, he was rather immobile as a kid, so he spent a lot of time watching his mother bake and cook, including watching her go through the difficult and tedious process of making fresh chocolates. He got so into candy that he began selling Taylor's molasses chips and creating his own candy recipes while still in high school. By the time he graduated, he had a pretty successful career going, selling candy wholesale to stores in the Minneapolis-St.
Paul area. In 1902, he married F.L. G. Kissock, a schoolteacher. About a year later, Frank's first son, Forrest, was born.
It was also around this time that the candy markets became oversaturated. With the Hershey bar having been introduced in 1900, the United States' first mass-produced candy bar, a host of other locally owned candy chains popped up. The competition was fierce, especially in the Minneapolis area. Brands like Chickerstick, Pearsons, and Cherry Hump started in Minnesota and all are still around today.
So it wasn't a huge surprise when Frank's wholesale business went under. To add a little lemon juice to his fresh wound, in 1910, Ethel divorced Frank for being unable to support her. She also won sole custody of Forrest, who she promptly sent to live with her parents in Canada. The ugliness of the divorce wasn't a good omen for Frank and Forrest's future relationship. They would rarely see each other until years later, with tensions still running high.
Frank, never a man to get too down, tried again, this time marrying another Ethel, Ethel V. Healy, and moving to Seattle, Washington to go back into the candy business. He failed again with wholesaling, and creditors started taking his stuff. He moved 30 miles south to Tacoma and again struggled. In 1920, Frank and Ethel II moved back to Minnesota to be closer to their families.
At this time, Frank had only $400 to his name, but despite his constant struggles with candy, he continued to try, this time making his own at 3 a.m. every morning with his wife doing the selling. The candy bar was the Maro Bar, made out of chocolate, nuts and caramel. It was tough, but they started to make a little money and then a good amount more. Yeah.
After years of trying, Frank Mars had finally carved out a somewhat lucrative career in candy. They were even able to buy a house and would have been comfortable being local candy suppliers. But the invention of the Milky Way changed all of that. It was also around this time that Frank's son Forrest was establishing a mighty fine business sense. After attending college at Berkeley and later Yale, he became a traveling salesman for Camel Cigarettes.
As the legend goes, in Chicago one night, Forrest went a little overboard plastering ads across the city for Camel. He was arrested, but his estranged father bailed him out. While at a soda counter, Forrest looked into his chocolate malt glass and said, Why don't you put a chocolate malted drink in a candy bar? Nougar had been invented in Italy in the 15th century, but a variation of whipped egg whites and sugar syrup instead of the normal honey was invented by the Pendergast Candy Company in the early 20th century. They were based in Yes, Minneapolis, and the Nougar became known as Minneapolis Nougar.
Fragmars had started using this nougar in his candies in 1920. In fact, he called the company the Nougar House for a time. But this time, in 1923, he mixed it with chocolate and put caramel on top of it. Using his cosmic name as an inspiration, he called it a Milky Way. It was introduced in that same year.
Within a year, Mars' sales jumped by tenfold, grossing about $800,000. That's about $11 million today. Said Forrest later, that thing sold with no advertising. Mars Company quickly launched into orbit. They moved their headquarters to near Chicago and by 1928, just five years after introducing the Milky Way, they were making $20 million in gross revenue.
That's about $273 million today. In 1930, they introduced the Snickers bar named after Frank's favourite horse, and soon after, the Three Musketeers. Frank started living in Grand's fashion, buying fast cars, big houses, and a horse farm for his wife.
Meanwhile, Forrest didn't like what he saw. Knowing that there was more profit and security to be had by cutting costs and expanding the business into other areas, he tried to convince his father to give him a third of the company and let him expand to Canada, Forrest's home country. Frank refused, and Forrest, later recounting a conversation with his father, I told my dad to stick his business up his bs. If he didn't want to give me a third right then, I said I'm leaving. In the end, Frank gave Forrest $50,000 in foreign rights to the Milky Way to basically leave his company alone and move to Europe.
Fortunately for the company, that is exactly what Forrest did. While in Europe, Forrest learned from Switzerland's Nestle Chocolate Company about how to make good, sweet European-style candy. He tweaks the recipe of the Milky Way to make it more sweet. He calls it the Mars Bar. It sold even better than the Milky Way in Europe, amassing Forrest his own considerable fortune.
Frank passed away in 1934 at the young age of 50. His wife Ethel took over the company, then Frank's half-brother William L. Slip Kruppenbacher, when Ethel was too ill to run it. In 1945, Ethel passed away. The company moved to the next of kin, the business Sammy Forrest.
Forrest took over the company and immediately diversified, turning Mars into more than just a candy company. He worked with a European pet food supplier and eventually created Whiskers Cat Food. He worked with a Texas salesman to create ready-to-make rice. That became Uncle Ben's Rice. Besides being a brilliant money-making businessman, he was also known to have a violent temper and demands for perfection.
For example, he was known to throw chocolate bars out of windows if they didn't meet his quality expectations.
Okay. Remarkably quickly, he turned a regional candy maker into a worldwide food empire. Today, it is his three kids who are reaping the benefits, John Forrest Jr. and Jacqueline. They are some of the richest people in the world, each owning a third of the Mars company, which employs over 75,000 people and is valued at around $70 billion, making us approximately the sixth largest privately held company in the world.
And now for a bonus fact. In 1941, Forrest Mars Sr. struck a deal with Bruce Murray, son of famed Hershey president William Murray, to develop a hard-shelled candy with chocolate at the center. Mars needed Hershey's chocolate because he anticipated there would be a chocolate shortage in the pending war, which turned out to be correct. As such, the deal gave Murray a 20% stake in the newly developed MM.
This stake was later bought out by Mars when chocolate rationing ended at the end of the war. The name of the candy thus stood for Mars and Murray, the co-creators of the candy. As for where he got the idea, the MM was modelled after a candy Forrest encountered while in Spain during his exile from Mars in the 1930s. During the Spanish Civil War, there, he observed soldiers eating chocolate pellets with a hard shell of tempered chocolate. This prevented the candies from melting, which was essential when included in their rations.
Not surprisingly, during World War II, production of MM skyrocketed due to the fact that they were sold to the military and included as part of the United States' soldiers' rations. This also worked great at marketing because when the soldiers came home, many were hooked. And a terrific job on the production and editing by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Simon Whistler for telling one heck of a story about some of our favorite candies. And to think that out of one company came Milky Way, Snickers, and Three Musketeers, and that they've been around for a century.
in a world where brands come and go. What an achievement. The story of Mars, which is of course the story of Milky Way, Snickers, and Three Musketeers, and MM's too. Here, on our American stories. Time for a sofa upgrade?
Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices, with sofas starting at $699. AniBay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly. Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out. Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy. Liquid simply slides right off.
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Terms apply. When I listen to the news, here's what I want to know: why this story matters, who's at the center of it, and how the reporters uncovered it. And as a journalist, I want to make sure that's what you get too. I'm Eva Heizadi, co-host of the podcast Post Reports. Every weekday, my colleagues and I at the Washington Post give you the context you need on the biggest stories.
Healthcare, tariffs, artificial intelligence. We've got you covered. Look for post reports wherever you listen to podcasts. Every day has a to-do list, but adding Enjoy Belveda to yours can help you knock out the rest of it. Belveda breakfast biscuits are a tasty and convenient breakfast option when paired with low-fat yogurt and fruit that provides steady energy all morning.
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