M&Ms Ads - Becoming Superstars

When last we talked about the M&Ms the little candy coated super-stars we're headed full tilt into the new Millennium. While other companies we're floundering to maintain clean cut mascots in a world full of cynical and way too smart kids the M&Ms managed to ride a tide of good will bolstered by smart mature humor and a constantly evolving sensibility that kept them fresh. Maybe what worked so well for them was that they stopped being aimed specifically at kids. The M&M characters left their pure cartoon roots with the introduction of the mixed media CG versions of the characters, and Mars stopped even making commercials without them. They reached a mass awareness that few mascots have ever achieved and kept on pushing, to become, and stay, the biggest of mega-stars in the candy world.

To be honest, figuring out how this all went down is pretty confusing so |I'm going to assume I will be getting some of this wrong. Lets be clear: I am not a historian. This is a light fun pop survey of the modern M&M characters as seen through their advertizing. There are other places on the web, or in print if you're looking for cold hard facts. Like Yellow, we're just here to have a good time :)

So as we got into the early 00s foreign markets expanded, the brand grew, and ads specifically targeted at non-western markets began to hit. This change alone makes sifting the chaff on the internet pretty complicated especially since some of the campaigns and ads were used in different countries at different times, or under different circumstances. Anyhow, suffice it to say the opening of foreign markets and ad campaigns, makes it extremely messy.

Lets take a step back though and have a look at some ads.  As the century ended, the M&Ms were interacting with celebs in new mixed media adverts, and establishing the core dynamic of the Red Yellow relationship that we all know and love.

The candies declaring themselves the Spokescandies of the new Millennium at end of '97, and I missed one ad they featured in one that I had to share. I love this one, and wanted to make sure I posted it.



Its great to see Dick Clark still young (youngish) and its nice that he was comfortable making fun of his age.

With the launch of Crispy M&Ms in '99 there were more than a few ads featuring the new character and flavor.



Oh Puddy. You always entertain me :D



And Red, you're always pulling fast ones...

As I said Red and Yellow especially we're developing the classic Laurel and Hardy playing off each other riffs, and the public loved it. Here are a few other turn of the century ads that feature the M&Ms just being their own funny selves.



That is a little disturbing. funny but disturbing. This next one just features Red, but its pretty cute.



And finally here's an ad from '99 that I think shows where all the ads were headed in the early '00s.



This is a really great one. The airport ad is awesome because it showcases Red and Yellow doing their thing. It's got them bickering lovingly, being funny interacting with our world. They even break the fourth wall directly, they acknowledge that they are in fact candy, and it all wraps up with a solid tag at the end. This is the shape of the ads to come.

Getting into the 2000s for real-sies now they launched a fun campaign at the start of the year.



This is great on a number of levels, but I think the most important thing to note is the solo color offering. This is one of the first time solo colors were offered for a promotion. AND this wasn't a promotion tied into a holiday like Easter or Xmas where they gave us specially colored (or flavored) editions of the candy. This was just for the heck of it.

Another fun thing came up in the year 2000. And the next very serious ad addresses it perfectly.



That's right. Plain has changed, and in 2000 M&Ms re-branded their classic candy as Milk Chocolate. Such an obvious thing, but remember back when M&Ms started it was really a different world.



One more cute one on this, because I as I've mentioned before I smile for Patrick Warburton and always want him to succeed.

2000 also saw the release of two new M&M video games: The Lost Formula and Mini Madness.



In 2001 M&Ms started a long and strange journey trying out a lot of weird and sometimes very interesting flavors. For this outing they tried their hand at Dulce de Leche in some 5 Hispanic countries. Although it was a valiant attempt and actually sounds pretty good there wasn't much interest apparently and the product line was discontinued by '03.



In 2002 the ads continued, only got a bit more sophisticated. The Laurel and Hardy routine that Red and Yellow we're perfecting still had to be tempered. As much as I like the Airport commercial above its also VERY 90s. Here's the kind of standard ad that typified the early 2000s. Even though it only has Red you can see that it shows a literal and quirky take on the candy. More importantly it's just plain funny.



Love that Bradley Whitford (and this ad is during the height of his run on The West Wing).

2002 also saw the return and update of a previous successful ad campaign. The Global Color Vote was essentially the same trick they'd pulled in '95 but this time it was between Pink, Purple, or Aqua as the new color.



Here's a French ad featuring some cheerleaders?!



After Purple won the contest, it became an M&M color for a limited time. I'm not sure why they didn't keep it around or give us a new mascot like they did when Blue made the scene but they did feature a nifty contest looking for the bag full of Purple M&Ms to win a prize.



In 2004 the M&Ms launched another cool color campaign, only this one was all about the missing color! The hunt was on to find Grey M&Ms this time and it all started with this funny ad.



Here's one that maybe explains it a bit better.



And I always loved this bloodhound one though. Great stuff.



One of the interesting things about M&Ms getting so popular in the 2000s is that they started doing huge tie in marketing promotions. M&Ms had a number of movie tie ins over the years  2004 saw the start of the cross media tie ins, And not just with The Wizard of Oz. No instead I mean this beauty below inspired by the Addams Family to promote another limited run on Dark Chocolate M&Ms.



That's not all from '04 though. M&Ms also got big, and I don't mean regular big, I mean OGRE sized!



I actually think this tie in with Shrek 2 is a great one. M&Ms and Shrek are a really perfectly paired brand. But since M&Ms were in the midst of experiments in size and shape 2004 saw the first appearance of the most radical change yet, the M-Azing chocolate bar!



It sounds like the M-Azing bar was only moderately successful. The bar apparently stuck around in some form or another straight through until today and was finally re-branded and re-launched in 2013 as the new M&M chocolate bar. A bit more on that in the next post.

Aside from featuring in the new M-Azing  bar, the M&M Minis we're also going strong in '04. I posted a few ads from this era of the Minis in my last blog post on this subject but here is another one to show you where the Mini advertizing was at the time.



At first I thought it seemed like a very 90s ad but then I realized that the M&M minis were being targeted at kids, while regular M&Ms were targeted at everyone.

Speaking of mass marketing the following year M&Ms teamed up with another film franchise that had probably the biggest mass market appeal possible. Watch the ad below to see the M&Ms join the Dark Side...



Watching this I have to wonder why Mars never just out and out put out a Dark Chocolate M&M on a permanent basis. I know they've got a few specialties at all times these days, but its weird that they kept bringing it back as a limited run.

2005 also saw the launch of Mega M&Ms. I'm guessing that the Ogre sized M&Ms went over so well that they decided to continue the line.



I know that ad didn't have the M&M characters in it but its pretty funny..

If the Chocolate M-Pire tie in wasn't the breaking point then it had to be the M&M tie ins for '06. These guys weren't just well known spokes-candies, they were true celebrities unto themselves. In 2006 Red and Yellow made a mark adjacent to Joan Rivers at the Academy Awards pre-show. To me this is huge.



Think about the number of eyeballs on that broadcast. Think about the fact that there are people who care about this from really all over the world. Its pretty serious stuff. I mean as serious as you can get for entertainers who aren't actually stars on the big screen.

They may be super-commercialized.... but can you blame them? I mean they are commercial characters. 2006 also saw ties ins for Pirates 3, and Shrek 3.


Pirates 3 in saw the launch of limited time white chocolate M&Ms, and Shrek the Third saw the return of Ogre sized M&Ms again, as well as this vacation contest.



I'm going to jump ahead a bit now, in 2008 M&Ms finally hit on a weird urban myth for their gain. At Valentines they launched a limited run of all green M&Ms. Green you ask? yes. I'm not sure how well known the rumor is now, but I totally remember as a kid hearing that green M&Ms we're for sexy time...



These also came at Christmas time that year. As good a time as any for an aphrodisiac (weather its true or not).

The summer of 2008 saw another side product launched from M&Ms. The M&M ice cream bar.




Its true...



That's pretty funny :)

 New limited time flavors also emerged in 2008. Wild Cherry hit the scene alongside Mint Crisp M&Ms as a promotion tied into Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.



The biggest promotion of 2008 though came with the launch of mymms.com. Now there was finally a chance to change things up, and get your face, or whatever you wanted printed onto your M&Ms. Very exciting stuff.


After this commercial Mars took a different tack making a bunch of pretty funny commercials letting regular people become an M&M.


That ones probably my favorite, but there are some other great ones.


ha, contacts...


Gross but funny.


ha, earholes...


Good stuff all around.

Before I finally wrap this very long blog post up I'll mention one more 2008 M&Ms item. The launch of Premiums. Ms Green finally got something all her own here and it turned out quite well.

5 flavors of premiums were launched. I know I ate a few of them. They had a 'high end' vibe to them and I suppose they were pretty decadent.


Of course we know that Mint has been around since this time in on again off again limited runs, but this is where I first had it. A few more of the flavors were Rasberry Almond, which is actually a current limited run flavor, and Triple Chocolate. Both sound great to me.



I've had these and they do taste great.



mmm... so delicious sounding.

When we come back to this topic, I'll pick up from 2008 and we can watch some more ads together. These crazy M&Ms just became superstars right under your noses...  pretty impressive.  Thanks all, later :)

M&Ms ads - the 90s

A few weeks ago I posted a long and involved post talking about some of the evolution of M&M advertising on television. I encourage you to go read that post first. It was really fun writing the post since I got to parse through a ton of my favorite old M&M ads. Today I thought I'd follow up with the next part of the story and have a look at the more modern M&M ads of the 90s.

M&Ms themselves are really fascinating, and the ads have gone through a lot of changes over the years. But the 90s are characterized by some really dense advertizing. The M&Ms were becoming legitimate stars in their own right, and the advertizing and products went in a number of interesting directions. When last we left off the year was 1992 and M&M had just celebrated their 50th anniversary, and introduced both Peanut Butter and Almond varieties. And just to note the ads I'm really talking about here are all centered around the M&Ms characters, not the commercials with just humans :)

As I said, M&Ms were so popular now that they really seem to have had multiple ad campaigns running concurrently. In some cases you could still find old 80s style M&M commercials featuring M&Ms in pure cartoon settings.



But M&Ms also in the late 80s into the early 90s created a lot of commercials without their mascots entirely. I'm not sure if these were meant to appeal more to adults since they obviously at some point realized the true value of the mascots and basically stopped doing commercials without them, but its interesting nonetheless.

Additionally they made the big transition around this era. It was becoming more and more common to see the M&Ms interacting with real humans. And often not just any humans but celebrities.


That's Daisy Fuentes, model and MTV VJ.



And the incomparable Robert Pastorelli of Murphy Brown fame.

Also since I forgot to mention it earlier M&Ms started featuring Christmas and Easter seasonal bags in 1986. They had pastel colored seasonal M&Ms for Easter-time, and red and green for Xmas.

 

And...

 

Here's my absolute favorite Christmas one :)



Probably the next big innovation to M&Ms came in 1995 when they ran a campaign to vote on the next new color of M&M to be introduced.



The vote was actually to replace the tan colored M&Ms which were being discontinued. As you can see from the funny ads below featuring Wings star Steven Weber and the M&Ms the winner was a new favorite of mine, Blue.



And here's another funny one.



Interesting as far as I can tell Blue was not as of yet associated with a specific flavor, unless it was Almond. Its hard to determine exactly when that happened.Currently all of the different M&M colors are associated with certain flavors, but I don't think that was always the case.

Moving on though, in 1996 M&Ms decided to branch out again, this time with M&M minis.



These little guys have been giving Red and yellow a hard time ever since.Its funny, the Minis are kind of like a cross between a swarm of kiler bees and a crazed Looney Tunes character.

Here's a great example of the kind of pranks the Minis pull.



And I know this is skipping ahead a bit but I love these Mini commercials from the early 2000s as well and they fit into this same category :)



Yeah, of course Red rides the bus.



I LOVE this one. Talk about Looney Tunes!



And of course this is a great example of Red and Yellow just getting tossed around. Pretty typical stuff for the era.

Now it gets a bit tricky around this part but by the late 90s both Ms Green and Orange had also been established as M&M personalities. Unlike Blue these were soft and ongoing changes to character since both colors had been around for quite a while.

Starting with Green, lets have a look at some of her early appearances. She is of course the first woman M&M and they really played up the sexy angle. I mean A LOT.



She's also always had a real air of celebrity to her.



Was that inappropriate? I'm honestly not sure how to take it. Now I know this one is from much more recently, but how about this...



And then of course there's this one final one, my personal favorite.



Now that's pretty funny.

When Green was introduced she was associated loosely with Dark Chocolate, but now she reps for Peanut Butter, Mint, and Coconut. Although with that I have to wonder why Orange isn't on Peanut Butter anymore?

Orange on the other hand is the neurotic part of the M&M gang. He got a personality pretty early on but it wasn't until the introduction of Crispy M&Ms in 1999 that he found a calling and got his own full ad campaign. Here's a great ad with Orange and Halle Berry.

 

Love it. This guys always cracked me up and I wish they would've found more for him to do in those early days. While I liked Crispy M&Ms (they were discontinued Stateside in 2005) after the initial burst there wasn't much advertizing support for them. And so it wasn't until Pretzel M&Ms came along much later that Orange got a chance to shine again. For now though lets look at a few more ads featuring Orange from the late 90s.



Talk about neurotic.



That's another really fun one. And finally lets have one with your friend and mine Patrick Warburton.



Oh Puddy...

As the M&Ms launched into the 2000s they were of course the official spokescandy of the  Millenium. And yes they may have been a bit early on it...



And what do the M&Ms get paid anyhow?



Oh Red and Yellow... you really can't help but love these guys. By this point they've fully developed the Laurel and Hardy routine and are just riffing some great jokes.

And once the M&Ms got into the new Millennium properly things got even bigger for them. While other companies like MacDonalds the cereal companies had tougher and tougher times selling the public on their cutesy characters, M&Ms simply didn't. Their focus on fun, and funny irreverant evolving humor made them stand out and become even bigger stars that any reasonable person would've thought possible. These guys are up there with the biggest spokespeople in the world, and its great to see how they continue to work in a modern setting.

Next time we'll delve into the M&Ms megastardom of the 2000s. Until then, lets not forget how great the candy actually is. Great candy and some stellar advertizing. Its certainly a winning combination.