The famous chocolate and candy manufacturer Mars Wrigley is suffering painful backlash from conservatives, feminists and the woke community after rebranding the beloved M&M spokescandies last year. With the iconic characters reportedly being replaced by Maya Rudolph, let’s dig in the history of these “spokescandies” and what their purpose to the brand is.
Spokescandies have been around since the ’60s to help promote the chocolate-candy brand
Since M&M came to the industry, the cartoon mascots called the “spokescandies” have been gracing television commercials and various advertisement for promotion of the chocolate brand. They were a huge part of pop culture and were as popular as other mascots like Ronald McDonald (McDonalds). However, last year, Mars Wrigley made some changes to the characters.
The spokescandies now consist of different variants of the chocolate product like the smarty-pants Red, the sexy Green, the jolly Yellow, the anxious Orange, the bossy Brown, the cool Blue, and their newest addition, the confident Purple. Each character now has a detailed backstory and was incorporated with different personalities, which turned out to be “damaging to the brand”.
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Why Maya Rudolph is replacing the spokescandies as the new face of M&M
Due to the changes, people from the woke movement found the new characters a bit offensive, to say the least. Green M&M also received criticism from feminist groups because Wrigley made her look less sexy. The most recent character, Purple M&M also prompted negative response because of it being “very inclusive”. One personality known to be a conservative, Fox News host Tucker Carlson described the modification of the spokescandies as “an example of liberal agenda gone too far” and added that “woke M&Ms are back”. The internet also went wild and some were agreeing with Carlson. Because of this, Mars Wrigley decided to retire the spokescandies indefinitely. The company announced that the mascots are taking a break from the spotlight.
“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,” Mars Wrigley said in a statement on Twitter. “Now we get it — even a candy’s shoes can be polarizing … Therefore, we have decided to take an indefinite pause on the spokescandies.”
This leads us to Wrigley hiring the actress and comedian Maya Rudolph as the new ambassador of the candy.
“I am a lifelong lover of the candy, and I feel like it’s such an honor to be asked to be part of such a legendary brand’s campaign,” Rudolph told NBC’s TODAY during an interview on Monday following the replacement of the spokescandies.
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In addition to that, Mars Wrigley previously announced in December that the M&M spokescandies were slated to return in the SuperBowl in a 30-second ad. However, we may be seeing Rudolph instead of the beloved cartoon mascots.
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