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Film 03Rivals

Hershey vs Mars

Two candy empires, one aisle. And the chocolate inside the very first M&M's came from the other side.

Runtime
11:01
Chapters
8
Spans
1857 – today
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named after a horse? legend.

closed. closed. closed.00:38

The odd beginning

It started with

a man who was terrible at business.

Almost every chocolate in a trick-or-treat bag comes from one of two families: Hershey or Mars. But in 1941, when M&M's were born, the second M stood for Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey's president. And the chocolate inside them came from Hershey.

A farm boy who failed again and again, a deposit on the Titanic, a father who paid his son to leave the country, a chocolate bar designed to taste bad, and a company a school still controls: the story of the chocolate war.

Frames from the film

Three candy shop doors in a row, each with a "closed" sign.
Three candy shop doors in a row, each with a "closed" sign.
A red candy shell cracked open to show the chocolate inside.
A red candy shell cracked open to show the chocolate inside.
A foreign-rights agreement on a green desk.
A foreign-rights agreement on a green desk.
A chocolate pie with one slice cut away, tagged "reportedly".
A chocolate pie with one slice cut away, tagged "reportedly".

Chapters

  1. 00Two Piles of Candy0:00
  2. 01The Failure1:05
  3. 02The Outsider2:33
  4. 03The Exile3:42
  5. 04The Gift4:51
  6. 05Enemy Chocolate6:49
  7. 06The Candy War8:08
  8. 07The Verdict10:08

A note on accuracy

Some famous parts of this story are legends, and the film says so: that Forrest Mars got the idea for M&M's from soldiers in the Spanish Civil War, that the Milky Way came from a malted milkshake, and that Snickers was named after a family horse. Milton Hershey's "caramels are a fad" line is reported by the company, not recorded at the time. The Mars family fortune is a Forbes estimate (Mars is private). Dialogue is dramatised.

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Sources

18 cited
  1. 01Hershey Community Archives: Milton S. Hershey (1857–1945)
  2. 02Hershey Community Archives: selling the Lancaster Caramel Company
  3. 03Hershey Community Archives: the gift
  4. 04Hershey Community Archives: history of Milton Hershey School
  5. 05Hershey Community Archives: the Great Building Campaign
  6. 06Hershey Community Archives: William F. R. Murrie
  7. 07Smithsonian NMAH
  8. 08Fortune (1967): the sweet, secret world of Forrest Mars
  9. 09Fortune (1985): bar wars
  10. 10Mars, Incorporated: history
  11. 11History.com: the wartime origins of the M&M
  12. 12Lemelson-MIT: Forrest Mars
  13. 13HistoryNet: the U.S. Army chocolate bar
  14. 14NBC News
  15. 15Hershey proxy statement (2026)
  16. 16BNN Bloomberg (2024)
  17. 17Yahoo Finance (2026)
  18. 18Joël Glenn Brenner, The Emperors of Chocolate (Random House, 1999)

Hershey's, Kisses, Reese's, M&M's, Snickers, Milky Way and Mars are trademarks of their owners (The Hershey Company; Mars, Incorporated; and others), shown for identification. Not affiliated with or endorsed by any of these companies.

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