Mars bar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Mars Bar is the name of two different candy bars manufactured by Mars Incorporated. One is currently sold throughout the world, but is marketed under a different name in the United States. The other was sold in the U.S. through the early 2000s, but is no longer marketed under that name in the U.S.

History of the brand

The Mars Bar was first created in 1936 and has become an instantly recognisable worldwide brand. However, in the United States, it is known as Milky Way. In the US, the Mars name was used until 2000 for a different bar, now known as Snickers Almond. (The worldwide Milky Way bar is known as 3 Musketeers in the US; there is no longer a "Mars Bar" on the US market.)

In 1984 the Mars Bar became the target of a campaign by the animal rights group the Animal Liberation Front, when said group claimed to have contaminated several bars on sale in supermarkets with bleach in protest against the Mars corporation's sponsorship of dental research and tooth decay which involved tests on monkeys. The incident was later revealed to have been a hoax.

The Mars Bar was implicated in a well-known and oft-repeated (but false) rumour (http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/marsbar.htm) involving Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger and his girlfriend Marianne Faithfull. This incident is also thought to have led to the term Mars Bar party as a reference to a sexual orgy.

International Mars bars

Outside of the United States, the Mars Bar consists of a slab of nougat-like chocolate mousse topped with caramel and coated in chocolate.

Because of its relatively constant food value (approximately 470 kCal per bar [NK: current UK bar says 280Kcal, Nov 2003]) since its invention, it has sometimes been used as a yardstick of inflation and other economic performance indicators.

For many years the Mars Bar was sold in the United Kingdom and many other countries using the well-known slogan "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play".

In 2002 this Mars Bar was altered and repackaged to make it more appealing to women. The nougat filling was whipped more, making it lighter and more like the Milky Way. The bar became slightly smaller and the advertising slogan was changed to "Pleasure you can't measure".[1] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1878064.stm)

The Deep fried Mars Bar, a Scottish invention, also raised the notoriety of the brand when it was widely reported in the early 1990s.

United States Mars bars

In the United States, the Mars bar was a slab of plain (not chocolate) nougat with whole almonds topped with caramel and coated in chocolate. Recently, Mars Incorporated stopped marketing the "Mars Bar" brand in the U.S., going so far as to take down the U.S. Mars Bar website. This bar is now sold in the U.S. as the "Snickers Almond Bar". Elsewhere in the world, the same candy is sold as the "Mars Almond" bar.

The Mars Bar sold outside of the United States is marketed within the U.S. as the "Milky Way" bar, while the bar marketed internationally as "Milky Way" is called the "3 Musketeers" within the United States.