…petitioning

R.I.P.

Losing My Tan

In 1995, a contest was held to elect the newest color of the M & M candy spectrum. It was a momentous and memorable campaign: TV commercials, radio ads, water cooler debate and so on. Blue, pink and purple were the candidates, and much to the delight of chocolate lovers around the world blue won by a landslide. Purple didn’t stand a chance, and pink was easily surpassed despite a strong female voter turnout. Yes it was blue that would be joining the red, green, orange, yellow, brown and light brown M & M crew.

And it was a lovely blue. I remember heading to the corner store after the polls closed and opening my first bag. At first glance it was glorious. A new, bright and exciting addition to a true candy classic. But something was different. Something tasted different. And upon closer inspection, it was clear: Light brown was gone.

That’s right. While you were congesting the phone lines voting and campaigning for the future of the candy, you were not voting for an addition, you were voting for a replacement. The Mars corporation tricked you, and light brown (tan) was gone…substituted by the new blue, to ultimately be forgotten in one of the biggest injustices in candy since the shady decline in popularity of the Zero bar in the 1970’s.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something different about the light brown M & M. Something about the look, its contrast with the rest of the crew. The taste. The subtle difference in the sweetness and undertones of the tan dye. Light brown was my favorite. You can buy generics online, but it isn’t the same. Those who may argue there is no need for two browns in the bag have been misled by the company, in order to avoid exposure to the truth and a PR nightmare for Mars.

I voted for blue. I did not vote for the fate of the tan. The extent of this conspiracy has yet to be fully realized and the fight for justice is not over.

Please visit this petition to do your part in the reinstatement of light brown. And spread the word….Knowledge is power. Keep the dream alive.

–Eric Mills
Candy Philanthropist & Children’s Author Extraordinaire, Robot’s Don’t Wear Sunscreen

When Eric isn’t busy saving tan M&M’s, he’s educating the public on how to save their robots.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s