Have you ever named your stuffed dog, your car, or your business after a pet, wanting to memorialize your furry companion? If so, prepare to feel some kinship with the creators of the world’s best-selling candy bar, because Snickers, along with being deliciously sweet and salty (and famously filling), gets its name from a beloved pet as well. As the story goes, Frank and Ethel Mars named the bar after their favorite horse, a frequent winner in the races he was bred for.
The couple had recycled names the other way around a few years earlier when they named their newly-built farm in Tennessee “Milky Way Farm.” This was in the early 1930s after the decade prior’s astonishing success following the debut of the classic Milky Way candy bar. In the United Kingdom, though, the heartwarming name didn’t cut it: Allegedly, manufacturers thought Snickers sounded too close to “knickers,” a common British term for underwear, and so the candy bar became a “Marathon” bar in the British market.
How Snickers became the world’s top-selling candy bar
Clearly, the Mars family has a knack for making good candy — beyond Milky Way, Snickers, and of course, the Mars bar, Frank and Ethel’s son Forrest helped create M&Ms, Three Musketeers, and more. But what was it about the chocolate covered, nougat-filled Snickers bar that cemented its place on top? Seemingly, it can be attributed to one major thing: good advertising.
After the candy’s debut, it quickly became popular due to the notoriety of the Mars family’s candy business. But a series of award-winning ad campaigns raised the (candy) bar. In the 1980s, the company coined their “Snickers satisfies” motto, and have continued to rely on the concept of a filling, hunger-satiating treat ever since. As the official snack of the 1984 Olympic Games, advertisements were often geared toward athletes, and sometimes even majored on the idea of being a “manly” snack. Certain ads showed men eating a bite of Snickers, and then doing over-the-top so-called masculine things like drinking motor oil and tearing out their chest hair, and one series of ads even ended with the slogan, “Snickers: Get some nuts.”
But Snickers hit the advertising jackpot more universally with the debut of their ‘You’re Not You When You’re Hungry’ campaign in 2010, helping to increase global sales of Snickers by more than 15%. It’s been reimagined time and time again, most recently with a travel theme as a play on needing a snack to survive the people doing crazy things on your flight, and time and time again, it’s been successful. And it certainly is satisfying, earning its motto — but if you are an athlete looking for a quick protein fix, there might be better high protein bars to fuel your workout.
