Blessed with a sweet tooth since childhood, I have a fondness for Snickers candy bars. A Snickers bar was always the ideal treat to pack along on various adventures. I remember bike rides with my mom and brother as a boy and our lunch breaks under the pines on dusty Garboni Road, always a Snickers bar for dessert. And trick-or-treating on Halloween. A Snickers bar was the most prized of your haul.
My affection for Snickers bars has continued into adulthood. They have always struck me as the ideal survival food when afield – a meal and dessert all in one.
A number of years ago, on a memorable deer hunting expedition with my rowdy friend Lowell, I was comforted by this fact. We were scouting for mule deer near Baggs, Wyoming. Lowell’s cousin Elvis and his friend Rick were our guides, and we were navigating the hills in a 1960s era International Scout. After admiring the rust over baby blue paint job of our hunting vehicle, and anticipating the possibility of auto repairs afield, I decided to be prepared. Before leaving Elvis’ trailer that morning, I layered up with warm clothes – long underwear, thick flannel shirt, sweatshirt, down parka, beanie, and wool cargo pants with plenty of room in the side pockets. In these pockets I packed an ample supply of Snickers bars. My friends were quick to launch ridicule upon me, not only for my excessive clothing (in an effort to project an air of manliness, they wore only light denim jackets), but also for the fact that I was carrying several days’ worth of calories in my pants pockets. They found this excessive.
That evening, with the sun setting low as we stood in the snow with a disabled Scout and faced the prospect of a freezing night in the icy sagebrush, those Snickers bars tasted pretty good. We did finally get the old Scout rolling again and limped the 30 miles back to town at 10 miles per hour. But we weren’t hungry.
With fond memories, I was thinking about Snickers bars this week and learned there is a bit of a story here. It involves a good horse.
The Snickers story begins with Frank Mars. He was born in Minnesota in 1883. As a sickly child, instead of roaming the great outdoors with the other boys, he often stayed home with his mother making candy in their kitchen. When he grew up, he wanted to make candy. After he married his wife Ethel, they began making and selling candy out of their home.
In 1920 they moved from Tacoma, Washington to Frank’s home state of Minnesota (those colder northern states are chocolate friendly – less melting I’m told). Here they founded the Mar-O-Bar Company, today known as Mars, Inc. The fledgling candy company met success with the creation of the Milky Way bar in the 1920s. This paved the way for the Snickers bar. With their Milky Way profits, Frank and Ethel expanded their business.
As a reward for their success, they purchased a horse farm in Tennessee and began breeding racehorses. At the same time Frank was experimenting with various ingredients and creating new candies. In time he perfected the peanut nougat- based chocolate bar. As the story goes, not long before the launch of their new candy bar, Ethel’s favorite racehorse died. To honor his wife and her horse, Frank decided to name the new candy bar Snickers. It was an immediate success and became extremely popular.
Along with their talent for candy creation, Frank and Ethel exhibited a knack for marketing. After WWII, with the advent of television, the Mars Company began serious advertising. They sponsored the Howdy Doody TV show from 1949-1952, capturing the allegiance of millions of young candy-loving Baby-Boomers.
Years later, Mars paid $5 million to become the official snack of the 1984 Olympics. This move brought international popularity for the Snickers bar.
Continued advertising has been extremely successful, with Snickers commercials becoming known as some of the most creative on TV (Betty White playing tackle football before eating a Snickers is my favorite).
If you’re hungry, now might be a good time for a Snickers bar.
© 2023 Jody Dyer