Who Invented the Snickers Candy Bar

An article by Sam Reese    Comments Off

The Snickers Candy Bar is one of the biggest selling chocolate treats globally, earning Mars, Inc over $2 billion every year in revenue. The candy bar comes in so many flavors and styles now that the brand is better known now for it’s name than for the recipe that makes it unique.

In the 1890s in Minnesota a young boy suffering from polio was introduced to the art of making confectionary by his mother who feared he was bored but also couldn’t risk his fragile state and let him out to play. That little boy was Frank C Mars, the founder of the Mars food empire that is known throughout the world for the Snickers, Mars, M&Ms, and Skittles candy brands.

Frank took to making candy like a duck to water and at the age of 19 was selling molasses chips, and a few years later had started his own factory making chocolate candy with his wife Ethel. Unfortunately, Frank and Ethel’s first candy business had to close, forcing Frank to rethink the candy he was making. Some would say this was a good thing since his previous products were fairly run of the mill and essentially the same as every other candy maker.

In 1930, after three years product development, Frank Mars finally invented the Snickers candy bar which was filled with a peanut nougat base topped with whole peanuts and surrounded in Hershey milk chocolate. The Mars company had been successful with another product in the 1920s, the Milky Way candy bar, and Frank wanted a name for his new candy bar that would capture his customer’s imagination in the same way.

Around that time Ethel’s favorite horse passed away on their farm in Tennessee that they had named after the Milky Way candy bar. Ethel’s horse had been named Snickers, and after a few days of agonizing over the new candy bar name, none of which seemed suitable, Frank suddenly decided that if the Tennessee farm could be named after a chocolate candy bar, then why couldn’t a candy bar be named after a horse.

Snickers had been a race horse, and by all accounts a fine animal too, so Mars decided to advertise the Snickers candy bar as a sport performance candy bar. The high calorie count of the candy meant that a single serve could give a quick boost of energy to any athlete, and all Snickers publicity has since featured athletes or people engaged in physical activity.