Mars Bar
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The Mars Bar is a chocolate bar manufactured by Mars Incorporated. It was first manufactured in Slough in the United Kingdom in 1932 as a sweeter version of the Milky Way bar which Mars produced in the USA.[1] It is made of chocolate-malt nougat topped with a layer of caramel and covered with milk chocolate, and is still marketed outside the USA.
A completely different chocolate bar named Mars Bar was sold in the USA until 2000. It contained plain nougat, almonds, caramel, and milk chocolate.
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[edit] Mars Bar Variations around the World
Candy bars sold as the Mars Bar vary in different regions of the world. The American formulation of the Mars Bar is no longer sold in the USA nor elsewhere.
[edit] UK Mars Bar
In 2002, the UK Mars Bar was reformulated and repackaged.[2] The nougat was made lighter, the chocolate on top became noticeably thinner, and the overall weight of the bar was reduced slightly. This brought it closer in style to the European Milky Way and the North American 3 Musketeers bars. The packaging was also redesigned with a less-bold and more cursive logo. The famous slogan "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play" was also replaced with "Pleasure you can't measure". The reasoning behind this was to increase its "treat" appeal to the female market; previously, Mars had been associated with a somewhat masculine and sporty image.
[edit] Limited editions
In the UK and some areas of Europe, limited edition Mars Bars have occasionally gone on sale. One of these has been the Mars Midnight, which has the same filling as a normal Mars Bar but is covered in dark chocolate. Several of these limited lines were normally available products in the Australian market. In Canada (Mars Dark) it has been added to the product line on a permanent basis. Some of the Limited Edition Mars Bars have been:
- Mars Almond
- Mars Dark and Light
- Mars Midnight Ice Cream
- Mars Midnight
- Mars Gold
- Mars Mini Eggs (Available around Easter)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Mars Bar
- Mars Triple Chocolate (Australia)
- Mars Lava (Australia)
- Mars Miniatures (5 fun size bars in the same packet)
- Mars XXX-(Australia) sold in gold wrapping.
- Mars Chill (Australia)- wrapper had 'Mars' written in white, turned to blue when cold
[edit] Spinoff products
Other products have also been released using the Mars branding.
- Mars Delight
- Mars Drink
- Mars Ice Cream
- Mars Cake Bar
[edit] Custom packaging
The Original Mars bar in "Believe" packaging was sold in the UK from 18 April 2006 until the end of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in July. "Believe" took prominence on the packaging ("Original Mars" appeared in smaller print) to indicate support for the England national football team. Advertising in other nations of the UK was tailored to reflect their own teams, although in Scotland the "Believe" packaging was still used.
[edit] Advertising slogans
[edit] Former
- "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play" - United Kingdom, Australia (pre-2002)
- "Feels good to be back! " - Australia (2005)
[edit] Current
- "Recharge on Mars" - Canada
- "Another way to make your day" - UK
- "Out of this world!" - Australia, UK
- "MARS® LEGEND™" - Australia
- "Earth - what you'd eat if you lived on mars" - New Zealand and Australia"
- "Mars, pleasure you can't measure" - Europe
- "Mars, geeft je energie" (Gives you energy) - The Netherlands
- "Nimm Mars, gib Gas" (Take Mars, step on the gas) - Germany
[edit] Deep-fried Mars Bar
This is a British Mars bar which has been coated with batter and deep-fried in oil or beef fat. It is a Scottish invention (first reports of battered Mars bars being sold date back to 1995[3]) and is available from fish-and-chip shops in Scotland and throughout England. They are also available across Australia and New Zealand from small fish and chip shops.
[edit] Australian recall
In July 2005, Mars Bars, along with the Snickers bar, were recalled due to an anonymous extortion attempt against Star City Casino in Sydney. The extortionist claimed to have poisoned seven Mars and Snickers bars at random in New South Wales. As a result Masterfoods Corporation, the company that manufactures Mars Bars in Australia, recalled the entire Mars and Snickers product from store shelves in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Nineteen people were possibly affected, with two being admitted to hospital. In the later half of August 2005, the threat to the public was deemed negligible and the bars returned to shelves, accompanied by a state-wide advertising campaign incorporating the slogan "Feels good to be back".
[edit] Trivia
- From Summer 2006, all Mars Bars produced in Canada are peanut-free. Mars is one of the few chocolate bars in North America for which no size of the product has any trace of peanuts.
- Rock group The Undertones released a song called "Mars Bars", which has several references to the product. The then-current UK (and US) advertising slogan "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play" is incorporated into the song's lyrics.
- When an advertising agency coined the above phrase, one of its employees was Murray Walker, later famous as a motor racing commentator. The phrase is often erroneously attributed to him, although in reality it was merely his decision to use it.
- During the BBC Coverage of the 1992 British General Election, the camera came to David Dimbleby who said with his mouth full - "I was just eating a Mars bar"
- Jamie Farr of the television show M*A*S*H endorsed the US Mars bar in commercials during the 1980s.
- During Operation Red Dawn (December 2003), in which the U.S. military captured former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, they apparently found a stash of Mars Bars near the former president.
- Legend says that when London police raided a Rolling Stones party in the 1960s, they found lead singer Mick Jagger eating a Mars Bar from between girlfriend Marianne Faithfull's legs. Faithfull has repeatedly denied that it ever happened. She later appeared on a Mars' advertisement with the slogan Pleasure You Can't Measure.
- In the book Total Recall, Hauser's briefcase was full of Mars Bars. He fed them to rats to mislead the villains.
- The terrorists in Die Hard (1988) are shown throughout the movie eating Mars Bars and drinking Coca-Cola, perhaps a sign of product placement.
- On a rural road in Maine in 1999, horror writer Stephen King was struck and seriously injured by a van whose driver told investigators that he had been on his way to get "some of those Marses[sic] Bars they have up to the store." King later wrote that on hearing this, it occurred to him that he had "nearly been killed by a character out of one of [his] own novels."
- A 2006 Mars Bar advert in the UK features the song Blue Monday by New Order.
- It has been observed on several occasions that the price of a Mars Bar correlates fairly accurately with the change in value of the British Pound since World War II.[4]
- The majority of Mars Bars in the UK are made in Slough.
- During the Falklands War, there was much concern amongst British soldiers in the islands as the task force's entire supply of Mars Bars was placed on one ship, which was sunk.
[edit] Footnotes and references
- ^ Mars - the chocolate planet, Slough History Online. Article retrieved 2007-02-21.
- ^ Guardian Unlimited, "Mars bar", 18 March 2002, accessed July 23, 2006.
- ^ Original source, Scottish Daily Record via:- "Deep-fried Mars myth is dispelled", BBC News online. BBC article dated 2004-12-17, retrieved 2006-11-15.
- ^ Mars Bar], Nico Colchester Fellowship, FT.com (Financial Times website). Article dated 2001-01-26, retrieved 2007-01-13.
[edit] External Links
- The Visible Mars Bar project, which shows the difference between US and UK mars bars.
- Site with cross-sections of both the original U.S. and Canadian Mars bars
- Slough History Online
| Confectionery products of Mars, Incorporated |
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