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Last week, a special edition of M&M’s came out, which made the panties of all conservative media get in a twist.

How to turn a candy into a national drama: woke, lesbian, non-binary, trans and androgynous are all qualifications that were reviewed. Mind you, it’s about candy.

You’d think American conservatives would spend the New Year reflecting on the choices that led them to the absolute clown show surrounding Kevin McCarthy. Or how their own attempted coup in Brazil led to it last weekend….

But no!

What’s on their minds at the moment is the “woke, lesbian” M&M’s that Mars Wrigley recently presented. They’re regular M&Ms, but with green, brown, and the newborn purple. The latter was oversized to celebrate “body positivity” (which is rather ironic for a sugary candy brand). Well, there was also a peanut in it, that’s why.

They are on the packaging, turned upside down so that the M – with some goodwill – becomes a W for Women. M&M’s says the candies are being made for a limited time, and are intended to honor “women around the world who are upending their definition of success and happiness while challenging the status quo.” And who better to help them with that mission than “our own powerhouses Green, Brown and Purple?” These three colors were previously presented as feminine in the brand’s storytelling.

M&M’s donates $1 for every purchase up to $500,000 to She Is The Music and We Are Moving the Needle, two nonprofits that support women in the recording industry, as well as $300,000 to other nonprofits.

More diversity

Mars has been criticized in the past for making the green M&M too sexy, fueling a rivalry or possible flirtation with the brown M&M. When they announced last year that the M&M’s would become “more nuanced personalities to underscore the importance of self-expression and the power of community through storytelling,” the internet erupted in laughter.

For example, the green M&M would now wear sneakers “to reflect her effortless confidence” and the brown M&M would wear comfortable low heels instead of her previous high heels to show that she is sensible. The red M&M would be less bossy, and the orange M&M would “acknowledge its fear”. One expert said: “Finally an M&M with mental problems.”

They also changed the skin color on the characters’ arms and legs to match their candy shells instead of the white skin color in their previous design. Today.com noted, “The design changes you barely see are kind of like going to one of those ‘Can you tell the difference?’ “looking at pictures.” In an effort to reflect all the different shapes and sizes, Mars said they would also refresh the look of the real candies.

Each M&M has been given a Q&A to explain their new characters on the candy website, in which the brown M&M claims to be ‘not bossy, just the boss’.

Fox’s famed (and certified as such) vocational hater Tucker Carlson was shocked when M&M’s announced that Green and Brown would wear more sensible footwear, saying the “less sexy” footwear made the candy “very unappealing and totally androgynous.” Q.e.d.

Purple!

At the end of 2022, M&M’s introduced their first new character in ten years: Purple. The character’s “charm and quirky nature” stems from her “sharp self-awareness, authenticity and confidence,” Mars said. A whole battery of Creative Directors and Senior Copywriters has come into play, you can see that.

Purple was presented in a rather clumsy video, with the ambition of a musical. The song features four real-life performers: saxophonist Grace Kelly, dancers and choreographers Devin Santiago and Colo Cag, and opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo. The three male characters are quite flamboyant.

The video was placed on as many platforms as possible. For every stream, M&M’s donated $1 (up to $500,000) to Sing for Hope, a global nonprofit that uses the power of art to create a better world.

You may remember how seven years ago, Green and Brown held hands on a bench at the beach and nearly caused a riot at the Mars Wrigley Candy Factory. This was days after the Supreme Court ruling legalizing “gay marriage”- and the image went viral. Afterwards, Mars tuned down that perception by saying that the two were just “good friends”. Uh-huh.

Well, adding Purple didn’t do anything to lessen the hysteria.

About those women

For Fox News, the current campaign was reason enough to call a panel of four “experts’ to discuss M&M’s sponsored woke agenda. Where “discuss” should of course be interpreted in a more restrictive way.

The segment opens – very nuanced – with the question: “Will M&M’s still melt in your hand if they are trans?” One expert then calls Green “a seductress”, scoffing at the earlier decision to replace her go-go boots with sneakers. He then frowns in mock disgust and asks, “What message does it send to children when you devour these non-binary chocolates?” (whereby, oh horror, the glazed cocoas are also sometimes seen as bonbons. Belgium: please don’t read for a while)

Let’s be clear: M&M’s has not made trans or non-binary mascots. I’d find it “interesting” if they did, but these are the same girl mascots as always, only now with the purple one on the side. Can you imagine feeling emasculated and excluded, to the point of a nationwide televised rage spiral, because there are no boy mascots in a limited edition bag of chocolate candy?

Snake and bitch?

But wait! It gets worse. The female expert on the Fox panel calls Green “a snake” and “a sneaky, treacherous little bitch” as well as “an opportunistic little bitch” (mind you, this is on national TV) and suggests that you “have to flee from women like the Green M&M ”.

“This is the kind of thing that makes China say, ‘Oh right, keep focusing on that, keep focusing on giving people their own colored M&M’s, while we’re taking over all the mineral deposits around the world,'” said Fox co-host Martha MacCallum. An chyron also noted that Green and Brown held hands in an ad – so that photo from 2015 was dragged in as “offensive evidence.” And now we also have to worry about China, because of some candy…?

Meanwhile, in the UK…

The British tabloid Daily Mail also had its say. The headline above the article read “M&M’s launches woke female-only special edition bag of candy featuring ‘lesbian’ green and brown chocolates, as well as new plus size purple sweet who represents body positivity”

They have “discovered” 11 Green & Brown fanfictions on the internet and are convinced that M&M’s are part of the “LGBTQ grooming* problem”. Apparently, this is part of the grand plan of “Wokedom”? Just wait until they find out that Skittles’ catchphrase is “Taste the rainbow.”

Conclusion

You wonder why one should care so much about a well-intentioned, well-motivated and well-executed campaign for a candy. It’s not about supporting terrorism or other subversive activities, nor are they concerned about the risk of obesity: no, they will and must find a ‘woke agenda’ to spew their bile. Compliments for M&M’s, a dozen demerits for the haters.

* LGBT Grooming is described by Wikipedia as: “the systematic use of LGBT education and campaigning for LGBT rights as a method of ‘child grooming’ (befriending and developing an emotional connection with a minor and sometimes with the child’s family). child, to reduce the child’s inhibitions for the purpose of sexual abuse).” Wiki adds that this has been cropping up “since the early 2020s, among conservatives and members of the far right, primarily in the United States. These allegations and conspiracy theories have been characterized by experts as unfounded, homophobic and transphobic, and as examples of moral panic.”

Alfred Verhoeven is a marketer and is in the final phase of his PhD research Marketing the Rainbow. He previously wrote for ILOVEGAY about Marketing the Rainbow: the process and all that came before it, Sport and (un)sportmanship,  Why you need a supplier diversity program, BeNeLux LGBTIQ+ Business Chamber (BGLBC), From B2C and B2B to B2G and G2G (oh, and G2C), The Men from Atlantis, The other kind of cruising, Booking.com, Home Deco, Haters and trolls: the ‘letter to the editor’ of the 21st century, 5 Bizarre LGBT Videos, TRANSparency, Transgender persons as a target group, Matchmaking, 5 videos that went viral, From Representation To Respect, Cultural sensitivities and social involvement in marketing, 4 reasons to practice diversity and The Rules of Market Segmentation.