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This article is about the chocolate bar. For other uses, see Snickers (disambiguation).
Snickers
File:Snickers wrapped.jpg
Product typeConfectionery
OwnerMars Incorporated
Introduced1930
Snickers halved

Snickers is a brand name chocolate bar made by Mars, Incorporated. It consists of peanut nougat topped with roasted peanuts and caramel, enrobed in milk chocolate.[1] Snickers has an annual global sales of $2 billion.[2]

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Snickers was formerly sold under the brand name Marathon until 1990.[3] More recently, Snickers Marathon branded energy bars have been sold in some markets.[4]

History

In 1930, the Mars family introduced its second product, Snickers, named after their favorite horse.[5]

Snickers Duo

A replacement for the king size Snickers bar was launched in the UK in 2004 and designed to conform to the September 2004 Food and Drink Federation (FDF) 'Manifesto for Food and Health'. Part of the FDF manifesto was seven pledges of action to encourage the food and drink industry to be more health conscious.[6] Reducing portion size, clearer food labels, and reduction of the levels of fat, sugar and salt were among the FDF pledges. Mars Incorporated pledged to phase out their king-size bars in 2005 and replace them with shareable bars. A Mars spokesman said: "Our king-size bars that come in one portion will be changed so they are shareable or can be consumed on more than one occasion. The name king-size will be phased out."[6]

These were eventually replaced by the 'Duo', a twin bar pack. Though this change to Duos reduced the weight from 3.5 to 3.29 ounces (99 to 93 g), the price remained the same. Splitting it into two bars enables sharing or saving one bar for another time. The packaging even has step-by-step picture instructions of how to open your 'Duo' into two bars, in four easy-to-follow actions.[7] As Mars stated fulfillment of their promise, the Duo format was met with criticism by the National Obesity Forum and National Consumer Council.[8]

Australian recall

In July 2005, tens of thousands of Snickers and Mars Bars were removed from New South Wales store shelves due to a series of threatening letters which resulted in fears the chocolate bars had been poisoned.[9] Mars received letters from an unidentified individual indicating that he planned to distribute poisoned chocolate bars to store shelves.[9] The last letter he sent included a Snickers bar contaminated with a substance which was later identified as rat poison.[9] The letters claimed that there were seven additional chocolate bars which had been tampered with which were for sale to the public.[9] As a precautionary measure, Mars issued a massive recall.[9] Mars said that there had been no demand for money, only complaints directed to an unidentified third party.[9]

Ingredients

Snickers ingredients are: milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, skimmed milk, lactose, milkfat, soy lecithin, artificial flavor), peanuts, corn syrup, sugar, skimmed milk, butter, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, lactose (a milk product), salt, egg whites and artificial flavor.[citation needed]

Products containing Snickers

In the early 2000s, deep fried chocolate bars (including Snickers, and Mars bars) became popular at US state fairs, although they had been a local speciality in fish and chips shops in Scotland and England for some years[10] despite containing an estimated 440 kilocalories (1,800 kJ) per bar.[11]. A normal snickers bar contains 280 kilocalories (1,200 kJ).

In 2006, the UK Food Commission highlighted celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson's "Snickers pie",[12] which contained five Snickers bars among other ingredients, suggesting it was one of the unhealthiest desserts ever; one slice providing "over 1,250 kilocalories (5,200 kJ) from sugar and fat alone", more than half a day's requirement for an average adult. The pie had featured on his BBC Saturday programme some two years earlier and the chef described it as an occasional treat only.[13]

The Cheesecake Factory restaurant bakes and sells its own "Snicker's Bar Chunks and Cheesecake" which consists of its own Original Cheesecake with whole Snickers chunks baked into it. It is topped with peanuts and drizzled with chocolate sauce for the plate presentation.[14]

Variations

A Snickers Fudge split
  • 1970: Snickers Munch
  • 1989: Snickers Ice Cream bar
  • 1996: Snickers Ice Cream cone
  • 2001: Snickers Cruncher bar (rebranded Snickers Munch in some markets, still sold as "Cruncher" in Germany, Romania, Egypt, Poland, Latvia, Austria, Slovakia, Israel, Sweden, The Netherlands and Bosnia)
  • 2002: Snickers Almond bar
  • 2002: Cookies & Snickers
  • 2004: Snickers Marathon energy bars
  • 2006: Snickers Duo
  • 2006: Snickers Xtreme (5 grams (0.18 oz) of protein per serving, lack of nougat)
  • 2007: Snickers Dark (dark chocolate)
  • 2008: Snickers Charged (limited edition, contains caffeine, taurine and B vitamins)[15]
  • 2008: Snickers The Lot (Crispy pieces in a thick cream, caramel, sprinkled with a large amount of nuts, covered in chocolate (Australia and New Zealand))
  • 2009: Snickers Fudge
  • 2010: Snickers Maximus, a limited edition with only caramel & peanut in the centre.
  • 2010: More Nuts, a limited edition featuring 10% higher nut content
  • 2010: Snickers Almond
  • 2011: Snickers Peanut Butter

Others include:

  • Snickers fun size (also called minis)
  • Snickers Flapjack
  • Peanut Butter Squared[16]
  • Snickers Gold
  • Snickers Cake
  • Snickers Ice Cream (Snickers Ice Cream Bars, Snickers Minis Ice Cream Bars, Snickers Ice Cream Cones, Snickers Ice Cream Brownies)
  • Snickers Nut N Butter Crunch
  • Snickers Crazy Peanuts (limited edition, sold in Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia)
  • Snickers Hard (limited edition, sold in Armenia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia)
  • Snickers 220 V (limited edition, contains guarana and L-carnitine, sold in 2007 in Slovakia and Poland)
  • Snickers P'opables
  • Snickers Hazelnut (Australia, Poland, Duo bar)
  • Snickers miniatures in Celebrations
  • Snickers Maple (limited edition, sold in Canada only)
  • Snickers with Green Filling (limited edition, sold as a tie-in with the movie Shrek the Third.
  • Snickers Adventure Bar (limited edition, sold as Indiana Jones promotion, chocolate, nuts, spice, and coconut flavor)
  • Snickers Rockin' Nut Road (limited edition, sold as Rocky Nut Road in Canada, contains almonds, caramel, marshmallow flavored nougat, dark chocolate)
  • Snickers Chocolate Spread

Advertising

Not Going Anywhere For a While?

In the late 1990s, Snickers ran ads which featured someone making a self-inflicted mistake, with the voice-over saying "Not going anywhere for a while? Grab a Snickers!".

One such ad had a player for a fictional American football team showing off his new tattoo of the team's logo on his back to his teammates. He then shows it to his head coach who, after complimenting the tattoo, immediately tells him that he's been traded to Miami. The player then goes to have his old team's logo replaced with the new team's logo.[17]

Some of the ads were done in conjunction with the National Football League, with whom Snickers had a sponsorship deal at the time. One memorable ad featured a member of the grounds crew at Arrowhead Stadium painting the field for an upcoming Kansas City Chiefs game in hot, late-summer weather. After finishing one of the end zones, and visibly exhausted, one of the Chiefs players walks up to him and says the field looks great, "but who are the Chefs?", showing that despite all the hard work the grounds crew accidentally omitted the "i" in Chiefs.[18]

Super Bowl XLI commercial

On February 4, 2007, during Super Bowl XLI, Snickers commercials aired which resulted in complaints by gay and lesbian groups against the maker of the candy bar, Masterfoods USA of Hackettstown, New Jersey, a division of Mars, Incorporated. The commercial showed a pair of auto mechanics accidentally touching lips while sharing a Snickers bar. Realizing that they "accidentally kissed", they, in three of the four versions, "do something manly" (mostly in the form of injury, including tearing out chest hair, striking each other with a very large pipe wrench, and drinking motor oil and windshield washer fluid). In the fourth version, a third mechanic shows up and asks if there is "room for three in this Love Boat".

Complaints were lodged against Masterfoods that the ads were homophobic. Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese is quoted as saying

"This type of jeering from professional sports figures at the sight of two men kissing fuels the kind of anti-gay bullying that haunts countless gay and lesbian school children on playgrounds all across the country."[19]

Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) president Neil Giuliano said "That Snickers, Mars and the NFL would promote and endorse this kind of prejudice is simply inexcusable." Masterfoods has since pulled the ads and the website.[19][20][21]

Mr. T

In 2006, Mr. T starred in a Snickers advert in which he rides up in an army tank and shouts abuse at a football player who appears to be faking an injury. In 2008, a European Snickers commercial in which Mr. T uses a Jeep-mounted Minigun to fire Snickers bars at a speedwalker for being a "disgrace to the man race" was pulled after complaints from a US pressure group that the advertisement was homophobic.[22] The ad originally began airing mid-2007.

NASCAR

In NASCAR racing, Snickers (and the rest of the Mars affiliated brands) sponsor Kyle Busch's #18 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. Prior to that the brand served as a primary sponsor for Ricky Rudd's #88 Robert Yates Racing Ford as well as an associate sponsor for the team's #38 car driven first by Elliott Sadler and then by David Gilliland, and an associate sponsor for the MB2 Motorsports #36 Pontiac driven by Derrike Cope, Ernie Irvan, Ken Schrader, and others. In 1991 Rick Wilson (nascar driver) drove for #8 Stavola Brothers Racing Buick and later Ford, Snickers first appearence as a sponsor.

Celebrity ads

In 2010, Betty White appeared in a Snickers commercial. A group of men are playing a football game when one of the players (who at the start is played by White) gets tackled. A teammate starts yelling at him, claiming he is "playing like Betty White". His girlfriend subsequently runs up to him with a Snickers bar, telling him to eat it. As he does, the Betty White character turns into a young white male, and he exclaims that he is "better". As this player plays well, another player is transformed into Abe Vigoda and is easily tackled. The narrator then proclaims: "You're not you when you're hungry. Snickers satisfies." The commercial was ranked by ADBOWL as the best ad of the year.

A later ad featured Aretha Franklin, complaining about feeling too hot in the back seat of a car. The car is occupied by three other young male occupants; one of them recommends a Snickers bar to the character, noting that every time this individual is hungry, he turns into a "diva". After taking a bite of the Snickers bar, the Franklin character turns into his true form of a young male. After this, a previously young male occupant of the car is replaced by Liza Minnelli, complaining that the former Franklin character is pushing his knees against the back of his seat, implying that this character is in need of a Snickers bar as well.

In late 2010 yet another ad in the series began airing, featuring comedians Richard Lewis and Roseanne Barr, the former of whom transforms into a construction worker after he has a Snickers. His co-worker notes that he "get[s] a little whiny" when he's hungry.

A 2011 rendition of the commercial featured Joe Pesci and Don Rickles appearing as party-goers who begin getting angry because they are hungry.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Snickers Candy Bar". Zeer.com. Retrieved 2010-01-15.
  2. ^ McCarthy, Michael (2005-01-31). "Women sweet on humorous Snickers ads". Usatoday.Com. Retrieved 2009-06-16.
  3. ^ The Marathon candy bar[dead link], Christian Science Monitor, Home forum 18 March 1999
  4. ^ Snickers Marathon - Long Lasting Energy Bar, Snickers Marathon corporate website. Article retrieved 31 January 2007.
  5. ^ http://www.foodreference.com/html/fsnickerscandy.html%7CFoodReference.com - Food Facts & Trivia section
  6. ^ a b Fleming, Nic (article author), Chocolate bars cut down to size[dead link], telegraph.co.uk. Article dated 27 September 2004, retrieved 8 December 2006. Quote is from Michael Jenkins (external affairs director at Masterfoods, as parent company was then known).
  7. ^ h2g2 (editors)The Rise and Fall of 'King-Size' Chocolate Bars (UK), h2g2 at bbc.co.uk. Article retrieved 8 December 2006.
  8. ^ Hickman, Martin, "Chocolate makers eat their words on king-size snacks"[dead link], The Independent (London) (via find articles.com; article no longer online at independent.co.uk). Article written 6 January 2006. Retrieved 8 December 2006.
  9. ^ a b c d e f "Mars, Snickers Recalled Due to Poison Threat", health.dailynewscentral.com. Article dated 1 July 2004.
  10. ^ "UK | Scotland | Deep-fried Mars myth is dispelled". BBC News. 2004-12-17. Retrieved 2009-06-16.
  11. ^ "Fat Festival? Calories in Food at the Fair". Retrieved 2009-08-13.
  12. ^ "Food - Recipes - Snickers pie". BBC. Retrieved 2009-06-16.
  13. ^ "UK | Celebrity recipe 'most unhealthy'". BBC News. 2006-02-05. Retrieved 2009-06-16.
  14. ^ Snickers Bar Chunks and Cheesecake
  15. ^ Snickers Charged. Candyblog, January 25, 2008. Retrieved 18 July 2009.
  16. ^ http://www.slashfood.com/2011/01/03/snickers-peanut-butter-squared-taste-test/
  17. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pHkhgvp_5Y
  18. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmgice3ieZ4&feature=related
  19. ^ a b Snickers Ad of Men Accidentally Kissing Pulled After Complaints From Gay Groups, FOX Business. Article retrieved 17 October 2007.
  20. ^ Super Bowl Controversy, FOX sports. Article retrieved 6 February 2007.
  21. ^ Thulasi Srikanthan (2007-02-07). "entertainment | Snickers bicker feeds ad flap". Toronto: TheStar.com. Retrieved 2009-06-16.
  22. ^ Sweney, Mark (2008-08-04). "Don't give us none of that jibba jabba | Media". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-06-16.
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