According to the Associated Press (January 22, 2022), “Candy maker Mars is giving a makeover to its six M&M’s characters as a way to promote inclusivity.”
Finally, right?
They plan to add more “nuanced” personalities to their little red, green, orange, yellow, brown and blue candies which they call “lentils,” as a way, one can suppose, of fooling the ignorant into thinking they’re actually eating legumes. It is only a conjecture.
Mars plans to “butch up” two of their candies to make them less feminine. The green girly-girls are switching footwear from high-heeled boots and stilettos, to sneakers and flats. Ah, don’t we feel more inclusive now?
The Mars website states that they’re also enlarging the ampersand (&) symbol, as a way of showing “how the brand aims to bring people together.” If that’s what it takes …
In a show of democratic (small “d”) unity, their blue character will now be modeled after Senator Ted Cruz, that beacon of inclusivity. With a touch of whimsy, his character will flash a pink beard and matching pink tights—to make him more appealing and less of a douche.
To balance things out, Mars will feature a yellow President Joe Biden, stooped over and using a cane, but still able to dance in the TV commercial, thus pandering to the oldsters and the disabled; a red Majorie Taylor Green in full nurse regalia, complete with an old-fashioned nurse’s hat, to demonstrate that anyone can change if she wants to; and an orange Kyrsten Sinema attached to the brown hip of Joe Manchin, to demonstrate what togetherness truly looks like.
“We think there will be a little bit of something for everyone,” says Patty James, their Director of Marketing.
Rosie Sorenson is a humor writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can contact her at: RosieSorenson29@yahoo.com
From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2022
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