I Can’t Shut Up About: Deep dives into my online obsession of the week.
America, let’s talk. On Monday, M&M’s announced that it would be discontinuing its spokescandies, presumably melting them each down into an anthropomorphic chocolate goo. “America, let’s talk,” the tweet from the official M&M’s account began, saying the company would be taking “an indefinite pause” from its candy characters. Please dump out a tube of M&M Minis in their honor.
“In the last year, we’ve made some changes to our beloved spokescandies,” the announcement stated. “We weren’t sure if anyone would even notice. And we definitely didn’t think it would break the internet.” (It didn’t.)
As you may recall, M&M’s made a “polarizing” decision early last year when they de-bimbofied the green M&M. In addition to removing all of the gendered titles of the M&M’s — “Ms.” is objectively too sexy — they gave Green a sensible white sneaker in place of her original go-go boots in order to reflect her “effortless confidence.” (And maybe to distract from this decade-old commercial in which the green M&M is moaning atop various silks.) There was upset, outrage, and disgust — mostly from Tucker Carlson at Fox News.
“M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous. Until the moment you wouldn’t want to have a drink with any one of them,” Carlson said, advocating for what all real Americans want — to grab a beer with one of those talking candies. The sarcastic chyrons accompanying the segment said things like “Candy in sexy shoes is highly offensive” and “Progress at last: plain, frumpy M&M candy.” (He talked shit on the orange M&M, which parent company Mars had dubbed the anxious M&M. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read, “Miserable, non-binary candy is all we deserve.”) Carlson concluded, “When you’re totally turned off, we’ve achieved equity.” This man definitely wants to fuck the fictional chocolates.
Earlier this month, Carlson did a segment on the limited-edition M&M’s packaging for International Women’s Day, which solely featured the femme M&M’s — Green, Brown, and the newly introduced Purple. “The green M&M got her boots back but apparently is now a lesbian, maybe, and there is also a plus-sized, obese purple M&M,” Carlson said. “So we’re going to cover that, of course. Because that’s what we do.” Of course, Carlson may have been bloviating for the sake of manufactured outrage. Because that’s what he does.
Now he seems to be taking some credit for the recent decision to discontinue the spokescandies. On the same day as the Mars announcement, Carlson gave a recap of supposed “wokeness” of M&M’s, noting that the discontinuation of the spokescandies came before his show could complete a “deeper investigation” into the recent change. I’m assuming this would have involved dumping out a package of M&M’s and seeing if Carlson could still get hard. “When you’re intentionally repulsive, it’s clear you’ve got the right politics,” Carlson said about the now-sexless M&M’s before yelling about how some people don’t understand that “Candy isn’t political!” As of 2020, this man was reportedly making $10 million per year.
As for the future of M&M’s marketing, Maya Rudolph will be replacing the spokescandies as primary spokesperson. (Wooow, one woman being made to do the work of seven M&M’s? This is progress??) However, this is all a distraction from the real issue at hand: regular M&M’s are a bad candy. We must stop giving these glorified chocolate chips a platform and focus on more important issues — like whatever happened to Butterfinger BB’s!