I remember these vaguely from my childhood. And suddenly, they were gone. Any idea why the Mars candy company decided to discontinue this color? And when exactly did they do it?
Yeah, they took out tan in 1995 when they added blue.
Shit, are you serious?! I guess it has been a while since I bought M&M’s. TO THE QUICK-E-MART FOR CONFIRMATION!!!
I had a friend in college who did up the “Anti-blue” web page, proposing the theory that Blue killed Tan (with corroborating evidence provided from an interview with Yellow). Sadly, it seems to have disappeared from the internet, even the Internet Archive wayback machine only has the first page, and it’s missing the picture of Blue standing over Tan’s bloody, stabbed body done up in MS Paint.
I mean, how can you not like a conspiracy theory that involves anthropomorphic pieces of candy killing each other off?
I was kind of irked when M&Ms killed off tan for blue. I mean, first they pulled my favorite color, red, for years. Then they get red back (albeit kind of half-assed while they worked on the formula or something) but scarcely do they get that perfected when they drop my second favorite color. There ain’t no justice.
Blue M&Ms – feh!
DD
I posted elsewhere that I always hated the blue ones because I fondly remember the ads asking “Who’s got room for the blues?”.
Oh, they’ve been doing all kinds of short-term weird stuff with the colors in recent years. For a while they added pink, aqua, and purple, and there was supposed to be a vote for which one was the most popular. (Since they didn’t add the winner permanently to the mix, I don’t know what the point of that exercise was.) Then last year they added psychedelically speckled ones, which had a coarse texture–they seemed to be made with ground-up mixed colored shells. Recently they’ve been making bags of all black and white ones, apparently tied in with a contest. Also, if you go to the Mars Candy web site, you can special order various oddball M&M colors in bulk.
Go to the M&M store in Las Vegas and you can get them in just about any color you desire, including tan.
I prefer Smarties
We had a Canadian student working in our office who said that M&M’s sold in Canada were referred to as Smarties. So, were you referring to Yank Smarties or Canuck Smarties?
Canadian Smarties are not just rebadged American M&Ms. They are a different coated chocolate candy, and taste better to me. American Smarties are those chalky sour pastel thingies, best left unmentioned.
Can’t say I’ve tried Canadian Smarties, but I must respectfully disagree on your opinion of American Smarties. Anyone else who eats them notice the new flavors as of late? (Sorry to hijack your thread, John.)
Back when I was a yout I had some of the “kanuk” smarties. One of the grocery stores near me sold them in the bulk section. They seemed to have a much firmer texture and had a more “sweet candy” taste from the shell as opposed to the chocolate taste.
We affectionatly referred to them as Ghetto M&Ms
Mmmmmm…tan…
UK Smarties are the same idea m&ms but different chocolate and they’re slightly flatter and wider.
I think you’re thinking of necco wafers, which are about the size of a quarter, and otherwise as you described. In comparison American Smarties are thicker, and about 1 cm in diameter, and actually taste good.
My wife likes necco wafers :rolleyes: (we were already married when I found out).
Anyone else remember “Hersheyettes”? Pretty much shaped like M&Ms, but they had a heavier candy coat.
Also, wasn’t there an M&M like candy called Royals, or something, which were chocolate mint?