[calm instrumental music]
- [Narrator] For generations, most of the world's
top chocolate makers have been based in Europe.
[speaking Swiss German language]
- [Narrator] But one young American is so desperate
to make it in the confection industry
that he'll do whatever it takes to succeed.
[suspenseful music]
[speaking Swiss German language]
- Hey, Beck.
- Yeah?
- [Narrator] Even if it means
[suspenseful music]
committing international espionage.
- I don't recognize any of the companies on your CV.
- Oh, they were local candy makers, small operations.
No one you would've heard of.
[soft tense music]
- Do you know anything about making chocolate?
- I've worked in production, manufacturing, distribution.
- [Narrator] And most notably, at the Mars Company
because this is Forrest Mars
and one day he'll take the candy industry by storm.
- Look at these.
- He was going up against
some very well- established names.
- Hershey's was America's number one candy maker.
- [Narrator] Creating his own empire.
- Mars and Murrie.
- It has a ring to it.
- [Narrator] Responsible for half of the top 10
bestselling confections on the planet.
- They've got M&M's, they've got 3 Musketeers,
they've got Milky Way.
- [Narrator] But along the way,
he'll face multiple setbacks.
- Chocolate and pineapple tastes
about as good as you would imagine.
- [Narrator] Redefine the corporate landscape.
- Every salesman in this room is worthless.
- He tears out the executive washrooms
and gets rid of the corporate helicopter.
- [Narrator] And create one of the most iconic
slogans of all time.
- Melts in your mouth.
- [Announcer] Not in your hand.
- More value, less mess?
What's not to like?
- It's genius marketing.
- [Narrator] As he builds the first
multi-sector food conglomerate.
- Forrest had turned his pet food company
into the largest in the world.
- [Narrator] And a family dynasty worth $94 billion.
- He built the leanest, meanest candy company in the world.
[tense uptempo music]
[dark music]
- [Narrator] In 1923,
Forrest Mars is hustling to scrape out a living.
- And look how she's looking at you boys.
[men chuckling]
- [Narrator] To make ends meet,
the 19-year-old college dropout
has been illegally plastering billboard ads around Chicago.
- I mean, look at that gaze, man.
- [Narrator] But it's not his life's ambition.
[police officer whistles]
- Go, go, go, go.
[tense dramatic music]
- He wanted to be making money hand over fist
and he would do anything to make that happen.
[tense dramatic music]
- Forrest Mars was intense.
[tense dramatic music]
- Forrest Mars didn't intend to get arrested
and the stunt actually was really
just this outrageous ploy to make money.
But now he's in jail
and he needed somebody to bail him out.
[tense dramatic music fades]
- [Narrator] Forrest calls someone
he hasn't seen in over a decade.
His father, Frank Mars.
- Frank Mars spent most of his life
trying to become a candy salesman in Minnesota.
So, Forrest grew up without his father,
mostly with his mother and grandparents
in different parts of the US and Canada.
- So a young Forrest Mars grew up estranged from his dad,
resenting his dad,
and forever either wanting his approval or a connection.
[slow tense music]
- You're welcome.
[slow tense music]
[scoffs]
- [Narrator] For the past several years,
Frank Mars has been trying to crack into
the American chocolate bar industry,
which after being non-existent,
has skyrocketed over the last two decades
and is now dominated by one name.
- Hershey's had a vision
that chocolate could be for everyone every day,
not just reserved for the wealthy or kings and queens
as it was when it first came onto the scene.
- [Narrator] By the early 1920s,
the Hershey company has no clear rival
as annual sales hit the modern equivalent
of over $300 million.
Now, Frank Mars hopes to get even a small piece
of that revenue.
- Frank has had mild success with a bar called the Mar-O-Bar
named after his last name.
Not big success,
but Forrest is fascinated with Frank's business
and he wants a piece of that action.
[tense music]
- One chocolate malted.
- Two.
- That's a pretty nice shirt.
- Yeah, things are good.
Still hustling.
- How come I haven't seen your stuff in Chicago?
- Different markets, different tastes.
Candy bars can sell out in one region
and sit on the shelves in the next,
it's hit or miss.
[glass clinking]
[soft upbeat jazz music]
- Why don't you just make a chocolate bar
that tastes like a malted shake?
[Frank scoffs]
No, I'm serious.
People drink these across the country.
- At the time, there were a lot of chocolate bars
being manufactured,
but the idea of the malt flavor
and the feel, the taste of the milkshake in a candy bar
was really something very different.
That got Frank Mars thinking
and Forrest was eager to join his father.
- I like this one.
- No, it doesn't taste like anything.
- [Narrator] Forrest convinces his estranged father
to team up and create a milkshake-flavored candy bar
that could be sold across the country.
- Yeah, I don't like that texture.
- Frank Mars was trying desperately
to compete in a market
that was increasingly dominated by Milton Hershey
and all of his products.
[tense music]
- Forrest wants to basically help run the company
with his father.
He wants to be partners.
- No, I don't like the texture.
- But he was a big personality, highly ambitious.
He wanted to do things his way
and just like Frank, he very much liked to be in control.
- No. - You sure?
- No, it's not a milkshake.
We're going for a milkshake.
[chocolate thuds]
- After many failures, they tried the mixture
of eggs and milk and sugar, whipped it all together
and ultimately developed the nougat center.
But Forrest added malt flavor to it.
That was his idea.
[tense orchestral music]
[Frank chortles]
- That's a keeper.
[Frank clears throat and chortles]
- Frank hadn't been interested in taking big risks
or expanding nationally,
but that's exactly what Forrest wanted.
- [Narrator] Forrest urges his father to go all in
on their new creation,
but to mass produce it,
Mars needs a steady supply of milk chocolate.
And in the 1920s, there's only one place to get it.
- Even though Hershey is the undisputed
number one chocolate bar manufacturer in America,
they're actually supplying the industrial milk chocolate
to a few different companies.
- [Narrator] In 1924, Mars makes a deal
with the Hershey company
to secure a supply of chocolate for their new candy bar.
[tense music]
- The Milky Way becomes a sensation
not just because of the flavor,
but by using nougat in a way
that had never been used before.
- It's nougat, it's chocolate-covered,
and it's got caramel in there.
It looks bigger, it tastes bigger
than that little flat Hershey bar.
- [Narrator] Within two years,
Milky Way sales hit the modern equivalent
of $12 million a year.
- Frank was content to enjoy his success
and not move so quickly.
Forrest was of a different mindset.
He said, why stop now?
Let's look for new opportunities
and new products to introduce.
- [Narrator] Taking Forrest's lead,
the business grows quickly
pressing into brand new territory.
- The Milky Way launches them onto the national scene
then they roll out with two more big hits,
one right after another.
- Snickers, then 3 Musketeers joined the Milky Way bar
and they became the staple for the Mars Company.
- [Narrator] By 1930, Mars becomes one of the largest
candy bar makers in America
with profits north of $2 million, over 36 million today.
- But as a businessman, Forrest Mars was never satisfied.
He always wanted bigger and better.
- [Frank] Got you a little something.
- So much of what drove Forrest Mars
was a desire to prove himself
as someone of worth, merit, talent, ability,
and enterprise in the face of his father
who never saw any of those things in him.
[slow tense music]
- How nice.
- You don't like it?
- I just don't think I get it.
- It's the same one that you liked
that day we had the malteds, remember?
[slow tense music]
It's my way of saying, I'm proud of you.
[wrapper rustling]
- I don't want a shirt.
I wanna be put in charge of the East Coast Division.
- But we don't have an East Coast Division.
- Exactly.
You're acting like we've won
and we're not even in the game yet.
- Forrest was ferociously passionate about the brand.
- And he really wanted his father
to have an enormous vision that he had
to be a global company.
- You wanna win?
You have to start thinking bigger.
Hershey isn't our supplier,
they're our competition.
- [Narrator] A power struggle is brewing
not between rival candy companies,
but between father and son.
What neither could predict, however,
is that this clash will propel the Mars brand
to become a $50 billion a year global empire.
[tense energetic music]
But only for one of them.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] In 1932, Mars Inc. has hit $25 million in sales,
second only to Hershey.
- Mars has come from this very small company
and rapidly blown up.
- They've got Snickers, they've got 3 Musketeers,
they've got Milky Way.
- [Narrator] But their newfound success
has also triggered a growing rift between father and son.
- You openly contradict me on the floor
in front of my employees.
- Oh, your employees.
You mean our employees?
- There's arguments, there's fights.
Frank wants to do things his way,
Forrest wants to do his things
and it just leads to a lot of dissonance.
- And Forrest being that he's given
so many of these ideas to his father
[doors slams]
feels he's entitled to a larger share of the pie.
- I want 30%.
- Of what?
- Of this company.
- Forrest, this is my company
and unless you wanna go out and build your own.
- 30% or I walk out that door.
- Don't.
- Yes or no?
[tense dramatic music]
- I'm sorry.
[tense suspenseful music]
[door slams]
- He left very determined
that he could make something of himself
and come up with new products and do new things.
- [Narrator] Denied 30% of his father's company,
Forrest resolves to one day take it all.
But first he escapes his father's shadow
4,000 miles away.
- No one has influenced chocolate more than the Swiss.
So Forrest goes to Europe to prove his dad wrong,
to show he could be successful.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] At the time, American and European candies
are only sold in their respective territories.
Forrest Mars aims to change that
by creating the first international candy company.
- When Forrest Mars goes to Switzerland in 1932,
his main goal was to understand
how a much larger business functions.
- I don't recognize any of the companies on your CV.
- Well, they were the local candy makers, small operations.
No one you would've heard of.
- Nestle was one of the largest
food and candy companies in the world.
So he clearly sees an opportunity
even in taking a lower ranking position at Nestle to learn
the differences between the candy business in the US
and the candy business in Europe.
- Why do you want to work here?
- You're the best in the business.
I wanna work for the best.
- Candy companies, of course, are trying to protect
all of their intellectual property.
- How you made the candies, how you got them wrapped,
how you set up your assembly line.
- The way the shipping was run,
your recipe for chocolate,
the ratio of cocoa to butter to sugar and so on.
- But if you could get a shortcut, right,
and steal someone else's method,
you could save enough money and enough time
to change your entire destiny.
[tense upbeat music]
- Welcome to Nestle.
- [chuckles] Thank you.
- [Narrator] Little does Nestle know
they've just let a wolf inside their headquarters,
a wolf that will become one of their fiercest rivals.
- So Forrest Mars brilliantly and kinda dubiously
gets a job at the Nestle factory
because once you're inside the factory,
you're not necessarily stealing, you're just looking around.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] A few months later,
armed with Nestle's secrets,
Forrest spends every penny he has
to set up shop 20 miles outside of London,
in the working class town of Slough.
- Slough being a largely industrial area
is a perfect place for him
to acquire a fairly cheap factory.
- These are all of our options.
- And Great Britain was an English-speaking market,
so it was a lot easier to do business there
versus in Switzerland or France or other parts of Europe.
- This one.
[soft tense music]
- [Narrator] His first idea is to take the candy bar
he originally dreamed up
and tailor it to English taste buds.
- One of the big takeaways that Forrest had
from working in Switzerland
was that Americans and Europeans
really had a different appetite for chocolate.
[chocolate snaps]
- So the Swiss love a strong aromatic chocolate
with a silky smooth texture.
Italians they like a drier, bittersweet flavor.
And Brits, they like a caramel note in their chocolate.
- So he's going to use his European intel
with what he knows from home,
and he is going to make a different version
of the Milky Way.
- This one's close.
Make it a touch sweeter.
- One that's slightly bigger
and also has a wonderfully astrological name.
[tense music]
His family name.
- Yeah, this will work.
Good.
- The Mars bar was creamier than most American candies.
- Forrest pulls back on some of that malt flavor
and he makes it a little bit sweeter
to hit the perfect formula for European taste buds.
- [Narrator] But as a newcomer, Mars faces an uphill battle.
- He was going up against some very well-established names.
Even just in the UK you had Rowntree, you had Cadbury,
and you have to remember in the 1930s,
a lot of people just didn't have money
for things like chocolate and candy.
So for an upstart, it was definitely difficult.
- [Narrator] To set his product apart,
Forrest boldly claims his candy bar has health benefits.
- He marketed it for what he claimed
were its nutritional properties
and one of the early ads actually said,
"Mars bars are made with chocolate to sustain,
glucose to energize, and milk to nourish."
And people looked at those ingredients
as what we would today call functional ingredients.
- And it became a huge hit in England,
the same kind of success
that his father had seen in the States.
- [Narrator] Within a year, he sells 100 million Mars bars
across the UK.
- [Joel] Forrest then used that initial success
to start building his own empire.
It didn't take very long before he had factories
and operations throughout England.
- I'll be home later tonight.
- [Narrator] By 1934, Forrest's company is on its way
to becoming the third largest candy manufacturer in Britain,
but he's determined to be the biggest in the world
and show up his father
by inventing completely new candy bars.
- See this one.
- He realizes that people love
that the Mars bar is a bigger candy bar
and he decides to create an even larger candy bar
called, I kid you not, the So Big,
- But bigger is not always better.
The So Big bar was actually so big
that people could not finish it in one sitting
and it would melt in the pockets,
and that was a huge flop.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] To right the ship,
Forrest exploits a recent economic trend
to make a confection he sure will be an instant classic.
- Because of a sudden drop in the price of tropical fruit,
he decides he's gonna take advantage
of this otherwise expensive ingredient
and create a pineapple- flavored Mars bar.
- A little bit more.
- But people don't like the combination
of pineapple and chocolate
and that too is an incredible failure.
- [Narrator] After two flops in a row,
Forrest must find his next big hit
or risk becoming the failure his father predicted.
[tense dramatic music]
or risk becoming the failure his father predicted.[slo]
- [Narrator] In 1934, Forrest Mars is desperate
to turn things around for his new candy company
after coming off back- to-back failures.
[tense music]
- Every entrepreneur has to face challenges
and even failures.
So he's gonna keep swinging that bat
because he knows he's got hits in him.
- [Narrator] After successive losses in confection,
Mars spies an unexpected way to earn a win.
[tense dramatic music]
- In the '30s there was a huge void
with pet care in general,
but also really good pet food, specifically for dogs.
- Pet ownership wasn't like it is now.
People would just give animals scraps.
- And Forrest Mars realized
that there were massive gaps in the market.
- So he bought this pet food manufacturer,
the Chappel Brothers dog food company.
He's really taken a huge risk, a huge swing of the bat
by saying, you know what, I'm gonna put all my effort,
all my energy, all of my financial resources
into this new thing.
And he starts manufacturing canned dog food,
one of the first people to do it.
- And he thought that maybe his millions were not going
to just be made in candy, but in pet food.
- [Narrator] With the purchase
of the UK-based dog food company,
Mars ventures outside the confection industry
creating Pet Food Inc.
- Forrest wasn't just satisfied with being a candy maker.
Forrest truly had empire on his mind.
And whenever he saw a potential opportunity to expand,
he did so because he wanted to prove to his father
that he could build a global company.
- [Narrator] What Forrest doesn't realize
is he'll never get that chance
because on April 8th, 1934,
after suffering heart and kidney failure,
Frank Mars dies at just 50 years old.
- He had three of the most successful chocolate bars
in the world.
That is an incredible legacy
and one that should never be forgotten.
- [Narrator] His absence leaves the future
of one of America's most lucrative companies in doubt.
[pensive music]
- It's unclear if they ever even made up
from their original spat
when Forrest basically walked out.
He probably had conflicting emotions about the man
who gave him his first success in the candy business,
but on the other hand was resistant to a lot of his ideas.
- [Narrator] In his will, Frank stipulates
that a small number of his company's shares
will go to Forrest
while more than half go to Frank's second wife, Ethel
and their daughter Patricia.
- Forrest's stepmother, Ethel, really resented Forrest
for pushing his father Frank to hustle and work too hard.
- He could not reingratiate himself
with his father's family.
He'd been banned and he had no connection
with his dad's business.
- But he wanted control of his father's candy company.
This was his holy grail.
He felt like it was his birthright.
[slow tense music]
- [Narrator] As a distraction from his troubles,
Forrest takes a short vacation
where he finds inspiration in the unlikeliest of places.
[slow tense music]
- [Alex] Forrest Mars took a trip to Spain
where it's very hot for much of the year.
[slow tense music]
He saw these soldiers eating chocolate without it melting.
- [Narrator] The chocolate candies
made by the UK's Rowntree company are called Smarties.
- And it's worth noting these are not the smaller
tart candies that come in the plastic wrapper,
these Smarties are chocolate.
They're coated in this sugary candy coating
that helps protect them in high heat situations.
- He'd never seen a candy coating
on top of chocolate before.
- It was a lot easier to handle or keep in your pocket
for when you wanted a snack later on.
- And he thinks, well, wouldn't this be something
great to bring back to the United States?
- The only way he can get back into his family business
is to buy it back.
And the only way he can do that
is if he can create a candy that is a global hit.
- [Narrator] One day that global hit
will rake in annual sales of $770 million around the world
and become one of the most popular candies of all time.
But to get there, he'll have to forge an unlikely alliance
with his biggest rival.
[tense dramatic music]
- [Narrator] In the late 1930s,
Forrest Mars is planning his next big move.
- Look, I can tell you what I can do.
I can write you a check.
- Forrest is convinced that he's found his company's
next big candy.
- I understand.
- Forrest was inspired by a European candy called Smarties.
- Good decision.
- [Darin] And he wanted to sell them in America.
- So he left his business
in the hands of his second-in-command
and he returned to the US.
- [Narrator] But while he comes home
armed with what he thinks is a million-dollar candy idea,
he also faces a new roadblock.
- When Forrest Mars wants to bring this product
to the United States,
he realizes he really needs supply of milk chocolate.
- [Narrator] And there's only one company
with enough supply, Hershey,
where Forrest meets with their current president,
William Murrie.
- Sit.
- [Forrest] Look at these.
- Colorful.
So what?
- So they've been in my pocket since I left New York.
- How is it possible?
[tense suspenseful music]
It's impressive.
I'm not sure what this has to do with me.
- William Murrie was a family man
and it had been his dream
for his kids to follow in his footsteps
and Forrest knew that.
- For a 20% investment
and your guarantee of a steady supply
of Hershey's Chocolate, your son Bruce,
he's the executive vice president of my new company.
- Here's his chance to give something to his kids.
- [Narrator] To assure his son's legacy,
Murrie goes behind Hershey's back.
- I think Bruce will go for it.
- [Narrator] And makes a deal for 20% of Forrest's company.
- And his son Bruce Murrie comes in as Forrest's partner.
- [Narrator] The new partnership also inspires
the candy's iconic name.
- Mars and Murrie, that has a ring to it.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] M&M's.
The first order of business for Forrest and Bruce
is to build a factory that can make their unique candy.
- Forrest purchases these giant copper drums
called panning equipment
that would coat these little pellets of chocolate.
[tense dramatic music]
- They came in brown, yellow, orange,
red, green, and violet, packaged in a paper tube.
- [Narrator] Glazed in multiple thin layers
of colored candy coating,
the bite-sized chocolates
will be unlike anything Americans have ever seen.
But before Forrest Mars can introduce them to the nation.
- [Franklin] December 7th, 1941,
a date which will live in infamy.
- [Narrator] America enters World War II.
[explosion booms]
Within a year, factories across all industries
are converted to aid the war effort,
outputting some 300,000 airplanes, 2 million vehicles,
plus billions of pounds of food rations,
including from America's top candy maker.
- Hershey played a critical role by supplying rations
that would help the soldiers remain alert and well-fed
for maybe an entire day on a single ration.
- [Narrator] The US military calls it the Ration D bar,
but the troops have a different name for it.
- It had to be extremely hard and durable
so that it wouldn't break during shipping,
that the chocolate wouldn't melt.
You had to slice shavings of it off with a knife
because it could crack your teeth
and it would wreak havoc on your intestines.
So, soldiers called it Hitler's secret weapon.
[tense upbeat music]
- [Narrator] Forrest Mars thinks he can provide
a better candy ration for the troops,
something durable and delicious.
- Okay, just let me know where to send it.
- [Narrator] After securing a lucrative military contract,
Forrest's company is suddenly producing
200,000 pounds of M&M's a week.
- M&M's were included in rations
and for the soldiers that was invaluable,
mostly for aviators who found them very easy to eat
on bombing runs.
- [Narrator] After nearly four years,
World War II finally comes to an end
on September 2nd, 1945.
- Forrest Mars had a contract to make M&M's
for 15 million service members.
And now with the war over, it's gone instantly overnight
and he's struggling to remain relevant.
- M&M's were a hit with the troops during the war,
but once everyone got back home,
they weren't selling as much as the Hershey bars
or even the Snicker bars were.
So Forrest is really frustrated.
- [Narrator] He begins to take out that frustration
on his business partner, Bruce Murrie.
- He blames Murrie for the slump in sales of M&M's
in the immediate post-war years.
- He was very critical of him in public.
He said he knew nothing about candy
and made Bruce's life absolutely miserable.
- [Narrator] Fed up with Forrest's behavior,
Bruce Murrie resigns in 1949,
but Forrest wants to make sure
he never shares in future profits.
[tense rock music]
- He offers to buy out his business partner
with a million dollars of his own money
and Bruce Murrie is more than glad to take it.
- [Narrator] Dropping the modern equivalent
of $12 million on a slumping product,
Forrest Mars sees his chance to buy his father's company
slipping through his fingers.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] In the early 1950s, Forrest Mars desperately wants
to buy back his father's candy company,
but first he has to fix M&M's poor post-war sales.
- Forrest had to start figuring out
how to make this product work for a mass audience
and how to market it to everybody.
- [Narrator] So Forrest tasks a top New York ad agency,
Ted Bates and Company,
to produce a detailed study on M&M's.
- Your message is not reaching the consumer,
but more importantly, your biggest consumer
has no buying power.
- And why is that?
[tense dramatic music]
- They're children.
- Really?
- If you wanna sell to kids,
you have to appeal to their parents.
[slow tense music]
- Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
[slow tense music]
- The brilliance of this slogan
is that parents knew intrinsically
if you bought your kid a Hershey bar,
within minutes you're gonna be cleaning candy
off of their fingers, their face, their clothing.
But the parent could very easily buy their children M&M's
and it wouldn't create mess.
[tense dramatic music]
- We'll call you.
[tense dramatic music]
- [Narrator] In a last-ditch effort to rescue M&M's sales,
Forrest rolls out a national campaign in 1954
touting the new slogan.
- That slogan is so perfect for 1950s America
and the kind of ethos that was being sold
of like perfect domesticity.
Like you didn't want a kid who had
chocolate all over their face and their clothes.
You were trying to present
a kind of more put together image
and the M&M fit into that.
- [Narrator] As M&M's sales slowly tick up,
Forrest doubles down by introducing
a spinoff variety later that year,
Peanut M&M's,
along with a revolutionary pair of mascots.
[tense dramatic music]
- There's this ad of Mr. Peanut and Mr. Plain,
the first two spokescandies of M&M's
where they dive into a pool of chocolate.
- Look for this M on each piece.
- And Forrest is adamant about marketing the kids.
And so, he insists that his ads run
after programs such as the Howdy Doody Show
or the Mickey Mouse Club.
- [Narrator] Thanks to Forrest's
aggressive marketing campaign,
by 1956 M&M's annual sales top $40 million
beating the Hershey Bar and even his father's Snickers bar
to become the most popular candy in America.
- Unlike a candy bar,
with M&M's you get so many individual pieces in a package
so you can easily split them with your friend.
You get 10, I get 10.
- M&M's become such a phenomenal success in America
that they're even stocked in Air Force One.
That's how iconic this treat becomes.
- [Narrator] Over the next several years,
Forrest's company expands
from a successful candy manufacturer
to a budding global empire.
[slow tense music]
But there's one thing, he still desperately craves,
his father's company.
- At this point, his company is worth three times
what his father's company is worth.
So he's got the money to come in
and take over the family business,
but he's still gotta convince the shareholders to sell
and the one he's really gotta convince is his half-sister.
- [Patricia] Hello?
- Forrest heard that his half-sister Patricia
was sick and dying
and he went to her and said,
"Will you please give me your shares?"
And I think it's only because she knew
that she was dying, that she relented.
- [Patricia] Don't let him down.
- You've got my word.
- [Narrator] In 1964, Forrest becomes the CEO, president,
and chairman of his father's company,
now worth over $40 million.
His first act is to merge the two companies into one.
[tense dramatic music]
Mars Inc.
His second act is a complete company-wide overhaul.
- He knew he wasn't gonna run it like his father.
- It's his company now and he's calling all the shots.
- He fires the French chef.
- [Jason] He tears out the executive washrooms.
- [Vallery] Everyone needed to clock in and out
with a timecard.
- [Jason] He gets rid of the corporate helicopter.
- He tied salaries to company performance.
That was an unheard of practice.
- [Narrator] While Forrest increases
efficiency and productivity,
there's one more brass ring he's desperate to reach.
- They haven't eclipsed Hershey's,
but they are Hershey's closest competitor.
- Hershey's was still America's number one candy maker.
- [Narrator] Determined to overtake
his father's former rival,
Forrest sets his sights on another big change.
- Mars had for decades used Milton Hershey's milk chocolate,
but Forrest decided we're gonna make our own milk chocolate,
we're gonna source our own peanuts.
So they suddenly became more insular
but also more profitable.
- [Narrator] Forrest uses the increased profits
to expand his product line
inspecting candy sold in Europe for inspiration,
including a fruit taffy sold abroad
through Mars's UK division.
[tense dramatic music]
- What are these call overseas?
- Opal Fruits.
[tense dramatic music]
- Mars is known for their really good quality chocolate.
They didn't wanna use the name Opal Fruits
so Forrest says, oh no, that'll never work.
We need to come up with something else
that people know already.
[tense dramatic music]
- [Narrator] Forrest Mars thinks he has the perfect answer.
[tense dramatic music]
- Let's call them
[tense dramatic music]
M&M's Fruit Chewies.
[tense dramatic music]
[tense music]
- [Narrator] In the 1960s, Forrest Mars is about to launch
one of his company's UK candies in America under a new name.
[suspenseful music]
- Let's call them M&M's Fruit Chewies.
- [Narrator] Retailing at 25 cents per pack,
the unique candy is quickly rolled out nationwide.
- M&M Fruit Chewies hit the market
and they absolutely flop.
- When people think of M&M's,
they think of chocolate and this is not chocolate.
- And also Fruit Chewie in terms of like product names
is considered stupid.
Stupid name.
So Forrest Mars, believe it or not,
admits that he has made a mistake
and they pull them off the shelves.
- [Narrator] To revive his failing product,
Forrest sees an opportunity to latch on
to a recent craze gripping the nation.
- Ever since JFK's 1962 speech about going to the moon.
- That challenge is one that we're willing to accept.
- [Romi] Americans are obsessed with space.
TV shows are coming out.
"Star Trek" came out in 1966
and many toys and food products followed suit
to take advantage of this outer space craze.
- So they want to catch all the space-themed hysteria
that's going on in pop culture and toys,
and, of course, in food.
- [Narrator] In 1973, Forrest Mars re-releases
the chewy fruit candies under a new name,
Starburst.
- You're getting lots of different flavors
in a single package.
It's bright fruit fun.
By the way, cherry is the best flavor.
- [Narrator] Over the next few years,
Starburst helps Mars Inc. rake in
a total annual revenue of $1 billion,
allowing Forrest Mars to finally surpass Hershey
and become the number one candy maker in America.
[tense upbeat music]
- But Forrest is all about international expansion.
- He really felt strongly that to survive in a modern world,
you had to be a global operator.
- So capitalizing on the success of Starburst,
Forrest Mars stars scouring European markets
for candies that he can rebrand
and relaunch as mega hits throughout the world.
- So Forrest Mars brought over a UK import
from a small time manufacturer.
- We don't need any more M&M's.
- [Assistant] They aren't M&M's.
[suspenseful music]
[tense music]
- What are these?
- It's a candy that combines the beloved crunch of the M&M
and the fruit chewiness of Starburst and creates-
- Skittles.
[upbeat music]
- The name actually comes from
a British derivative of lawn bowling.
- They're good.
- [Narrator] Launched across the globe in 1982,
Skittles go on to become the most popular
non-chocolate candy in America,
helping Mars Inc. become the world's leading confectionary
as their snacking division alone rakes in $18 billion a year.
- The crazy thing though is that's less than half
of their total revenue.
Today, businesses like their pet food business
are larger than candy.
- [Narrator] With plants all across Europe
and over 50 different brands,
Mars' pet food division is the biggest in the world.
- Many people aren't aware of this, but Pedigree,
that's Mars.
Sheba cat foods, that's Mars.
- Forrest Mars never really saw himself
as just a candy maker like his father.
He saw himself as someone who was building an empire.
- Mars really made the blueprint in some ways
for an international food conglomerate.
- He was the first candy maker to break into Russia
after the wall came down,
to go to China,
to bring his candies to hot deserts in the Middle East.
And I think that's a tremendous legacy that he leaves behind.
- The candy aisle would not be what it is
without Forrest Mars.
[tense orchestral music]
- [Narrator] With an annual global revenue of $50 billion,
Mars Inc. continues to be ranked
in the top five wealthiest
privately-owned companies in the world.
[tense orchestral music]