Quote:
Originally Posted by Disease
Smarties came first, that is why M&m's went for the selling point, melts in your mouth, not you're hand, it was a dig at smarties...
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From Wikipedia (but then again, we never know the veracity of these sites):
"The official M&M's website states the idea for M&M's came from the Spanish Civil War: "Legend has it that, while on a trip to Spain, Forrest Mars Sr. encountered soldiers who were eating pellets of chocolate encased in a hard sugary coating. This prevented it from melting. Inspired by this idea, Mr. Mars went back to his kitchen and invented the recipe for M&M'SŪ Plain Chocolate Candies." The chocolate that the soldiers were eating were coated to prevent chocolate from sticking to their fingers. Forrest Mars was traveling with a member of the Rowntree family, "...and Rowntree went on to make Smarties, a candy similar to M&M's."[2] After the rights were purchased by Forrest Mars Sr. and R. Bruce Murrie in 1929, they had to reintroduce them to the domestic market with a different name because there was already a candy product sold in the U.S. under the name Smarties. To identify their new brand, they combined the first initials of their last names: M & M."
And the fact that it says "Legend had it" can also cast some doubt on how true it is. :p