M&M’s Changing Its Super Bowl Commercial For An Utterly Ridiculous Reason
M&M's announced it will not feature its spokescandies in the upcoming Super Bowl due to ridiculous criticism coming from right-wing politics.
Not even the beloved M&M’s cartoon characters that have been the centerpiece of Mars advertising campaigns for the past 60-plus years are beyond criticism in today’s society. Mars announced this week that the cartoon characters were being pulled from their upcoming Super Bowl LVII commercial spot due to right-wing pressure over character changes the company made last year to make the characters more inclusive and representative of the different cultures in American society.
The purpose of the character rebrand and backstory revision was an attempt by Mars to keep them in step with the country’s current environment. According to CNBC, Mars’s Chief Marketing Officer Gabrielle Wesley stated, “The original colorful cast of M&M’S spokescandies are, at present, pursuing other personal passions.”
Instead of the spokescandies leading the marketing campaign during the M&M’s Super Bowl LVII spot, those responsibilities will fall on the shoulders of actress Maya Rudolph. Welsey noted that over the next few weeks, M&M’s website and social media outlets will reveal, “what the M&M’S spokescandies are up to over the next few weeks before, during, and after Super Bowl LVII.”
Mars initially rebranded their candy characters about a year ago by making subtle changes. For example, the Green M&M had been criticized for being too sexy. The company switched out her knee-high boots for sneakers and put more emphasis on her feminist values. The Orange M&M became a mascot that suffers from anxiety to include some of the country’s population that lives with this mental health condition, and they added a purple M&M that was supposed to represent inclusivity as a whole.
That rebrand caught the eye of conservatives that included Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who claimed the makeovers were another shining example of the Democratic liberal agenda pushing the boundaries of this issue too far. In recent weeks this argument has resurfaced on mainstream conservative media platforms, causing Mars corporation to take its Super Bowl marketing commercial plans in a different direction.
M&M’s Twitter account commented on Monday saying, “In the last year, we’ve made some changes to our beloved spokescandies. We weren’t sure if anyone would even notice. And we definitely didn’t think it would break the internet.”
Due to all of the uproar being associated with their brand’s cartoon portrayal of society and this not being the type of attention they wanted to get to try and sell more units of their candy, Mars has pulled the plug on the M&M characters Super Bowl commercial. Hence, its decision to go with a more middle-of-the-political-road advertisement by casting Maya Rudolph. The actress will become the brand’s, “Chief of Fun,” according to Wesley.
When we think about the polarizing effects that even the M&M’s characters are having on our society, it is really ridiculous to think that this is where we are at this moment in time. All we can do is hope that someone or something comes along in the not-so-distant future that is able to bring the left and the right agendas closer to the center so that we can become more unified as a nation.
When our political differences start dramatically affecting the portrayal of cartoon characters in our Super Bowl commercials, which are meant to be more fun and entertaining than the run-of-the-mill commercials we get the rest of the year, suffice it to say that we are in dire need of a societal reset.
