July 13, 2016

In 1976, Mars, the candy company that makes M&M's, eliminated the red version of the candies from their mix. This decision came as a result of public controversy surrounding a synthetic dye called FD&C Red No. 2, which was a suspected carcinogen, and were replaced with orange-colored candies. This was done despite the fact that M&M's did not contain the dye; the action was purely to satisfy worried consumers. However, to avoid consumer confusion, the red candies were pulled from the color mix. Red candies were reintroduced ten years later, but they also kept the orange colored M&M's. Paul Hethmon, then a student at University of Tennessee, started the campaign to bring back red M&M's as a joke that would eventually become a worldwide phenomenon. More than 400 million individual M&M's are produced every day in the United States.