by I. Michael Akbar

Created on: April 05, 2009   Last Updated: December 22, 2009

What better reason can there be to name a candy bar "Snickers" than in the memory of a beloved pet.

In 1930, Frank C. Mars invented the Snickers bar by adding a chocolate coating to an already existing nougat, caramel and peanut snack. The treat was named the "Snickers Bar", in memory of one of the Mars family's favorite horses, which had passed away less than a month before the creation of the bar. Snickers, the horse, had been a winning race horse, raised on the family's Milky Way farm in Tennessee. It was Frank's wife, Ethyl, who had insisted on naming the candy bar after the horse.

The original Snickers candy wrapper listed ingredients of white sugar, sweet milk chocolate, corn syrup, peanuts, milk condensed with sugar, coconut oil, malted milk, "whites of eggs" and salt. The first Snickers weighed in at 2 1/4 ounces. The original price of the Snickers bar, with all of its rich ingredients: one nickel.

Frank C. Mars was born in Minnesota in 1884. He learned how to make candy from his mother as a young boy. She had used the candy making craft as a way to keep the polio-stricken Frank busy. Young Frank delighted in dipping his mother's homemade confections in chocolate as the final step in the process.

In 1911, at age 19, Frank Mars started his candy business. Initially, he and his wife made butter cream candy from their home. They would soon open The Mars Candy Factory, Inc., employing 125 workers in Tacoma, Washington and selling candy to 5 and 10 cent stores along the Pacific coast. Without refrigeration or preservatives, the candy had to made and delivered daily.

The company moved to a larger factory in Minneapolis, named the "Nougat House," in 1920 and changed the company name to the Mar-O-Bar Company. The Mars bar was once the best selling candy bar in history until the Mars company changed the name in the 90's to Snickers Almond. Sales of the Mars bar waned with the name change, allowing Snickers to overtake it in sales. Snickers is the now best selling candy bar of all time and has annual global sales of more than $2 billion. The Snickers brand has also launched a variety of other snack treats, including ice cream, frozen treats, pie and other varieties of candy bars.

Until the late 1980's, the Snickers bar was marketed in the UK under the name "Marathon" until the company decided to unify its global branding and renamed the UK version Snickers as well. Some people still insist on asking for a 'Marathon' when ordering a Snickers in the UK.

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