Did you know that Mars bars were originally coated in Cadbury chocolate?
In 1932 the original whipped nougat and caramel-based chocolate ‘Mars’ bar was created in Slough, England, after Forrest Mars established his own confectionery company.
Ten years prior, on the other side of the Atlantic, Forrest’s father Frank Mars had invented the similarly composed ‘Milky Way’ chocolate bar at their MAR-O-BAR candy company. Following a series of disagreements between father and son, Forrest left to pursue his own career in confectionery and reinvented the ‘Milky Way‘ into a thicker, chunkier bar he called the ‘Mars‘ bar for his new English audience.
However, in the early days of production Forrest lacked the machinery needed to create his own chocolate blend to coat his anglicised bar. Until his fledgling company was able to produce its own chocolate, the famous Cadbury Dairy Milk was used to coat the candy.
This was known as ‘couverture‘ – where chocolate producers (such as Cadbury) sold their chocolate for other firms to use.
The original price of an English Mars bar was threepence. There was also a short-lived pineapple flavoured Mars bar following the end of the Second World War!
So, in the US, the closest thing to a British ‘Mars‘ bar is an American ‘Milky Way‘. And a British ‘Milky Way‘ is closer to an American ‘3 Musketeers‘ (also invented and produced by Mars). There has been an American ‘Mars‘ bar in the past, but instead of caramel it contained almonds…did you get all that!
The British Candy Connoisseur 
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