How M&M's Get Their Signature 'M' Printed On Them

It's practically unheard of to turn down an M&M when someone offers you one. The little chocolate fiends are universally loved in every form, though some M&M flavors taste better than others. From giant peanut M&Ms to the teeny, tiny mini M&Ms, from personified candy mascots to the novelty stores across the globe, everyone knows an M&M when they see one. Is it the circular pops of color that you recognize? Or perhaps the iconic, white-stamped 'M' on every chocolate shell?

Those little stamps don't happen by magic, and they don't happen by hand, either. M&M prints the tiny 'M's' on every candy through a process similar to offset printing. Once the chocolates have a hardened, colorful coating, they're placed on a conveyor belt with special M&M-sized pockets to prevent them from rolling away. The conveyor belt shoots the blank M&Ms beneath a rubber stamp known as a "blanket," which prevents the chocolate from being crushed by any hard, metal printing plates and gently presses the white-colored 'M' into each chocolate all at once. The stamping press requires careful calibration to ensure that the 'Ms' are transferred without destroying the chocolates.

Way back in the day, M&M's were included in U.S. soldiers' ration packs during World War II since the chocolates were heat-resistant and durable in warmer conditions. The chocolate buttons were the invention of two nepotism babies: Forrest Mars Sr., the son of famed candy maker Frank C. Mars, and Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey's president William Murrie. In the 1940s, when Mars and Murrie needed a name for their new product, they simply took the first initial of their last names and called their chocolate creation 'M&Ms.' Even though the partnership eventually ended, the name stuck.

The first stark-white 'M's' were printed onto M&Ms in the 1950s, and over 70 years later, you'll still find that signature mark on every M&M product. The whole process is so automated that everything from pouring the chocolate base to the colorful chocolate shell to M&M color organization happens in minutes with help from the machine. The high-tech conveyor belt that stamps the chocolates can even produce up to 2.5 million little creations per hour. Although the brand performs quality control checks to ensure things are running smoothly, the machines do allow 'M'-less chocolates to make it into packaging since it doesn't affect the flavor, anyway. The next time you find an oddly shaped M&M or one with a misshapen 'M' stamped on it, consider it a sweet little factory defect.