A Little M&M’s Halloween Historical Packaging Evolution!

While going through my archives for the CountdownToHalloween this month, I realized I had a few older Halloween seasonal M&M’s packages I never covered before.  So I gathered them together for today’s post which I think presents a nice look at how M&M’s Halloween packaging has evolved over time.

To start off today’s historical look back, I have an M&M’s “Holiday” package, which was something Mars did in the late 80’s/early 90’s – giving consumers assortments of M&M’s themed for the seasons by color.  I am fairly sure that this predates any actual Halloween themes they used on the large product packages as it also predates their introduction of the M&M’s character mascot family, but I might not be correct on that.

Mars – M&M’s Holiday Plain chocolate candies in autumn colors – 16oz candy package – late 80’s early 90’s

Next up is what I believe to be one of the earliest actual Halloween-themed M&M’s packs – and it’s a fun one featuring a 1990’s M&M’s styled mascot in a witches’ hat and broom.

Mars – M&M’s Plain – 16oz Halloween candy package – circa mid-1990’s

During the 1990’s Mars introduced M&M’s Minis to the marketplace and they’re still around today, though I don’t see them as often.  From that early period in M&M’s Minis life comes this next piece – a large package created for Halloween that contained 18 fun-size M&M’s Minis boxes:

Mars – M&M’s Minis – 10 oz mini-boxes Halloween multi-bag package – 1990’s

Here’s an example of what one of the Minis fun-size boxes looked like (I didn’t have these stored together, so I’m not sure they are a matching set – but they probably are):

Mars – M&M’s Minis – Halloween mini fun-size candy box – 1990’s

Finally, we jump ahead to the mid-to-late 2000’s, with another lovely Halloween themed M&M’s package.  At this point, the branding had been termed the “Pumpkin Mix” and Halloween graphics were printed on each individual M&M candy piece.  It’s awfully cool that they printed little Jack-O-Latern graphics on each M&M.  These also feature the modern, rendered versions of the M&M’s character mascots:

Mars – M&M’s Milk Chocolate – Pumpkin Mix – 14oz Halloween candy package – mid-2000’s

At this point I’m a bit embarrassed to say that my evolutionary coverage needs to come to a halt as I couldn’t find my more recent Halloween M&M’s packages in time for today’s post.

I do encourage you to check out some of the neat Halloween M&M’s releases I’ve covered in the past with Candy Corn M&M’s, Pumpkin Spice M&M’s and their Halloween-themed theater-sized boxes.

And that’s everything for today’s post and my look back at M&M’s historical Halloween packaging evolution.  See you next time!

(Well, one more thing to share – not necessarily Halloween, but very Halloweenish – it’s the Addams Family done up as M&M’s on a promotion for Dark Chocolate M&M’s)

Mars – M&M’s Dark Chocolate Candies Sales Circular Coupon-Advertisement – The Addams Family – 2008

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Today’s post has been part of CollectingCandy.com’s 2014 Countdown to Halloween. To check out other sites celebrating Halloween all month long, visit the official CountdownToHalloween site.  For more of CollectingCandy.com’s CountdownToHalloween posts, just click here.