Snickers Bars Used To Look A Lot Different

The Mars company was founded in 1911 by a man named Frank Mars. He started making candy for what would eventually become one of the most well-known brands in the world from the humble confines of his kitchen in Tacoma, Washington, according to Forbes. What was first known as the Mar-O-Bar company evolved over the years, coming out with the smash hit Milky Way bar in the 1920s and paving the way for even more inventive chocolate bar ideas, including the Snickers bar (via Classroom). The original Snickers bar was handmade "by pouring peanut butter nougat onto a large tray, layering caramel and peanuts on top, hand-slicing then dipping each bar into melted chocolate."

Just as the process evolved into automation, the packaging got an upgrade over time as well. An Insider article recently covered the looks of some popular candy bars when they were first created compared to now, and they look vastly different. The original Snickers bar was covered in a paper wrapper with orange, green, and white coloring and featured an image of a woman lying on her stomach ready to dig into one (via Mars).

Despite the familiar, iconic wrapper design featuring bold writing and red, white, blue, and brown coloring, the look in the beginning was significantly different. While the Candy Wrapper Archive does not hold the original design from the 1930s, they do catalog much of the Snickers wrapper evolution over the years. A wrapper from 1939, and some subsequent iterations, moves to a blue, red, white, and gold color palette, and features a ton of writing that described the bar, mentioned other Mars company candy, and even made suggestions like trying a Snickers frozen.

The site's collections does not feature the bold writing that fans are familiar with until one created in 1983. This wrapper looks fairly similar to the current design and features the names of the bar in the center in bold blue writing on a white background, with the rest of the wrapper colored brown. It is also the first version to contain calorie information, which is featured on all bars now, too. It is kind of cool to see the twists and turns involved in evolving the wrapper to give everyone the Snickers they know, recognize, and love today.