It’s Halloween week – so of course we’re doing a theme week on Halloween candy!
Today we unwrap the long and delicious history of one of America’s most beloved treats. The Milky Way bar has delighted chocolate lovers since 1923 and holds the distinction of being the first filled chocolate bar ever created.
The Milky Way story begins with Frank Mars. As a child, he learned the art of hand-dipping chocolates from his mother while recovering from a mild case of polio. That skill transformed into a career when he founded the Mars Candy Factory in 1911 in Tacoma, Washington. By 1920, he relocated to Minneapolis, set up the Mar-O-Bar Company, and began crafting chocolate bars that would become classics.
The Milky Way bar combines fluffy nougat, smooth caramel, and milk chocolate. Despite the name, it was not inspired by the galaxy above. Instead, its flavor profile was modeled after a popular malted milkshake of the era. Malted milk had emerged in the late 1800s as a nutritious infant formula and quickly gained popularity for its rich taste. Milky Way’s earliest slogan captured that milkshake magic: “A Chocolate Malted Milk in a Candy Bar.” Advertising even boasted that it contained more malted milk than a double malted from the soda fountain.
When Milky Way launched nationally in 1924, it was an immediate sensation, earning $800,000 in sales that year alone. It remains the oldest Mars chocolate bar brand still in production. The original Milky Way was hefty too, weighing more than 3 ounces compared to today’s roughly 1.8-ounce version. That size difference helped the bar stand out from competing confectionery, including the already-popular Hershey bar.
By 1926, Mars introduced two varieties: a chocolate nougat version covered in milk chocolate and a vanilla nougat version covered in dark chocolate. A few years later, in 1932, Milky Way became a two-piece bar, and in 1936 the vanilla version got its own name: Forever Yours. It kept that title until 1979, eventually returning to shelves as Milky Way Midnight in 2000.
Over the decades, Milky Way’s marketing has evolved with consumer tastes. Slogans have ranged from “The sweet you can eat between meals” to “Life’s better the Milky Way.” One memorable 1960s commercial linked Milky Way bars to wholesome farm ingredients like milk, eggs, and corn. That imagery pushed the boundaries a bit. In 1970, the Federal Trade Commission stepped in to remind the company that candy is not nutritionally equivalent to fresh milk. The brand continued leaning into the milk message anyway, including a 1984 ad claiming each bar contained the equivalent of a quarter cup of milk.
Milky Way’s identity even differs depending on where you are in the world. Outside the United States, what Americans know as a Milky Way more closely resembles a U.S. 3 Musketeers bar, while the familiar American Milky Way formula appears internationally as the Mars Bar. That version dates back to 1932 in England, where Frank’s son Forrest adapted his father’s candy to suit European tastes.