Are Milky Way, Snickers, and 3 Musketeers really just the same thing?
With Halloween fast approaching, one thing is for certain: Candy is King. Not even COVID-19 and the pandemic have stopped Halloween candy from flying off the shelves at my local supermarkets. (Are you experiencing this as well in your communities?) Not wanting to disappoint potential trick-or-treaters, my wife found some fun-sized candy to hand out. (Side note: Why do they call it “fun-size”? There’s nothing fun about having a tiny bite of a candy bar.)
I’ve never been great at saving candy until Halloween. I’ll graze on it here and there in the days leading up to the holiday. (My mother did a much better job hiding candy growing up. How do you hide it from yourself?) Strewn across our house are buckets filled with Double Bubble, Butterfingers, M&Ms, Skittles, Snickers, Starbursts, Milky Way. You name it; we have it.
I’m not usually a sweets guy. (I’ll take a salted pretzel any day of the week.) However, I was in the mood for something chocolatey today, and it had been awhile since I tasted a Milky Way, so I grabbed that one first. Next, a 3 Musketeers. Finally, the grand-master of all candy bars: Snickers. By the the time I finished, each piece of candy started to feel a little familiar.
My inquiry gear shifted into place, and I started asking myself the difference between these three bars. Since I had a ton of extras on hand, I cut one of each, did a little dissection of my own, and saw something I never really thought about before: with the exception of a few obvious ingredients, like caramel and peanuts, all three bars seemed identical.
This begged the question: Are 3 Musketeers, Milky Way, and Snickers Bars really just the same thing?
First, some history.
All three candy bars are created and manufactured by Mars, Incorporated. In addition to these three, Mars Inc is the proud producer of M&Ms, Twix, Mars Bars, and many more. However, it was the creation of the Milky Way bar in 1923 by Mars, Inc founder, Forrest Mars, that put the company on the map.
Frank Mars, his son, shared “an off-the-cuff idea …[with] his father of covering a chocolate malted filling with a hard chocolate coating resulted in the creation of the Milky Way. A nougat center candy to which Frank had added caramel. In 1924, the first year the bar was marketed, its sales reached $800,000.” This was quite impressive for the time. (Side note: Milky Way is not named after our galaxy, as I had long thought. It’s named is derived from malted milkshakes, a popular dessert drink which shares a similar taste as chocolate bar.) Riding off the success of the Milky Way, “Frank Mars invented the Snickers bar in 1930 and the 3 Musketeers in 1932.”
So, we now have a timeline for the bars creation.
According to Mars’ official website, these are the main ingredients for the current Milky Way Bars:
MILK CHOCOLATE (SUGAR, COCOA BUTTER, SKIM MILK, CHOCOLATE, LACTOSE, MILKFAT, SOY LECITHIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR)
CORN SYRUP
SUGAR
HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL OIL AND/OR PALM OIL
SKIM MILK, LESS THAN 2% — MILKFAT
COCOA POWDER PROCESSED WITH ALKALI
MALTED BARLEY
LACTOSE
SALT, EGG WHITES, CHOCOLATE, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR
For Snickers, the recipe is as follows:
MILK CHOCOLATE (SUGAR, COCOA BUTTER, CHOCOLATE, SKIM MILK, LACTOSE, MILKFAT, SOY LECITHIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR)
PEANUTS
CORN SYRUP
SUGAR
PALM OIL
SKIM MILK
LACTOSE
PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL
SALT, EGG WHITES, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR
Finally, we arrive at the recipe for 3 Musketeers. (Side note, the candy bar was original produced with three candy coverings in one package: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. This is why it was originally called Three Musketeers. However, after World War II, only the full chocolate bar was produced. Despite this, the name never changed.) These bars are made up of the following:
MILK CHOCOLATE (SUGAR, CHOCOLATE, COCOA BUTTER, SKIM MILK, LACTOSE, MILKFAT, SOY LECITHIN),
SUGAR
CORN SYRUP
HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL OIL AND/OR PALM OIL
LESS THAN 2% — COCOA POWDER PROCESSED WITH ALKALI
SALT, EGG WHITES, ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL FLAVORS
All three recipes have a very similar base. In fact the chocolate used in all three is virtually identical. All three also have their share of corn syrup, sugar, skim milk, lactose, salt, egg whites and artificial flavors.
Only one or two key ingredients make the bars different from one another. For example, Snickers have peanuts where as the other two do not, and Milky Way is the only one with malted barley present. 3 Musketeers main distinguishing feature is the absence of both of these ingredients.
By going through the history of the bars creation and their ingredients, I feel like I answered my question: All three bars are products of Mars Inc, and it seems that the original Milky Way creation in 1923 was iterated on to create the other bars in the early 30s. In this light, it kind of reminds me of how Apple iterated on the iPod in the mid-2000s.
So, Are 3 Musketeers, Milky Way, and Snickers Bars really just the same thing? There’s no real official comment from Mars, Inc, but after research, I wouldn’t say that they are. The bars are more like siblings. They have similar origins, but it’s their subtle differences that make them unique and create a different taste in our mouths.
And with that, I hope this has generated your own interest and inquiry into the topic.
