Crisis in Candyland: Melting the Chocolate Shell of the Mars Family Empire

Rating:
Summary: Out of this world
Review: I must confess that I read this book because I love
Milky Ways. I've tried chocolate in Germany, Austria,
Italy, and Denmark, but I have found nothing that equals
the Milky Way.

I still love Milky Ways, but, after reading
this book, I am not so enchanted with the family that created this wonderful product. Indeed, the creatures from Mars are very strange according to Jan Pottker, who specializes in writing about famous people.

Pottker traces the history of the family that brought us
Milky Way and a handful of the other most popular chocolate
candies (Snickers, M&Ms) of all time. Along the way, we learn about the sour business that is chocolate making.

Pottker's story begins with Frank Mars, who, as a child stricken with polio, loved to watch his mother make candy. After a slew of hard times and many failures, he invented the Milky Way in 1923, and he began to make his fortune.

But it was his son, Forrest Mars, who built the company into a major player in the world of chocolate candy. Pottker depicts Forrest as an exacting, brutal, miserly, and strangely religious man who probably ruined his children's psyche. His own character was forged out of much conflict with, and neglect from, Frank Mars. Forrest retired from the company in 1973, and then headed to Henderson, Nevada to make Ethel M candies, named so in honor of his mother.

Forrest's two sons, Forrest Jr. and John managed to overtake
Hershey as the biggest candy maker in America by the 1970s.
Their sister, Jackie, moved from a life of leisure to helping them run the company.

The children of these three siblings are given dim prospects for equaling or surpassing the success of past generations.

The book has everything needed in a good novel. Sex, money, and power. And for good measure, Pottker throws in more power. Yes, the whole company seems to be one big power kick.

It is difficult, of course, to verify a lot of Pottker's information. Authors that purport to bring us information from nebulous sources are always selling their own credibility to readers. One repeated slip is the reference (pp. 8, 117, 228) to the disgraced president of American University as Richard Berezden instead of Richard BERENDZEN. Figures about sales and assets are rarely documented precisely. This is surprising, given
that the author has a Ph.D. from Columbia University, according
to her book cover.

Those interested in a relatively better documented book on the Mars family may also want to read Joël Glen Brenner's The Emperors of Chocolate (2000), which focuses on the battle between Hershey and Mars for the world's sweet tooth. Brenner is not as good at telling a coherent and sequential story as Pottker, and Brenner repeats some of the more amusing anecdotes about the Mars family found in Pottker's book (though Brenner never refers to Pottker). But Brenner, at least, does attempt to provide a semblance of more precise documentation.

In sum, Crisis in Candyland is a good read (and to be read with much caution) for those interested in what to me are the makers of the best chocolate bar of all time (the Milky Way).