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🍫 Want to build generational brand loyalty? Hershey and Mars convinced the U.S. military to distribute their products to millions of soldiers during WWII—for free—then waited for those veterans to become parents, proving the best marketing budget is someone else's.

Read time: 5 minutes | 1,175 words

STORY 

🍫 The Military Contract That Built Halloween's Candy Empire

While Mars and Hershey spent $18 million on advertising last Halloween, their real marketing genius happened 80 years ago—when they convinced the U.S. government that chocolate was a weapon of war.

World War II didn't just help these companies survive sugar rationing—it turned their products into symbols of American freedom that an entire generation would crave forever.

🚢 The Setup: When Japan Cut Off America's Sugar Supply

In April 1941, sugar became the first food item rationed in the United States. The reason was brutally simple: Japan's invasion of the Philippines eliminated one of America's primary sugar sources, and merchant ships that normally hauled sugarcane from Hawaii had been repurposed as military vessels.

"There was no way to get the sugarcane from Hawaii to the processing plants in the United States," says Elizabeth Aldrich, author of Casseroles, Can Openers, and Jell-O: American Food and the Cold War, 1947–1959.

Most candy companies should have been dead in the water. Hershey had other plans.

🎖️ The Deal: Making Chocolate "Taste A Little Better Than A Boiled Potato"

Hershey had been working with the military since 1937, when the government approached them with a specific request: create a calorically dense chocolate bar that could survive high temperatures and taste bad enough that soldiers wouldn't eat it immediately.

The result was the Ration D bar—dense as a brick, made with oat flour and cocoa butter, designed to be barely palatable. Chief chemist Sam Hinkle was literally instructed to make it "taste a little better than a boiled potato."

But here's the genius: just three bars packed 1,800 calories. Soldiers carried them onto Normandy Beach on D-Day, along with K Ration kits that also contained commercial Hershey's chocolate—the good stuff.

💰 The Pitch: "We're Keeping Morale Up For Our Soldier Boys"

As sugar became scarce, Mars and other candy companies went before Congress with a message that would make any modern brand manager weep with envy. According to Aldrich, Hershey explicitly told Congress they were "keeping the morale up for our soldier boys to remind them about the great American way."

The strategy was brutally effective. These Depression-era soldiers had grown up when food meant survival, not pleasure. The idea of America as a place where there was chocolate for everyone became a powerful motivator.

Chocolate wasn't just a treat—it represented abundance itself. And Hershey made sure Congress knew it.

🪂 The Results: Chocolate Became American Propaganda

The numbers tell the story of perhaps the most effective brand-building campaign ever executed:

• 23 tons of candy parachuted to German children during the Berlin Airlift

• One pilot became famous enough to earn the nickname "The Berlin Candy Bomber"

• Chocolate bars distributed to POWs in care packages and civilians in liberated towns

• M&Ms patented in 1941 and manufactured exclusively for the military until 1947

Mars had spotted candy with sugar shells during the Spanish Civil War and pitched the government on heat-resistant chocolate for the tropics. "That's where the whole idea of chocolate that melts in your mouth, not your hand comes from," Aldrich says.

🎃 The Long Game: Conditioning An Entire Generation

Here's what actually happened: An entire post-war generation grew up associating M&Ms and Hershey's bars with American abundance, freedom, and victory.

• 373 million Hershey's bars manufactured annually

• 25 million Reese's Peanut Butter Cups produced daily

• 70 million Hershey's Kisses churned out every single day

• 400 million M&Ms made daily

M&Ms overtook Reese's as the most popular Halloween candy last year. Both companies still spend around $9 million each on Halloween advertising. But that's just maintenance on a brand position built eight decades ago.

The Revelation?

Hershey and Mars didn't dominate Halloween through clever marketing or nostalgic packaging. They won by making the U.S. military their distribution channel and turning chocolate into American ideology. 

While other companies struggled with sugar rationing, they convinced the government that candy was essential to winning the war—and got exclusive access to supplies as a result.

The military didn't just help these companies survive WWII. It turned their products into symbols of freedom that would fill Halloween buckets for the next century. And every parent who buys a bag of M&Ms today is participating in a brand loyalty program that started on the beaches of Normandy.

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INSIGHT + ACTION

3 Lessons From The Candy Empire

The smartest move wasn't surviving sugar rationing—it was convincing the government your product was essential to national morale so they gave you exclusive access to supplies while competitors died.

1. Make Authority Figures Validate Your Product's Importance. Hershey and Mars didn't just lobby for sugar access—they reframed chocolate as a morale-sustaining tool for national security. Their pitch to Congress: "We're keeping the morale up for our soldier boys to remind them about the great American way." The government didn't just approve—they commissioned production and distributed it globally.

• Action: Stop selling features. Identify which authority figures (regulators, industry bodies, government agencies) can validate that your product serves a larger societal need. Get them to endorse or require it. Once authorities declare your product essential, customers assume it is.

2. Make Your Product Symbolize Values, Not Just Solve Problems. Chocolate wasn't marketed as calories or energy—it represented American abundance and freedom to Depression-era soldiers who grew up when food meant survival. Every Hershey's bar handed to a liberated child, every M&M dropped over Berlin, reinforced that symbolism. The product became ideology.

• Action: Identify the deeper value or identity your customers want to embody. Position your product as proof they've achieved that identity. People don't buy products—they buy evidence that they're the kind of person who owns that product.

3. Turn Your Customers Into Your Distribution Network. Hershey didn't pay for advertising—they made every soldier a brand ambassador. When veterans came home craving "the taste of victory" and gave their kids the same candy, each customer became a recruiter. When those kids became parents, they repeated the cycle.

• Action: Build in mechanisms that turn buyers into evangelists. Make your product giftable, shareable, or part of a tradition. The best distribution network is customers who have emotional reasons to spread your product themselves.

The bigger insight? The most valuable market position isn't built through advertising—it's built by associating your product with the customer's identity and values, then getting authority figures to validate that association. Hershey and Mars spent decades positioning chocolate as "American" rather than "delicious." When post-war prosperity hit, guess which candy Americans bought to prove their abundance?

They didn't dominate Halloween through better chocolate. They dominated because three generations were conditioned to associate their products with freedom, victory, and the American dream. Every Halloween purchase isn't about candy—it's about parents unconsciously repeating a ritual that proves they can afford abundance.

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