M&M's began when Forrest Mars Sr. saw soldiers in the Spanish Civil War eating Smarties, a British candy with a hard sugar shell that protects the chocolate. He patented his own hard-panning process in 1941, and the US Army became the first big customer, since soldiers could carry chocolate in tropical heat. Production began that year in Newark, New Jersey, using chocolate under an arrangement with Hershey, which then controlled rationed chocolate. During the war the candies were sold exclusively to the military. Mars has announced a version made without artificial dyes starting in August 2026, timed to the brand's 85th anniversary.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.