The History of the Mars Marathon Bar / 1973 -1981

Are you ever craving the perfectly crafted candy bar, with twists of creamy milk chocolate covering a sweet caramel center? WELL TOO BAD! Okay sorry to come on so strong, you can still enjoy candy like this, just not in its original form. 

You may wonder what I am talking about so let me get to the point. One of America’s long lost candies of the 20th century is the Marathon bar. Introduced in 1973 by the Mars Candy Company, the Marathon bar became a staple in American culture in the ‘70s. Measuring in at a whopping 8 inches and enrobed in a bright red wrapper, this oversized candy bar was almost a foot of braided chocolatey, caramel goodness. Groovy right?

The packaging was labeled with ruler marks, a sneaky little marketing technique that basically said “hey kids look how big this candy bar is.” Due to its abnormal size, this candy bar had a hard time fitting on regularly stocked shelves so it usually had its own display, one more thing to make it more memorable and more appealing to the kids. A bigger bar for the same amount of dough? Yes, please!  Who said that size doesn't matter? 

The bar got its name because it was known to take a long time while eating it. The caramel was chewy and would take a long time to break down. Taking on this bar wasn’t a sprint, it was a full-blown, for lack of a better word, marathon. But alas, its time was cut short and the Marathon bar was discontinued in 1981 after a glorious 8-year run.

The Marathon bar just couldn’t pull in the revenue like the other chocolate candy Mars sold, so it had to be pulled from shelves. Many believe it was because of its strange structure. Maybe people just didn’t enjoy chewing on candy shaped like DNA? It was pretty similar to the other bars the company made, so with a heavy heart and sore jaws from chewing, that the Marathon bar crossed the finish line and hung up its running shoes. 

It isn’t all bad news though. Cadbury, a company from the UK, created their own take on the Marathon bar. They call it the Curly Wurly because of its twisted structure. The bar isn’t sold in the US, due to the short success of the Marathon bar.

Whether you were a fan of the Marathon bar or not, you can’t deny the lasting impression it made on the candy world for only being on shelves for about 8 years. The Marathon bar still has its own cult following, that hopes one day the bar will make its comeback and take a few more laps around the track. I know that I would be happy to try this chewy, twisted candy bar with an interesting history and, to this day, it remains one of the most requested and revered discontinued candy bars.