I can definitely remember dark brown, red, yellow, green, tan.

Growing up, Bridget Lancaster's mother would sometimes put out a clear fishbowl of multicolored M&Ms.

Bridget, who's the host of the podcast Proof, from America's Test Kitchen,

didn't have a favorite color, but she had a least favorite one.

I probably separated them out and gave them to somebody else, you know, the tan M&Ms.

You set aside your tan for somebody else to eat because you didn't want them.

Yeah.

I mean, who wants tan food?

Eventually, even Eminem didn't want tan food.

In 1995, it held a contest to replace the tan color with pink, purple, or blue.

And blue won.

Within the next few years, Gatorade, Heinz ketchup, peeps, and more would be selling Blue products too.

But the M&M contest in particular generated a huge amount of attention.

We both remember it.

The year it happened, Bridget got a pack of the new M&Ms, now with Blue, in her stocking.

I was anti-blue Eminem, I have to say.

I was anti-change. But, you know, assuming as somebody says, no, you can't have them anymore, all of a sudden I want them. Can I tell you my Eminem story? Please. Tell me your M&M story. I was in high school or middle school. It was like, I think there's like four of us wearing our P coats. It's very like the 90s. And we bought a pack of blue M&Ms that going to have this new color blue. We knew we were doing that. And we took, we bought it. And one of the girls

like pours it into her hand. And we knew it was coming. And we all genuinely shrieked. Shrieked

in joy. Like just it was so like the marketing campaign worked so well. We were overcome.

And then we still were, like, what a gorgeous Eminem. Blue.

This is Decodering, a show about cracking cultural mysteries.

I'm Willa Paskin.

...