Marathon chocolate caramel
1974 wrapper
Marathon was a candy bar sold by M&M / Mars. On his blog CollectingCandy.com, Jason Liebig recounts how the Marathon wrappers sparked his interest in collecting candy ephemera:
Introduced in 1973, it was last seen on shelves in 1981 or 1982. So this bar was a part of my candy life from kindergarten into Junior High, years when candy typically makes a big impression. […] Marathon’s striking red-orange wrapper and wave-filled logo remained a powerful memory, long into adulthood.
For those that don’t know or are too young to remember, the Marathon was a flat braid of chocolate-covered caramel. It was delicious, and the wrapper was a thing of beauty and disputable subtext. On the back of the wrapper was an 8-inch ruler – a fact I will move past without comment.
Jason followed up with a three-part series about the Marathon wrappers, the commercials, and the discovery of original 1970s TV prop Marathon bars, making him the No. 1 authority on the subject. All that’s left to add is the name of the typeface: It’s Eightball, an uncredited design that was released sometime before VGC’s 1972 catalog.
1976 wrapper
Newspaper ad, December 16, 1973.
