M&Ms is dropping blue and brown from the line-up, here's why - News + Articles

Jun 29, 2026

Why are there so many songs about rainbows? Because this one just lost a couple of lines.

There’s been a lot of noise in the chocolate-news sphere of late about M&M’s dropping two colours from its iconic rainbow-coloured candy collection. Naturally, collective panic ensued. Had Pauline Hanson somehow infiltrated the Mars Wrigley board of directors? Was chocolate slowly being sapped of all hope and joy like the rest of us? Or was this just another marketing stunt to capture a split-second of our ever-diminishing attention spans?

As it turns out: no (phew!), no and kind of.

According to M&M’s, chocolate is better in colour…

Why is M&M’s losing two colours?

M&M’s is temporarily removing blue and brown from the line-up as part of its transition from artificial to natural food dyes. This is all part of RFK Jnr’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement, which is gunning to replace all artificial food dyes with natural ones in popular snacks. Because if you really want to make your country healthy, you should encourage them to eat highly processed junk foods that need to be dyed in order to look edible.

But before you start to stockpile all the blue and brown M&M’s in that giant bucket you keep stashed on top of the fridge so the kids can’t find it, don’t stress: this change is only occurring in special packs that will be available exclusively online through Amazon US. The mini chocolate treats – which come in red, yellow, green, blue, orange and brown – will continue to be available in all colours everywhere else.

M&M’s — Welcome to your brave new world.

Why is M&M’s dropping blue and brown?

M&M’s decided not to include blue and brown, as they were too tricky to replicate naturally at a commercial scale. In fact, Mars’ senior director of ingredient transformation – who’s also known internally as the company’s ‘chief colour officer’ called it the hardest thing she’s ever done in her whole career.

To get a natural blue, food scientists use spirulina (a type of algae). But this can generate a very thick, viscous, foamy mixture. When the M&M’s team tried to run it through their machinery, it gunked up the works and left their pipes in a right old state. Spirulina is also super-expensive, BTW.

In an interesting twist, to get the exact shade of M&M brown, the colour blue is also needed. So brown had to be left on the cutting-room floor, too. But Mars says that they will have blue and brown back in the mix, naturally dyed, by 2028.

In another interesting twist, green stayed even though it needed spirulina. M&M’s was feeling mighty frustrated by this stage, and was just going to go with red, orange and yellow. However, senior executives felt that “the sunset vibes were too strong”. Great feedback. We’re sure that went down a treat. Luckily, making green only required a microscopic amount of spirulina combined with turmeric, which saved their machinery (and likely their sanity by this stage).

Do different colour M&M’s have different flavours?

While our brains are hard-wired to associate different colours with different flavours, all M&M’s have the exact same hardened sugar shell. So while your brain might say “Ooh, lime” when it sees a green M&M, it’s really just lying to you.