Boomers Love This Classic Chocolate Candy That Was Launched In 1954

From malted milk balls to hard candy that's capable of pulling the filling out of your teeth, kids grew up eating some pretty iconic sweet treats during the '50s and '60s. But the one treat that baby boomers love the most is a classic chocolate candy that was launched in 1954 and is still going strong: Peanut M&M's.

Peanut M&Ms did not fare too well when we ranked 11 M&M's flavors. However, according to YouGov, an online resource that measures the popularity of products by conducting surveys across millions of consumers every day, Peanut M&M's are by far the most famous and most popular candy among boomers. An astounding 98% of baby boomers who participated in the survey about the most popular candies said they knew about Peanut M&M's, while 82% had a positive opinion about the brand. In comparison to other brands, only 59% said they liked Mentos, and even fewer 43% liked Toblerone.

These numbers are from the third quarter of 2026. The candy that came closest to Peanut M&M's in terms of popularity during this period was the gourmet chocolate brand Godiva, which 73% of boomers said they liked. According to YouGov, the popularity scores are calculated based on the spread of responses across four options — really like, like, don't like, and really don't like.

Peanut M&M's were the second variety of M&M's ever released. Unlike the original milk chocolate beads coated in candy, these have a peanut as the core, followed by a layer of milk chocolate, and finally a thin coating of crunchy candy on the outside. Because of the peanut in the middle, these are shaped differently from regular, button-shaped M&M's. When they first hit the market, they only came in one color: light brown, perhaps to match the shade of the peanut inside. It was only six years after the 1954 launch that yellow, green, and red M&M's made it into the mix — until the red ones mysteriously vanished for a decade. 

Peanut M&M's have been a consistently popular candy, according to YouGov, with ratings among boomers holding steady well over 75% for most of the last four years. Peanut M&M's are also loved by younger generations, including Millennials, even if the candy's overall popularity and fame drops marginally as the consumer gets younger.

The love for these treats isn't just quantitative, it's qualitative too, with Peanut M&M's finding a lot of praise online. "Top tier candy. If I was stranded on a desert island and could only choose 1 candy to have, it would be peanut M&M's," one fan wrote on Reddit. Others suggested getting creative with them, too. "Crushed up and mixed into vanilla ice cream, they're the best!" commented another Redditor.