Tucker Carlson Is, Once Again, Mad About ‘Woke M&Ms’

Around this time last year, Tucker Carlson devoted a segment on his show to a bizarre rant about how the cartoon M&Ms used to advertise the candy had been redesigned to be “less sexy,” with the Green M&M swapping her boots for sneakers.

The year is now 2023, and Carlson is, once again, mad at M&Ms. Time, it seems, is a flat circle.

Why is Tucker Carlson mad at M&Ms now?

Mars Wrigley has debuted a new promotional wrapper for M&Ms that features three female candy characters, and introduces a new Purple M&M along with Green and Brown. Mars Wrigley has announced they would be donating some of the profits from these M&M sales to organizations that support a variety of professional pursuits by women.

The official M&Ms Twitter account announced the new package using outdated “girlboss” language, writing: “We’re celebrating women across the country who are flipping the status quo!”

Of course, it’s just a silly PR stunt capitalizing on the culture war, probably attempting to repeat the explosion of media attention sparked by the “less sexy” M&Ms from last year; after all, there is no louder, cheaper megaphone than a right-wing culture warrior yelling about “wokeness.”

On air, Carlson uttered the phrase, “Woke M&Ms have returned.” Surely, Carlson is starting to regret his life choices that led him to this point.

Carlson continued, “The green M&M got her boots back, but apparently is now a lesbian, maybe? And there’s also a plus-sized, obese purple M&M, so we’re gonna cover that, of course.” Carlson added, a bit sadly: “Because that’s what we do.”

The “obese” Purple M&M that Carlson is referring to is oval-shaped (and, ironically, somewhat slimmer than her circular companions), because she is a peanut M&M, rather than some kind of body-positivity icon made of chocolate.

Meanwhile, Carlson’s speculation about the sexuality of the Green M&M (clearly his favorite), is based on an old, viral tweet from 2015 that depicted Green and Brown holding hands, with the caption, “It’s rare Ms. Brown and I get to spend time together without some colorful characters barging in.”

It feels like we’re at a point in the culture war where right-wingers are circling the drain, firing blanks and running on empty fumes. Does anyone really care if brands co-opt stale social justice rhetoric to sell candy? Is Carlson doing this ironically now, or do his viewers actually feel threatened by vaguely queer-coded chocolates?

Will marketing campaigns keep trying to “trigger” conservative influencers, in the hope that the outrage machine never runs out of gas? This doesn’t seem sustainable!

The “woke M&Ms” story comes in the wake of the last ridiculous culture war “controversy,” which saw right-wing influencers outraged by a goofy comic book that depicted the Joker as pregnant, after he falls victim to a curse, and vomits out a magical mud clone. The story, a tribute to the silly Silver Age of comics, was viewed as a trans allegory (it wasn’t), but that didn’t stop the outrage from flaring up. Now, we’re back onto M&Ms.

Conservative influencer Nick Adams also expressed outrage at the “woke M&Ms,” even more so than Tucker Carlson. I’m starting to suspect Adams might be doing a bit, a long-running piece of performance art, an absurd caricature of a culture warrior; the line between reality and satire for this kind of thing has become hopelessly blurred.

Adams made a series of increasingly emotional tweets about the “woke M&Ms.”

Adams even released a weird video in which he emphasizes how disturbing the feminist M&Ms are, and calls for “a complete and total boycott of all things Mars.” He also called for the same thing a few days ago for pregnant Joker, so these sternly-worded boycotts don’t seem to have much commitment behind them.

There are no shortage of calamities in the world right now, and yet, right-wing culture warriors seem to be fixated on children’s cartoons, comic books, and candy; it’s an almost enviable state of mind, where humanity’s biggest problem is “wokeness,” manifesting on a candy packet somewhere in the corner store.

For men like Carlson and Adams, the way Mars chooses to market candy isn’t just a mindless ad campaign; it’s as groundbreaking as Mars claims it to be.