Bring back tan M&Ms

"They once had a contest, But what did they do?

They replaced the good tan ones, with inferior blue ..."-Annonymous

This verse describes the fateful year of 1995 - the year the Mars Corp. replaced the tan M&M with blue.

According to mms.com, the official site of the M&Ms candy, 10 million people voted to replace tan with blue.

I ask who are those 10 million people?

Along with many other great aspects of our generation's childhood, including Transformers, Fraggle Rock and Lite Brite, the tan M&M has succumbed to an old time.

For the kids who thought that they could taste the difference between colors of M&Ms, like me, this desertion of the tan M&M, a favorite of many, was and still is devastating.

Obviously, a significant amount of time has passed since the death of tan, so some may ask why should I or anyone else care now?

Recently I stumbled across a design-your-own M&M Web site. Mars Corp. will help anyone design their own mix of colors for holidays or special occasions and let you personalize their famous candies.

They boast 21 different color options including gold, maroon, cream, aqua green and silver.

They also offer two options for many of the colors such as blue and dark blue, green and dark green even pink and dark pink.

Guess what they don't offer as an option in their 21 colors?

You got it - tan, or light brown.

This means I can't even special order my beloved tan M&Ms.

Hoping I wasn't alone in the world, I did a Google search for "tan M&Ms" which produced 113 hits.

I was pleased to see the abundance of those who mourn the loss of the tan M&M.

The first Web site was a petition to bring back tan with signatures from 441 people, many of which included entertaining messages.

"We have experienced a tan genocide!" wrote one supporter of the petition.

A surprising message read "we have created a small group at Penn State that supports the tan M&M and wishes to stop the tyranny of the blue."

Many of them expressed that they were tricked into voting thinking the blue would be added, not used as a replacement for tan.

Another site suggested that every time anti-blues purchase a bag of M&Ms they remove the blue ones, place them in an envelope and mail them to the customer service department of the Mars Corp.

That definitely would make them pay attention, if done correctly.

When I queried some supporters of blue M&Ms, they responded that the blue adds a little bit more color to the candy.

It just looks more colorful, they say.

The tan was too much brown.

To those people I ask, isn't there enough representation of bold color in the pack with lego yellow, red, green and orange?

Why do we need blue?

Or, more importantly, why can't we have tan?

To me, the tan represented those who could think outside the box - those creative souls who valued a not so widely used color for its addition to the pack.

All of you who believe in clapping for Tinkerbell, Skip-Its, Glow Worms and Carebears, I urge you to fight for the reinstatement of tan M&Ms everywhere.

Write the Mars Corp., call them, send them e-mails, let them know blue just can't cut it anymore without tan at least there right next to it.

"To save my own self, If I cannot save others,

From blues, on behalf, of our tan M&M brothers" -Annonymous.