If Republicans manage to regain control over the Senate and presidency in 2024, Seth Meyers has a pretty good guess as to what their first piece of legislation will be. And yes, it will involve getting rid of “deeply unappealing and totally androgynous” candy.
During his “A Closer Look” segment on Monday night’s “Late Night,” Meyers focused largely on Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his anticipated bid for the presidency in 2024. According to Meyers, “DeSantis’ main focus as governor has been using the power of the government to fight so-called wokeism which, as far as I can tell, he can’t even define.”
So, Meyers broke down what he thinks the term means, based on how it’s been implemented by DeSantis and other conservative pundits and politicians.
“It’s basically just a collection of petty grievances about meaningless culture war issues like gender neutral Potato Head dolls, or M&Ms not wearing sexy clothes anymore — a thing they, on purpose, say out loud all the time,” Meyers explained, taking a moment to mock. “If you accidentally said you thought the green M&M was hot in fourth grade, you’d be teased about it until you graduated high school.”
And, remembering the outrage surrounding those M&Ms and their outfits, Meyers guessed that conservatives would immediately create and sign legislation to prevent future changes, if they were to take control.
“If Republicans win it all in 2024, I’m sure their first act right out of the gate will be a law requiring the green M&M to wear full BDSM gear,” he joked.
For those who don’t remember — or simply burned it from your brains on purpose — in January 2022, Mars Inc., the manufacturers of M&Ms, announced that its candy character mascots would be updated to be more inclusive and reflect its “global commitment to creating a world where everyone feels they belong and society is inclusive.”
Those changes included swapping the green M&M’s go-go boots for more sensible sneakers and lowering the brown M&M’s stilettos to block heels. And, as a result, conservative hosts including Tucker Carlson, Greg Gutfeld, and more absolutely lost their minds.
“M&Ms will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous,” Carlson said at the time. “Until the moment you wouldn’t want to have a drink with any one of them. That’s the goal. When you are totally turned off, we’ve achieved equity.”
To kick off 2023, Mars poked fun at that outrage themselves, announcing that Maya Rudolph would replace all the candy mascots ahead of the Super Bowl.
“In the last year, we’ve made some changes to our beloved spokescandies. We weren’t sure if anyone would notice. And we definitely didn’t think it would break the internet,” the company said in a statement. “But now we get it — even a candy’s shoes can be polarizing. Which was the last thing M&M’S wanted since we’re all about bringing people together.”
So, they “decided to take an indefinite pause from the spokescandies,” replacing them with a “spokesperson America can agree on.”
You can watch Meyers’ full “A Closer Look” segment in the video above.
