really big innovations in marketing candy, in advertising candy, they were enormously influential and influential nationally.

- That stops bad breath.

- And candymakers in Chicago needed it because there was a lot of competition there.

- [Narrator] And no one embraced that competition quite like Forrest Mars.

But his rise to the top of the candy capital began with a rocky start.

- So Forrest is making his way through the world as a salesman.

His job is to plaster the streets of Chicago with posters for Camel cigarettes.

And you can imagine that did not go over very well with the local business community.

Forrest found himself arrested and put in jail.

Who comes to bail Forrest out, but his father, who he's never met.

- [Narrator] Forrest's father, Frank Mars, was a middling confectioner from Minneapolis.

- Frank Mars divorced Forrest's mother Ethel when Forrest Mars was a baby.

And Forrest grew up not knowing who his father was, not knowing that his father was a candymaker.

- [Narrator] Frank had generated modest sales with the whipped cream filled Mar-O-Bar, but had gone bankrupt twice in the early 20th century.

This impromptu family reunion would change the course of Mars history.

- That afternoon after being bailed out of jail, the two men sit down and they get to meet each other for the first time.

And Forrest Mars is drinking a malted milkshake.

And supposedly he says to his father, "Hey dad, if you really wanna make a great candy, take this flavor of malted milk and put it inside a candy bar."

And at that moment, that was the idea that led to his father going back to the candy company in Minneapolis and creating his most famous bar, the Milky Way.

- [Narrator] Fresh off the success of Milky Way, Frank invited Forrest to join the family business.

Together, they moved the Mars headquarters from Minneapolis to Chicago in 1929, and built a sprawling new factory on the west side.

- Well, if you look at it from the street side, it doesn't look like a factory at all.

- And that was all Forrest Mars's idea.

Secrecy was incredibly important to him, and he did not want anybody peering inside that factory.

So he proceeded to decorate the outside of the factory like a Spanish monastery.

- [Narrator] Mars christened the new factory by releasing what would become one of the biggest candy bar brands of all time, Snickers.

- It's got sweet, it's got sour, it's got salty, it's got bitter, and it's got umami.

If I was to pick, you know, one food that sort of was like the perfect consumer packaged good, Snickers would be up there.

- Well, I recently tasted a Snickers bar and it tasted exactly like the Snickers bar that I had in childhood.

And I must say I loved that concept of continuity, that there's something dependable that you can always go back to.

- [Narrator] The father and son duo continued their hot streak when they followed Milky Way and Snickers with 3 Musketeers.

- 3 Musketeers.

I mean, my mouth waters just saying the words.

♪ 3 Musketeers, the double chocolate treat ♪ - If somebody was looking for me at the paper and my desk was empty, somebody would say, "Oh yeah, it's two o'clock, he's at the candy machine.

He needs his 3 Musketeers."

- [Narrator] The new candy bars pushed annual sales to 32 million dollars in 1932.

But the lucrative run for the Mars Company came at a cost to the Mars family.

- Their relationship is very difficult because Forrest firmly believes that he's a better businessman than his father.

Forrest wanted to make it a global business.

Nobody is thinking global at this time.

For Frank, he has made an enormously successful company.

He's driving around in a Duesenberg, he's living the life, and here comes this upstart kid telling him, "You're not doing anything right."

So he offered Forest $50,000 and said, "Take the recipe for the Milky Way, I don't wanna have anything to do with you.

You take the money and make your own company."