Marathon (Snickers) commercial from 1977 featuring Keith Chegwin.

The original Snickers was formerly sold as Marathon in the UK and Ireland. More recently, Snickers Marathon branded energy bars have been sold in some markets. In May 2008, Mars, Incorporated was rumored to temporarily re-launch the Marathon bar.

 

History

In 1930, the Mars family introduced its second product, Snickers, named after one of their favorite horses.

In the early 2000s, deep fried chocolate bars (including Snickers, and Mars bars) became popular at U.S. state fairs and also in Australia, although they had been a local speciality in some Scottish fish and chip shops since at least the mid-1990s in spite of containing over 850 calories per bar when prepared in this fashion.

In 2006, the UK Food Commission highlighted celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson’s “Snickers pie”, which contained five Snickers bars among other ingredients, suggesting it was one of the un-healthiest desserts ever; one slice providing “over 1,250 calories from sugar and fat alone”, more than half a day’s requirement for an average adult. The pie had featured on his BBC Saturday programme some two years earlier and the chef described it as an occasional treat only.^[9]

Renaming in UK and Ireland

In the UK and Ireland, it was originally sold under the name “Marathon”. Mars standardised many of its global brand names and the name was changed to Snickers in 1990. For 18 months before the name changed, the words “Internationally known as Snickers” were printed on the side of the Marathon wrapper. Following the name change, the bar moved from being Britain’s ninth most popular bar to the third most popular.

Info taken from Wikipedia