History
The product was first created by Mars Limited in the UK in 1967 at the
company’s factory in Slough which is also where the current Mars Bar was
invented by Forrest Mars Sr. in the 1930s. In the
years after its creation the Twix candy bar was released throughout Western Europe
under the name Raider.
The Twix candy bar was finally made available in 1979 in the US sporting a
gold colored wrapper with orange text, it was branded as the Twix Cookie Bar.
Advertising for the Twix was always tastefully photographed with one of the bars
snapped in two and the caramel from one piece curling out slightly to show how
soft and chewy the candy was. The first ads in the US adopted the slogan
“Chocolate, Caramel and a Surprising Cookie Crunch!”
A period of continuing sales through the early 1980s would have suggested
Mars, Inc were happy with the performance of their Twix brand, in fact the candy
bar was not performing quite as well at retail and the hunt was on for a
replacement or improvement which in 1983 came about with the peanut butter Twix.
The caramel was removed and a soft peanut butter blend was added. The market
reacted very positively following the news innovation to the chocolate candy
bar.
During 1991, Mars rebranded the Raider chocolate bar to Twix in line with
their global branding but the decision meets with public disrespect. An
advertising campaign with the slogan “Raider heißt jetzt Twix … sonst ändert
sich nix” roughly translated as Raider is now Twix, nothing else changes. Public
reaction saw the change as a cynical attempt to revive sales of an old product
by rebranding it. It was so much that the name Twix has become synonymous with
cynical rebranding.
The change of name from Raider to Twix resulted in substandard marketing, at
least there was criticism of the Twix advertising campaigns which continued
through most of the 1990s and into the new millennium. It happened over
perceptions that the Twix brand was being marketed at young teenage men with
greedy sexual appetites at the expense of women. Several women’s movements described Twix
advertisements as being similar to beer ads in that young men unlucky in the
love stakes would be able to attract gorgeous women simply by eating a Twix
candy bar.
New flavors and varieties brought to the market included cookies and cream,
fudge, dark chocolate, white chocolate, coffee, orange flavor, mint slice,
triple chocolate and most recently Twix Java and Twix Cappuccino.
As part of the strengthening of the Twix brand and Mars, Inc’s overall
product development, Twix was chosen during the early 1990s as one of the brands
that would be reworked to compete in the ice cream space with frozen Twix bars
making their way into supermarket and mall ice cream vendor ice boxes.
Source: http://www.bighistory.net/history-of-twix-candy-bar/