Revels Treat Bag - 71g

A Mars packet, but not a tidy origin tale

There is no product-level origin story supplied here for Revels, so it would be cheeky to pretend we can give you the grand founding moment of this exact bag. What we can say is that Revels sits within the Mars confectionery family, and Mars has a properly tangled sweet-shop history of its own. Franklin Clarence Mars was born in Minnesota in 1883 and learned to hand-dip chocolate from his mother while recovering from a mild case of polio. In 1920 he moved to Minneapolis, founded Mar-O-Bar Co., and began making chocolate candy bars. The Milky Way, introduced in 1923 and originally made in Minneapolis, gave the company its early commercial lift.

How Mars became familiar on British shelves

The British Mars story matters because it explains why the name feels so at home in UK confectionery aisles rather than like something simply imported from America. In 1932, Forrest Mars Sr., Frank’s son, moved to Britain and set up Mars Limited in Slough, Berkshire. There he produced the first Mars bar, adjusting the idea for European tastes. The Slough operation became central to Mars in Britain, and over time the company’s UK presence helped build a shelf full of names that British shoppers came to recognise without needing to read the packet twice.

The British habit of knowing sweets by instinct

Revels belong to that very British category of sweets people remember by behaviour as much as flavour. They were the sort of thing passed round at the cinema, tipped into a bowl at Christmas, or bought from a newsagent when you had just enough change and no strong plan. The fun was never just chocolate. It was the tiny moment of suspense. Someone would pull a face, someone else would claim they liked the one everyone avoided, and the packet would still end up empty. British confectionery has always had room for this sort of nonsense, and frankly it is better for it.

Why the modern packet still works

The modern Revels bag is straightforward: a compact 71g pack of assorted chocolate sweets from Mars. It does not need a speech. Its appeal is in the familiar format and the slightly daft guessing game that comes with it. Mars as a company has grown far beyond its early chocolate-bar beginnings, but with products like this, the corporate scale fades into the background. What matters is the packet in your hand and the fact that everyone seems to have an opinion about which centre should be approached with caution.

A small taste of home, with consequences

For British expats in Canada, Revels can land with surprising force. Not because they are grand or fancy, but because they are ordinary in exactly the right way. They belong to corner shops, office drawers, family parcels, and those oddly specific cravings that appear years after you thought you had become sensible. A bag of Revels is not just chocolate, it is a reminder that British sweets are often at their best when they are slightly peculiar. The Great British Shop knows there is comfort in that, even if the next one is the one you were hoping to avoid.