Outside the Mars factory in Hackettstown, New Jersey, Kyle Busch’s No. 18 car is still on display. Mars Inc., the parent company of M&M’s, cut ties with Busch at the end of 2022. The car stayed. After Busch died on May 21, 2026, from pneumonia turning to sepsis at 41, that image stopped being a fun detail. Eddie Kalegi, a sports journalist, noticed it and had something to say.
“You’re still promoting this guy,” Kalegi said. “He has been the biggest ambassador for your company, whether you like it or not, over the last 20 years, and he is the reason so much merchandise has been purchased.”
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He came prepared. He held up an M&M’s clock he has owned since 2011, which never worked, still on his wall. He talked about a neighbor wearing a Kyle Busch M&M’s jacket, someone he had never even spoken to. His point was simple: Mars built real cultural reach through this man, and now they are standing in the way of honoring him.
“It seems like Mars is holding up this whole process because we could have so many awesome Kyle Busch throwback schemes,” Kalegi added. “Right now, it doesn’t look like they can happen because of Mars itself.”
From 2008 to 2022, Mars spent roughly $20 million a year sponsoring Busch’s No. 18 Toyota at Joe Gibbs Racing, the primary sponsor, for roughly 25 to 32 races per season. Kyle Busch won two championships under that deal, in 2015 and 2019, and 55 Cup races total.
“With 55 wins & 2 Cup titles together, we’ve built friendships that will last way past 2022,” Busch wrote on X in 2021.
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The car rotated brands all season: M&M’s, Skittles, Snickers, Starburst, taking turns on the hood. Busch’s “Rowdy” persona, paired with M&M’s “Candyman” branding, carried well past race fans.
Mars announced the split in December 2021. JGR president Dave Alpern gave the real reason: Mars “wants to try some new things, and no matter how big a brand is, they have a finite budget, so when you want to try something new, it has to come from somewhere else”. Mars Wrigley North America president Anton Vincent later put it more plainly: “There’s a lot of consumer interest and other passion points we need to get to”.
JGR spent close to a year hunting a replacement at that price and came up short, landing only a six-race Interstate Batteries deal, never a full-season sponsor. Left with an unsponsored car, Busch turned it down and moved to Richard Childress Racing ahead of 2023, ending 15 years at Gibbs.
When Busch passed, fans left bags of M&M’s candy at memorials outside Daytona International Speedway and RCR’s headquarters. M&M’s had called him “the Candyman” and thanked him for “15 incredible years” back in 2022. Since his death, the company has said nothing. A few weeks later, it blocked the one tribute fans actually wanted.
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Days before Lime Rock Park’s July ARCA race, Nitro Motorsports scrapped a planned tribute scheme for Thomas Annunziata’s No. 70, modeled on Busch’s 2019 championship car, after fans accused Mars of blocking it. A team rep pointed only to a stalled “approval process.” Mars hasn’t said a word.
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