At age 13 I pitched a candy idea to Mars Bars as part of a school project to write business letters. I loved Snickers at the time but was tired of unwrapping so many fun-size ones from Halloween. I told them something like - “you should just put the fun-size candies in a big resealable bag, so people can eat as much as they want without dealing with the wrappers. You can call them unwrapped minis. All you have to do is create new packaging and re-use the fun-size bars!”

I found the CEO’s corporate address somewhere online and sent the letter to him, never to hear back.

Then, around 8 months later, I saw my first ad for Snickers Unwrapped Bites on TV and freaked out. They had immediately implemented my idea, which as a kid was amazing, but I’ll never forgive them for not writing back. Especially because none of my friends ever believed me.

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earlyriser 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

8 months later sounds too short to have taken your idea, I'm guessing launching a product at Mars scale takes like 2 years. This is probably why the always say they cannot take ideas sent by external people... but on the other hand if this came from the CEO, probably could be fast tracked. So 80/20. Do you remember who was the CEO?

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dhosek 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Only vaguely related, but the Mars family lived in neighboring River Forest and the factory was just north of me in Galewood (it is shutting down or already shut down and the property is planned for redevelopment, but the neighboring Metra station is named “Mars” which means that in Chicago you can take a commuter train to Mars). Sadly the Mars estate was apparently torn down to be replaced with a pair of bland McMansions.

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hinkley 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s a shame. Annhueser Busch turned one of their estates into a tourist trap. But you couldn’t pet the horses, which is literally the only reason an 11 year old would want to go near a brewery.

	▲	kennyloginz 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Grant’s Farm? I always enjoyed it as a kid, trains and weird animals.

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IAmBroom 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Silly person, Mars is a city in PA, not a train station in Chi-town.

The Moon is located just east of the Pittsburgh Airport.

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1980phipsi 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's packaging an existing product differently than a fully new product. Would still require either new machines or adapting existing machines for it.

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MattGrommes 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I wonder if they have a policy about not accepting ideas / replying to people don't think their idea was stolen. I know TV shows have that policy so nobody can accuse them of plagiarizing their script idea.

	▲	hinkley 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And yet we get copycat movies all the time where clearly someone stole an elevator pitch or eavesdropped at a coffee shop and ran with it.

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EGreg 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I sent steve jobs (sjobs@apple.com) an email saying that MacOS should have an unspoofable dialog for the system password authorization, same way they have for DRM videos etc. I also suggested the user could choose a secret phrase or image to be displayed in the dialog during system setup. Never heard back. This was when Steve was alive and in charge. And to this day anyone can spoof the system password dialog and steal the system password…

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zadikian 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I emailed him in 7th grade asking if Pages could automate bibliographies. In hindsight, EasyBib was good enough.

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krackers 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>And to this day anyone can spoof the system password dialog and steal the system password

TouchID solves this in a sense.

	▲	airstrike 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Make it look like the TouchID isn't working and switch to password mode, boom. User password obtained

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mcintyre1994 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I always wonder about how easy that would be to spoof, because it seems like it'd be trivial.

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nine_k 4 hours ago | parent [-]

...but obtaining that phrase may be nontrivial.

	▲	mcintyre1994 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sorry, I mean the current implementation seems trivial to spoof. I agree that doing something like your suggestion would make me feel much more comfortable about those logins.

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niklasrde 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You mean what Vista introduced?

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foobarian 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I pitched a "crit Doritos" idea to Pepsi just recently, but sadly they haven't implemented it :-)

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cm2012 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am sorry to say this, but there is a zero percent chance your letter influenced their product roadmap in an 8 month timeline.