Friday, September 29, 2006

What does that Mars code mean?

As I’m often found eating expired (or at least past prime) candy, it was a wonderful comment on the Skittles Fresh Mint post that breaks the code on the package of Mars products. Reader Dave posted the code in the comments and I’m putting it here for everyone to use.

Here’s how do figure out when that candy was made:

The date of packaging is within the first three digits of the code - the first digit is the last number of the year and the next two are the week of the year.

So, the Milky Way bar I have in front of me says:
620AB02

That means it was made in the 20th week of 2006 - or sometime between May 14th to the 21st. Pretty fresh.

The Milky Way Dark I have says:
614EFELZ02

That means it was made in the 14th week of 2006 - or sometime between April 2nd to the 9th. Not bad.

This seems to work with Canadian Mars products too, as this is what the Mars Dark says:
535CFELZ03

That means it was made the 35th week of 2005 ... hmm, sometime between August 26th and September 2nd. That’s a little old. But I it must have been stored properly as it was still fresh and tasty.

The week of the year thing is a little tricky unless you have a payroll calendar nearby, so a quick and easy way to approximate the month is to divide the week by four (it gets less reliable the higher the number because there’s usually a fraction of a week left in the month).

The UK Mars bar I have simply has an expiration date on it (12-11-06). I’m not sure if that’s the European date style (November 12th, 2006) or the American (December 11, 2006) but at least neither of them have passed yet. 

Related Candies

  1. What does that Hershey’s code mean?
  2. What does that Nestle code mean?

POSTED BY Cybele AT 12:50 pm     MarsExpiration CodesCandyNews

Comments
  1. is it okay to eat expired chocolates?
    a week or a month expired maybe?

    Comment by KAREN on 11/09/06 at 7:29 pm

     

  2. I know I’m late to the game here… but some info for you guys:
    I bought a 30 count variety pack of Mars candy bars.
    Code Date: 737E44GA38 20:52
    Best Before: 09/2008

    So there’s about 1 year shelf life on these things. Hope this is useful!

    Comment by Brian on 1/24/08 at 2:51 pm

     

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Next entry: What does that Nestle code mean?

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