These boring monkeys will melt in your mouth: M&M’s is launching NFT-inspired candy

Bored Ape Yacht Club owners have used their permissive commercialization rights to reverse their Ethereum NFT images for everything from clothes to toys, alcohol packaging and restaurants. But now you actually can eat a few Bored Apes via limited edition M&Ms.

Candy brand Mars announced today that it has signed an agreement with Universal Music Group (UMG) label 22:22 to create limited edition M&M’s based on Kingship, the virtual band consists of Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club avatars.

“Consumers’ expectations of what they want from their favorite brands [have] changed, and at Mars we know we have to be more innovative than ever with a brand as culturally familiar as M&M’s,” said Mars Wrigley Global Vice President Jane Hwang, in a release.

The kingdom was revealed last November as a “metaverse band” made of NFTs owned by investor and entrepreneur Jimmy “j1mmy” McNelis. The 10:22PM label has created personalities around the Bored Ape illustrations and is developing original music for the group – modeled after the popular virtual band Gorillaz – who will perform concerts in metaverse worlds.

The band has also issued its own NFT “keycards” which provide exclusive benefits and access to holders. NFT owners got early access to buy M&M’s candies.

As part of the deal, Mars has released limited quantities of branded M&M’s chocolate candies, which have images of Bored Apes and Kingship iconography on them. All told, Mars will sell just 10,000 total packages of candy between gift boxes and gift jars.

Decrypt reached out to UMG representatives for additional details on the terms of the deal and how the partnership came together, but we did not immediately hear back.

An NFT is a blockchain token which acts as an ownership agreement to a virtual item, and can be used for things like profile pictures, artwork, and collectibles. As the NFT market has grown in scale, reaches 25 billion dollars worth of trade volume in 2021 alone, brands have increasingly come in via collaborations or their own digital collectibles.

Bored Ape Yacht Club is arguably the most popular project in space. Yuga Labs’ NFT collection has generated nearly $2.4 billion in secondary trading volume to date, per data from CryptoSlam. Combined with follow-up and spin-off projects, Bored Ape-related NFTs have collectively yielded more than $5.6 billion in secondary trading to date.

To be clear, this M&M deal is not a partnership with Yuga Labs or the actual Bored Ape Yacht Club brand. Instead, Bored Ape NFT holders can use their own images to create products and projects, and can license that artwork to brands if they want.

The royal deal with UMG’s 22:22 brand is one such example of a licensing deal, and this new Mars alliance adds a further layer. Bored Ape images have also been used for fast food restaurantsmarijuana and alcohol packaging, clothing, collectibles and more.

Bored Apes has also made a big impact in the music scene. In addition to Kingship, popular producer and musician Timbaland has released music around his own Bored Ape avatar, and launched a record label for other artists to do the same.

Rappers Eminem and Snoop Dogg have too released a music video together with their Monkeys – and Snoop it is open a dessert place themed around one of his monkeys.