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2 Candy M&m's® peanut
3 Salty Snack Planters® Peanuts
4 Pastry Big Texas Cinnamon Roll
5 Food White Castle Cheeseburger
6 Beverage Mountain Dew
7 New Product Salsitas Spicy salsa chips
History was made this year in the Automatic Merchandiser Magazine Readers' Choice awards. As of this year, the contest, now in its 14th year, no longer has an undefeated winner in any of the contested categories. This year, Masterfoods USA's M&M's® Peanut grabbed the top spot in the candy category, ending Snickers® Bar's reign as the undefeated champion in this category. Snickers® Bar was the only product to hold that honor.
Snicker's® Bar not only held the title as the contest's only undefeated product, but also the all-time highest vote winner.
M&M's® Peanut has come close to unseating Snicker's® Bar in previous competitions, and has often been the runner up winner in the candy category.
M&M's® Peanut has long been neck and neck with Snickers® Bar for the top spot in the candy/snack segment, according to the Vendscape data reported by Management Science Associates Inc. The Vendscape data is based on machine-level reports from more than 50,000 vending machines nationwide.
The most recent Vendscape report lists M&M's® Peanut holding the top share of the candy/snack segment at 3.96 percent, followed by Snicker's® Bar at 3.69 percent.
The Readers Choice awards are based on votes faxed, mailed or e-mailed to Automatic Merchandiser from readers. Readers are asked to vote for their best selling, most profitable and most requested products.
The competition continues to field more nominations each year. In the past four years, most nominations were made via e-mail than were physically mailed or faxed. Automatic Merchandiser attached mail-in and fax-in ballots to its January issue. Readers were also able to cast ballots on the magazine's Website.
M&M's® Peanut was not the only product to unseat a long time winner this year. In the beverage category, which has long been monopolized by Coca-Cola Classic and Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew emerged to win top honors for the second time in the contest's history. Mountain Dew first grabbed top honors in 1999.
Mountain Dew's success underscores the challenge that the traditional cola giants have been experiencing in recent years.
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