The gap in sales between Mars Inc.

The gap in sales between Mars Inc., the No. 1 company in succession Candy Industry's Top 100 list of confectionery manufacturers, and the 100th company is $7515 billion dollars. Ok maybe that comparison isn't fair. Moving further up the list, the gap between Mars and the 25th manufacturer is $7144 billion.

in some way those numbers don't seem to be that different. The message is: The upper echelon players in the global confectioner market have a elephantine lead on their less well-healed brethren--a lead that this year, as in years past, continued to widen.

The merger