We're Living in the Golden Age of Competitive M&M Stacking

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Guinness World Records tracks a lot of achievements: over 40,000 in total. Some are well-established, which makes them tough to break. For instance, the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest has been held for decades, and if you think you can eat more hot dogs in ten minutes than Joey Chestnut, you're either Matt Stonie or delusional. On the flip side, some records are so insane, why would you want to try? I don't own a pogo stick, and I doubt I could jump on one 88,047 consecutive times even if I did.

But occasionally, a record gets announced that feels breakable and people decide to give it a try, like stacking M&M's. And especially when the record is only four. That was the tallest stack ever when Silvio Sabba had his achievement certified in December 2016. And yet in the span of about 15 months, the record has already been broken three times.

Yes, the record for most M&M's balanced on top of each other is now seven. On April 7, 29-year-old Ibrahim Sadeq took the title for Tallest Stack of M&M's by stacking seven of the small circular candies in Nasiriyha, Iraq.

Ibrahim Sadeq / Guinness World Records

Guinness World Records posted a video of the achievement on Instagram last week — and with seven candies, it looks really difficult. Sadeq wears special finger gloves and needs plenty of effort to steady the final stack. He's also an accomplished stacker in general: Sadeq is co-holder of the world record for Most Balanced Eggs on the Back of the Hand. (It's 18 eggs.)

But the deceptively difficult stack-of-four record held up until January 31, 2021. On that day, Britain's Will Cutbill finally broke the standing record by stacking five M&M's.

And yet, Cutbill's glory was short-lived: On 14 October, Brendan Kelbie balanced six M&M's at his home in Queensland, Australia.

But little did Kelbie know that he was simply setting the stage for Sadeq. Though it took Kelbie nearly ten months to topple Cutbill, less than six months later, the record was broken again — all of which Cutbill seemed to predict. "When I tell them [the record is] a whopping five, I think they're a bit shocked," he said during an interview with CNN after setting his record. "They want to give it a go straight away and try and beat me."

So what was Sadeq's trick to get to seven? "I am using a mix of mind and body focus but people usually define it as a gravity defying act," Sadeq, who says he's been stacking things for six years, told Guinness World Records. "I could possibly balance anything, but it gets really tough with light objects or liquids."

I think it's safe to think that, somewhere in the world, right now, someone is searching for that special bag containing eight really flat M&M's.