On first look, marketing executives at a candy manufacturing firm thought the alien nicknamed ET in Spielberg's film was so ugly -- the filmmakers called it a combination of the faces of Albert Einstein, Carl Sandburg and Ernest Hemingway -- that they refused to have their M&M candies used in the film. Ironic, really: you'd expect a company called Mars Inc to show more empathy towards alien lifeforms.

Hersheys siezed the chance, ET picking up Reese's Pieces following a Hansel-and-Gretel like trail of candy. For Hersheys, it led straight to the bank as Reese's sales skyrocketed several times over -- because Spielberg's film quickly outdid Star Wars to become the biggest blockbuster in the history of cinema.

Based on Spielberg's relationship with an imaginary friend he made up after his parents' divorce -- and bearing an uncanny similarity to a Satyajit Ray treatment called The Alien doing the rounds in Hollywood for several years before this film was made -- ET is the moving story of a young boy befriending an unsightly alien, and remains one of the finest examples of movie magic.

So much so that Richard Attenborough, whose Gandhi bested ET for the Best Picture award at the Oscars, recently went on record to say that Spielberg's film was a far greater achievement than his own biopic, calling it 'an infinitely more creative and fundamental piece of cinema.' Indeed.

Over the years, the film has come to represent all kinds of moral and spiritual allegories, but nothing can quite express the unadulterated wonderment you feel as a child the first time you watch this movie, and especially this particular iconic scene: Click here for video.

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