|
On this site you'll find pictures of lids, tubes, wrappers, boxes, tubs, Easter Eggs, free competition prizes, special offers and goodness knows what else I collected up until August 2001 when Martin moved to Canada and gave hisSmartie collection away. James Prosser has now taken on the task of maintaining this site and he can be reached here.
|
|
Smarties are milk chocolate discs 8mm across and 3.5mm thick in the middle, coated in a crisp sugary shell and come in many colours.
FACT: Smarties were invented by Rowntrees in York (UK) in 1937 and were sold for 2d (old pennies) a time. Nestle bought the company (by then called Rowntrees Macintosh after an earlier merger) in 1988. Click here for supporting evidence for this claim.
Today, Nestles make Smarties at:
York (U.K - 530,000 tubes a day!), Czechia, Hamburg (Germany), Toronto (Canada), East London (South Africa), Melbourne (Australia), Thailand and Malaysia where they produce special "Halal approved" Smarties!
|
|
If you live in the USA you know Smarties as a different product entirely to the rest of us. This is because the UK company Rowntree's sold the Smarties name to an American company a long time ago. This is WHY you can't get what the rest of the world call "Smarties" in the USA - unless you buy from on of the firms with links later on this page. To see what Smarties means to someone from the USA, visit their web site: http://www.smarties.com.
|
|
|
In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Smarties are called Lentilky, and you can visit the Lentilky website here. Many thanks to Maxim Krusina for sending me the link to the official Lentilky site. To see a Lentilky TV commercial, click here.
|
|
Throughout the world (except Canada), they are normally sold in brightly decorated cardboard tubes about 15cm long by 13mm diameter, with removable plastic caps, also in a variety of colours (currently 4). Read about them on the UK Tubes pages. In Canada, Smarties are sold in boxes, not tubes.
Many people ask me about the TV advert "When you eat your smarties do you eat the red ones last?" - well I finally found the complete text to that song in that campaign, and you can read it here.
|
|
Many people collect these caps, as each one has a raised plastic letter (a-z) embossed on the inside. The "aim" is to collect all letters in all colours. In days gone by the lids were slightly larger and had lower case and capital letters, and even in some rare cases, NUMBERS printed on them. Read about them on the UK Lids page.
|
|
Sometimes the manufacturers print pictures on the Smarties themselves. Many people have written in asking about this practice. Here are some recent British samples:
|
From Hologram "Magic Trick" tubes
|
From "Shark Infested" tubes
|
From "Rugrats" tubes
|
|
|
Flavours of Smarties: Many people in the UK claim to be able to tell what colour each Smartie is by taste, although normally the only Smarties which actually DO taste any different are the Orange ones which contain Orange Oil as a flavouring. Marc Hillman wrote to tell us of a series of "blind tests" he was involved in concerning four tubes with "inconclusive" results. There are occasional exceptions to this however:
|
|
On these pages, whenever code numbers are given (e.g. HD0666) these are the codes printed on the packaging by the manufacturers to identify the design. Designing artwork for Smarties is obviously a full time job for some creative genius somewhere, and this site is dedicated to the artwork that is... Smarties
|
|
|
In 2005 Nestle decided to replace the famous tube with a new hexitube.It is beleaved the reason behind Nestle changing the packaging was because they wanted it to feel more appealing to children.
|
|
|
In 2006 Nestle stopped producing blue Smarties.
The reason for this was because Nestle wanted to remove artificial colours from smarties and at the time there was no alternative to the dye they were using.
Blue Smarties then became white but In 2008 Blue Smarties returned and now all the Smarties colours are now no artificial colours or flavours.
|
|
|
In 2010 Nestle sold some Smarties easter eggs in retro 80's packaging containing a brown smarties mug.
|
|
|
In 2012 Smarties celebrated It's 75th aniversary and to celebrate the occasion Nestle realesed the hexitube with the retro 80's packaging for a limited time.
|