Smarties
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| Owner | Nestlé |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Introduced | 1937 |
| Previous owners | Rowntree's |
| Website | www |
Smarties are a colour-varied sugar-coated chocolate confectionery. They have been manufactured since 1937, originally by H.I. Rowntree & Company in the UK, and are currently produced by Nestlé.
Smarties are oblate spheroids with a minor axis of about 5 mm (0.2 in) and a major axis of about 12 mm (0.5 in). They come in eight colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, mauve, pink and brown, although the blue variety was temporarily replaced by a white variety in some countries, while an alternative natural colouring dye of the blue colour was being researched.
Smarties are popular primarily in Europe, Canada, South Africa, Australasia and the Middle East. In the USA rights to the name belong to the Smarties Candy Company, which manufactures its own hard tablet sweet under the registered trademark name Smarties.
Rowntrees of York, England, have been making "Chocolate Beans" since at least 1882. The product was renamed "Smarties Chocolate Beans" in 1937. Rowntrees was forced to drop the words "chocolate beans" in 1937 due to trading standards requirements (the use of the word "beans" was felt to be misleading) so adopted the "Milk Chocolate in a Crisp Sugar Shell". Later, the candy was rebranded as "Smarties".
Smarties in the UK were traditionally sold in cylindrical cardboard tubes, capped with a colourful plastic lid usually having a letter of the alphabet on it. The purpose of this, according to a Rowntrees' spokesperson in the 1980s, was for them to be useful as a teaching aid to encourage young children to recognise the letters. Over the last 25 years, Nestlé and Rowntrees have manufactured five billion Smarties lids. Some lids are very rare and are now regarded as collectors' items.
In February 2005, the Smarties tube was replaced with a hexagonal design. The rationale behind changing the design was, according to Nestlé, to make the brand "fresh and appealing" to youngsters; the new packaging is also lighter and more compact, and the lid (which is now a hinged piece of cardboard) has a card clip which holds the lid shut when it is folded over. The new lid still features a letter like the old plastic lids, but it is in the form of a "what [letter] is a [thing]?" question, the answer for which can be read when the lid is open, next to the hole giving access to the rest of the tube. The hexagonal box is made of one piece of card which is diecut then folded and glued. The hexagon can also be stacked in many layers without the pile collapsing, which is an advantage at the point of sale. The last 100 tubes to leave the factory in York had a certificate inside them.
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Wikipedia