This is a big one from most peoples childhood, how could you resist a cardboard tube with lots of colours on it. When you managed to open that easy lid at the top, it just popped off in your hands. Inside you would discover hundreds of pill shaped coloured chocolate, it was heaven was it not?
Kids since 1937 have been enjoying this mainstay of children’s confectionery, and they can be traced back further than that under other names. The Chocolate Bean, we used to call them, because they were bean shaped. The Smarties people called them that too, until 1977 when that disappeared as the word bean did not seem to be the right word for the 70’s.
What I probably did not get as a kid, was that the colours were all the same taste. The sugar coated colours were just there to tempt you in, and have a look at any baby or kid, or even teenager, and the chocolate around the mouth showed it worked.
“When you eat your Smarties Do you eat the red ones last?
Do you suck them very slowly? Or crunch them very fast?
Eat that candy-coated chocolate
But tell me when I ask — When you eat your Smarties
Do you eat the red ones last?”
And don’t forget Smartie people are happy people, and they smile all the time.
Occasionally other colours came and went like Blue and White, but the mainstay colours of Yellow, Red, Orange,Green, Pink and Brown were always faithfully waiting in the box for me. Oh what great memories.
Have Your Say.....
If you have any information or thoughts on this page, please help us by popping them in the comment box below.