Our Smarties are NOT like your Smarties. Oh no no no, we are not talking about the chalky pastels that pass for ‘America’s Favorite Candy Roll’, but instead the delicious sugar-shelled chocolate buttons from Nestlé, cousins of M&M’s if anything.
Smarties have been in production since 1882, originally sold as ‘Chocolate Beans’. They now come in eight colors (red, orange, blue, green, yellow, pink, violet and brown) and constitute of a crisp, sugary shell encasing a buttery nugget of chocolate. Utterly delicious and lots of fun – Smarties tend to be a firm favorite with the kids.
Not to get too philosophical about a chocolate pellet, but Smarties are a very quintessentially British ‘treat’. Over to Bill Bryson for further explanation:
“And the British are so easy to please. It’s the most extraordinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small. That’s why so many of their treats – tea cakes, scones, crumpets, rock cakes, rich tea biscuits, fruit Shrewsburys – are so cautiously flavorful. They’re the only people in the world who think of jam and currants as thrilling constituents of a pudding or cake.”
We feel Smarties fit perfectly into this classification.
And did you know, the technical name for the shape of a Smartie is an oblate spheroid… As well as easy to please, it turns out we Brits are actually quite boring as well. We really can’t work out why you all want to marry us so much?!
The pre-2006 technicolor Smarties. Responsible for many a Brit's first narcotic experience.
Since 2006, Smarties have been proudly ‘free of artificial colourings and flavourings’. Keep it a secret, but we kinda preferred the neon shades of yore – especially as there was a longstanding rumor that if you ate too many blue smarties, the dye would send you crazy!
Tea & Sympathy 
European smarties rock!! 🙂
Smarties are the answer – though I miss the artificial coloured blue ones! I am very proud of having managed to collect smarties lids with all the letters of the alphabet on (back in the day when smarties came with plastic lids).
Your teahop looks great, in the hope that I’ll get there one day I’ve added it to my wishlist!
Ah yes, the letters on the lids – we forgot about them! Hope you can make it over, we’re well worth a visit.. if we do say so ourselves!
The orange ones are my fav–I swear they have an orange chocolate taste! When I was a kid I would take the orange ones out, eat the rest, then put the best back in the tube and save them for “best”