Smarties

In the sepia tinted days before blue Smarties came on the scene and ruined everything, before the tubes became hexagons, when you wished that the letter on the inside of the lid corresponded with the target of your affection. There were proper Smarties...

Rowntrees of York, England, had made "Chocolate Beans" from 1882 onwards. The product was then renamed in a fit of marketing exuberance "Smarties Chocolate Beans" in 1937. However, before you could even blink an eye, forty years had passed and Rowntrees were forced to drop the words "chocolate beans" in 1977 due to trading standards requirements (the use of the word "beans" was felt to be misleading) so they adopted the stunning "Milk Chocolate in a Crisp Sugar Shell". Later, the sweet was rebranded quite simply and somewhat provocatively as "Smarties".

Smarties are now no longer manufactured in York; production has now moved to Germany (don't get me started), where a third of them were already made (did we know this?). Outside Europe, Nestlé's largest production facility for Smarties is in Canada, where Nestlé has been manufacturing products since 1918.

Apparently, in subculture "smarties" is a street name for ecstasy, because of the latter coming as colourful tablets. Although why on earth anyone would want to pop a pill as opposed to gulping down a handful "Chocolate Beans" is beyond me!