UK/Canadian Smarties
UPDATE: we have now reviewed these chocolate Smarties!
Did you know that U.S. Smarties and UK/Canadian Smarties are totally different? I didn’t know this myself until I was chatting with my friend Cat (from the most excellent Catfish Show podcast). Cat says,
Although similar to M&Ms being a circular chocolate, coated with a candy shell, the shell in Smarties is much harder and the chocolate is a bit wider spread out (if that makes any sense). There are all kinds of colours like brown, red, yellow, (oh, I have to go buy a pack now) – purple, green, blue is new, and pink. There was a catchy tune associated with Smarties when I was a kid – “When you eat your Smarties, do you eat the Red ones last…” it was really fun to sing. The candies still come in a box and we used to be able to make it whistle when we finished eating all the candy (being so sugared up, hey why not). These candies are highly addictive and best divided into smaller portions to avoid over-indulgence. Mind you, the box doesn’t seem so big any more. :-) If you are ever in Canada, you must try these well established candies – they can be found in any corner store.
U.S. Smarties
Here in the U.S. Smarties are small round discs that are concave on both sides. They come in lots of different colors and the best way I can describe them is compressed Pixie Dust (from Pixie Stix), only a little sweeter. They come rolled up in “tubes” of 20. The U.S. Smarties website describes them thusly: “Small colorful candy wafers in many assorted flavors wrapped in cellophane. They taste great, kind of sweet and sour and fruity.” The U.S. Smarties are equivalent to the Canadian candy called Rockets.
So, why the difference in the Smarties? The U.S. Smarties website gives us some insight:
Ce De Candy only owns the trademark to the name Smarties in the United States. Outside the United States, Smarties is a registered trademark of Societe’ des Produits Nestle’ S.A. and are more like M&M’s. If you are in Canada, and want your tart and sweet favorite candy look for Rockets!
For even more UK/Canadian Smarties information, visit Martin’s Smarties Museum – it contains everything you could possibly want to know about the non-U.S. Smarties. Also, check out this comparison of the UK/Canadian Smarties and M&M’s head-to-head by Cybele from candy blog (another EXCELLENT candy blog).
fun, food, foodblogs, smarties
