Nestlé Smarties are a colourful sugar-coated chocolate confectionery popular in the UK, South Africa, Canada and Australia. They are similar to M&Ms produced by Mars. The current Smarties slogan is "Only Smarties have the answer", used since the early 1990s. Prior to this, the slogan was "Do you eat the red ones last?".
Geometrically speaking, Smarties are oblate spheroids with a minor axis of about 5 mm and a major axis of about 12 mm. They come in eight colours: red, orange, yellow, green, mauve, pink, brown and blue. The orange Smarties are distinguished by containing orange-flavoured chocolate.
Within the UK, Smarties are typically sold in cardboard tubes, capped with a colourful lid usually having a letter of the alphabet on it. In February 2005, it was announced that the traditional cylindrical tube was to be replaced with a new six-sided "Hexatube" packaging in the summer. Nestlé have stated that the redesign is in order to keep the brand interesting and fresh to children.
Smarties were introduced in 1937 as "Chocolate Beans" by Rowntrees of York and renamed as Smarties in the following year. They became known as "Nestlé Smarties" in 1993, five years after the company Rowntree Mackintosh was acquired by Nestlé. Smarties are still manufactured in York.
In the original range of colours, there was a light-brown Smartie. This was replaced in 1989 with the blue Smartie. Before 1958, the dark-brown Smarties had a plain-chocolate centre, while the light-brown one tasted of coffee. In 1997 larger-sized Giant Smarties were introduced, and, in 2004, Fruity Smarties.
In 2005, 570,000 tubes of Smarties were being manufactured each day, with an average of 48 to a tube. In the UK, an average of 307 tubes are consumed every minute. Over the last 25 years, Nestle has manufactured 5,000 million Smarties lids. Some lids are very rare and are now regarded as collectors' items. Sales of Smarties are worth £73 million each year.
On 25 October, 2003, Kathryn Ratcliffe set a Guiness World Record by eating 138 Smarties in three minutes using chopsticks.
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