Martin's Smartie Museum

As you will read later, I no longer have my Smartie Collection, I gave my entire collection away in 2000 - I no longer have any tubes, lids or other Smartie items to swap or sell. OK, just to set that straight!

Greetings

So, what ARE Smarties?

On this site you'll find pictures of lids, tubes, wrappers, boxes, tubs, Easter Eggs, free competition prizes, special offers and goodness knows what else I collected up until August 2001 when I moved to Canada and gave my Smartie collection away.

Smarties are milk chocolate discs 8mm across and 3.5mm thick in the middle, coated in a crisp sugary shell and come in many colours.

FACT: Smarties were invented by Rowntrees in York (UK) in 1937 and were sold for 2d (old pennies) a time. Nestle bought the company (by then called Rowntrees Macintosh after an earlier merger) in 1988. Click here for supporting evidence for this claim.

Today, Nestles make Smarties at:
York (U.K - 530,000 tubes a day!), Czechia, Hamburg (Germany), Toronto (Canada), East London (South Africa), Melbourne (Australia), Thailand and Malaysia where they produce special "Halal approved" Smarties!

If you live in the USA you know Smarties as a different product entirely to the rest of us. This is because the UK company Rowntree's sold the Smarties name to an American company a long time ago. This is WHY you can't get what the rest of the world call "Smarties" in the USA - unless you buy from on of the firms with links later on this page. To see what Smarties means to someone from the USA, visit their web site: http://www.smarties.com.

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Smarties are called Lentilky, and you can visit the Lentilky website here. Many thanks to Maxim Krusina for sending me the link to the official Lentilky site. To see a Lentilky TV commercial, click here.

Throughout the world (except Canada), they are normally sold in brightly decorated cardboard tubes about 15cm long by 13mm diameter, with removable plastic caps, also in a variety of colours (currently 4). Read about them on the UK Tubes pages. In Canada, Smarties are sold in boxes, not tubes.
Many people ask me about the TV advert "When you eat your smarties do you eat the red ones last?" - well I finally found the complete text to that song in that campaign, and you can read it here.

Many people collect these caps, as each one has a raised plastic letter (a-z) embossed on the inside. The "aim" is to collect all letters in all colours. In days gone by the lids were slightly larger and had lower case and capital letters, and even in some rare cases, NUMBERS printed on them. Read about them on the UK Lids page.

Sometimes the manufacturers print pictures on the Smarties themselves. Many people have written in asking about this practice. Here are some recent British samples:

From Hologram "Magic Trick" tubes

From "Shark Infested" tubes

From "Rugrats" tubes

Flavours of Smarties: Many people in the UK claim to be able to tell what colour each Smartie is by taste, although normally the only Smarties which actually DO taste any different are the Orange ones which contain Orange Oil as a flavouring. Marc Hillman wrote to me to tell me of a series of "blind tests" he was involved in on four tubes with "inconclusive" results. There are occasional exceptions to this however:

"Bug Flavour" (actually Pineapple)		See http://www.classaxe.com/smarties/uk/tubes/2/
"Cola Flavour" (pretty convincing)		See http://www.classaxe.com/smarties/uk/tubes/2/

On these pages, whenever code numbers are given (e.g. HD0666) these are the codes printed on the packaging by the manufacturers to identify the design. Designing artwork for Smarties is obviously a full time job for some creative genius somewhere, and this site is dedicated to the artwork that is... Smarties

Part of my collection before I gave it all away!

This collection began life in around 1990, when I began collecting Smartie lids. After Rowntrees (who then produced Smarties in the UK) started brining out a load of "limited edition" tubes and offers, the collection quickly grew to include these too. As of August 2001 I moved to Canada and sadly I had to leave the collection behind in England.

I am still happy to answer occasional questions about smarties, but please bear in mind, now I live in Canada, my information may be a bit out of date! Email me at:

Very Special thanks go to the following, some of whom have agreed to list links in the links section below:

	Kate Finney			Chris King
	Jimmy Centanni			Astrid Besaler
	Trond Stien			Brenda Williams
	Roz Aldridge			Daryl Lainson
	Helen			Peter BrooksBank
	Martin Cosford			Deanna Laity

TV commercials:

Very Important Link:

Smarties For Sale:

	Ebay (international) frequently have auctions for Smarties and other food items and are well recommended, I used them myself following Helen's enthusiastic recommendations! Once you have signed up you will find them both cheap and easy to use. You simply state the price (in US $) you are prepared to pay, and the computerised auction then plays an automated auction to see which person gets the item, increasing the bid in small increments possibly up to your maximum price, but frequently below it! http://www.ebay.com
	African Hut (South African in USA) sell many items from South Africa, including some Smarties stuff. Thanks Helen for the info! http://www.africanhut.com/
	Everything Australian, Australian sweets and candy including our favourites! Thanks again to Helen for the information. http://www.everythingaustralian.com/evryaustralian/lolliescandies.html
	British Mail Order, a site with links to hundreds of sites selling UK items abroad, some including Smarties. Thanks again to Helen for the information. http://www.britishmailorder.com/

Other Smarties Collectors

	Daniel recently emailed me about his own Smartie museum online - unlike me he didn't stop collecting in 2001, so I very much recommend his site for researching anything about smarties in more recent times. Visit his excellent web site at http://hometown.aol.co.uk/northerntrumpet/SMARTIES.htm
	Mathew Amos runs a smartie lid and smartie tube swapping site recently published - very nice design, see it for yourself at http://www.smartie-lids.com. You can email Methew at
	Trond Stien, a 40 year old Disney collector from Norway... has a staggering 2100 items including Pez, Smarties, Soakeys etc. Very keen to expand further! Please email if you collect any of these Visit his web site at http://home.no.net/tstie or email
	Astrid Besaler a collector from Belgium, also very keen to expand her already huge collection. She is 34, has 3 kids and a great husband but needs more Kinder, M&Ms and Smartie Toppers to be truly happy. Please help her!
	Daryl Lainson, a Smarties collector from Ontario, Canada and a thoroughly all round nice chap.
	Peter Brooksbank, a Smarties collector from the UK with an impressive (framed!) collection of lids.
	Paul Evans is a very serious collector, a professional you might even say, frequently found selling memorabilia (and buying it too!) in the hallowed halls of Ebay. He has some fantastic items going right back to the 1950's- Smarties records, cameras, even a three foot Smarties paddle steamer!
	Olivia Wharton is another serious collector, with a collection spanning 12 years and a loft full of T-Shirts, boxes, tubes, lids, mugs, watches, pens, paper and all kinds of other things. Olivia has a large array of brand new Smarties stationary on offer, so if you need genuine Smarties Scribble Pads or similar, dig out your cheque book out and drop a line to:
	Maria Eriksson from Sweden heard about this site from Trond Stein and she too is a collector or Smarties Toppers, but really just the figures rather than the tubes (or presumably the contents!). She has an amazing collection of SEVERAL THOUSAND figures and her own web site which you can see at: http://www.angelfire.com/mo/mariasdisneypage. You can also email her at
	James has a forum dealing with smartie issues including buying / selling smarties packaging and related items: http://www.forumsvibe.com/thesmartiesplan/index.php?mforum=thesmartiesplan.