> Having lived in both England and the United States, I'm familiar with both kinds of Smarties, and I was just waiting for someone to pipe in at these descriptions of Smarties and wonder what was up. Yes, as Chris explained, Smarties here in the USA are like Sweet Tarts, but smaller in diameter, less tart, and slightly less cohesive. They come in a roll, wrapped in clear plastic twisted at both ends. There's about twelve or so Smarties in each roll, and the rolls usually come in a big plastic bag with a bunch of them inside.

I think we'd call those clear twisted rolls of pastel-coloured pastilles by another name in Canada -- they're "Rockets". The name "Rockets" is printed in either red or blue on the clear wrapper, sometimes with pictures of spaceships. The flavour is both sweet and a bit tangy, and each Rocket piece tastes the same. They're nowhere near as sour-tart as so-called "Sweet Tarts". Pretty popular as a trick for Halloween.


> The Smarties I encountered in England -- one of my favorite candies while there -- are completely different. Unfortunately, I don't exactly remember what they were (too long ago!), but they *looked*, if not tasted, like M&Ms or Skittles. When I was there, they came in a cardboard tube, and you could open it at one end by pulling a plastic plug thing out of the end. On the inside of the plug, there was an alphabetic character (upper case on the big tubes, lower on the little) formed in relief in the plastic. I never did figure out what that was for. Some "collect all 26!" kind of thing? Further information from our non-U.S. folks would be welcome.

Unlike M&M's, Canadian Smarties seem a more uniformly flattened, rounded disc shape and I think the chocolate is somewhat better than M&M's. Our Smarties are made by Rowntree Nestlé and come in idiotically hard-to-open, slippery plastic bags similar to M&M's. So which confectionary company makes the plastic-rolled-up version of Smarties in the U.S.?

Hm, the original "Smarties" jingle that I parodied earlier should have clued me in to the fact that it's sung by a guy with a British accent. *he sings* "It's a candied-coated CHOCOLATE, so Tell Me When I ASK: When you eat your Smarties do you eat the red ones last?"