Talk:Smarties

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Smarties article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 3 months

Food and drink Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Food and Drink task list:

To edit this page, select here

Here are some tasks you can do for WikiProject Food and drink:

Help bring these Top Importance articles currently B Status or below up to GA status: Agaricus bisporus (i.e. mushroom), Beef, Bread, Curry, Drink, Food, Ham and eggs, Soy sauce, Sushi, Yogurt
Bring these Top Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Beer, French cuisine, Sugar
Bring these High Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Apple, Burger King, Fish
Participate in project-related deletion discussions.
Delete unrelated trivia sections found in articles. Please review WP:Trivia and WP:Handling trivia to learn how to do this.
Add the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} project banner to food and drink related articles and content to help bring them to the attention of members. For a complete list of banners for WikiProject Food and drink and its child projects, select here.
Provide photographs and images for Category:Wikipedia requested images of food
Consider joining this project's Assessment task force. List any project ideas in this section

Note: These lists are transcluded from the project's tasks pages.

Brands

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Brands, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of brands on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BrandsWikipedia:WikiProject BrandsTemplate:WikiProject BrandsBrands articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Archive box template

I've moved the on-page archive box template to a separate page, which can be found here: Talk:Smarties/Archive box. The reason I did this is because a separate template is easy to update without having to updating every last archive page the same way. I thought I'd inform any current or future editors of this talk page.
Thanks
--George2001hi (Discussion) 19:01, 2 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can we not just use the automatically-updated {{archives}} template? --McGeddon (talk) 14:28, 15 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the manual way is more organised, it also improves navigation - for example if I wanted to find a discussion from 2007 - for whatever reason - the 'MONTH YEAR - MONTH YEAR' guides me which Archive to look in. But if you can add the template, go for it. Thanks --George2001hi (Discussion) 12:46, 16 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nestlé?

Is there any reason THIS article is pointed at by the entry "Smarties" instead of the Smarties that popular culture has known as "Smarties" since before time? That article (Smarties_(wafer_candy)) is FAR more directly ideologically-linked to the word Smarties than this unheardof brand candy rip-off of M&Ms. 66.91.204.11 (talk) 01:01, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In a nutshell - because you're wrong. The majority of the world knows this candy as Smarties, the US are an exception. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.232.89 (talk) 15:26, 16 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, because this is the candy the majority of the world knows as Smarties, regardless of the usage of the name in the US. —C.Fred (talk) 03:41, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm baffled as to why 66.91.204.11 would assume otherwise. And I say that as someone with a bag of American Smarties next to me as I type this. —David Levy 05:21, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Smarties are not a rip-off of m&ms, it's the other way around. 78.86.112.209 (talk) 02:33, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Smarties in Canada

As a proud Canadians, I've never seen any variation of Smarties being sold as Rockets. In Canada, Rockets are Smarties (wafer candy) and Smarties are Smarties — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.16.25.2 (talk) 06:19, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's what the article says: the wafer candies that are sold as Smarties in the United States are sold as Rockets in Canada.

The chocolate candies sold as Smarties in Canada and the rest of the world (editor's POV: the real Smarties) are not widely available in the US because of that name clash. They're only available in import and specialty candy stores. —C.Fred (talk) 14:05, 18 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Name

When I was at school, one of our teachers claimed to be friends with the person who named both Twix and Smarties. Both were apparently named after people / characters found or influenced by regular train journeys they took at some point in their lives. Twix was named after a couple they nicknamed "Twix and twain", and "the Smarties" were the well-dressed gentlemen on their way to work. I've no idea whether these stories are true, though the teacher didn't have a reputation for being a liar, and the timings may be about right (he was in his 40s/50s in the early 80s so could conceivably known someone who in 1937 coined "Smarties"). I felt it worth recording the information however, in case anyone can add further weight to the claim. This same text is on the Twix Talk page. Redpola (talk) 16:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This seems somewhat unlikely. When Twix first came out, advertisements heavily (and I mean HEAVILY) emphasized the word 'mix', so a more likely explanation is that this name is a portmanteau of 'Twin' and 'Mix', the former referring to the fact that the packaging contains two bars and the latter referring to the caramel, wafer and chocolate mixture - hence 'Twix'. However, the name of the candy has no official origins and if one were to lie about the namesake of any candy, Twix would be an ideal choice.

With Smarties, the name is similarly shrouded in mystery, but it is somewhat unlikely, though not impossible, that your teacher knew the man who renamed the confection. George Harris, the man responsible for renaming the confection, was born in 1896 and died in 1958 at the age of 62. While this fits in the time frame you've presented, George Harris renamed a number of different Rowntree's brands, the point of which was to improve public consumption by making the names more simple and appealing. He renamed Clear Gums to Fruit Gums, Aerated Chocolate to Aero, Chocolate Crisps to Kit Kat and Chocolate Beans to Smarties. This was a marketing strategy that Harris had learned during his stay in the United States.

To clarify, George Harris was from the United Kingdom. It is a bit more likely that your teacher may have known him to some extent if your teacher was/is British, but seeing as there is no indication in your coverage of where your teacher hailed from, it is not a likelihood I can factor in. - I hope this helped. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.149.60.28 (talk) 11:58, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hyperactivity

Given the ongoing questions about artificial food colouring and hyperactivity in children should the reference to it being a myth be removed for an unbiased view? 130.185.67.126 (talk) 16:00, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In the colours section - "(which led to the common misunderstanding that the blue Smartie triggered hyperactivity in some children)" - This was not what led to that. It was a common myth way before they removed the blue smarties in 2006. e.g. http://www.foodcomm.org.uk/campaigns/food_and_child_behaviour/ It was likely driven by the book E for Additives by Maurice Hanssen published in 1984 and led to 'E-numbers' scaremongering. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.26.22.146 (talk) 12:51, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redirection from Lentilky

There isn't a single word on this page about Lentilky (a similar Czech/Czechoslovak product, that had nothing to do with Smarties up untill the brand was bought over by Nestlé), yet a redirecting page exists. Why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.98.200.252 (talk) 22:40, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]