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Smarties are dragée chocolate confectionery marketed by Swiss company Nestlé. They were first manufactured in 1937 by British company H.I. Rowntree & Company of York. Since 2007, Smarties are produced in Hamburg in Germany.
Smarties are oblate spheroids with a minor axis of about and a major axis of about . They come in eight colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, mauve, pink and brown, although the blue variety was temporarily replaced by a white variety in some countries, whilst an alternative natural colouring dye of the blue colour was being researched.
Smarties are sold in many regions around the world, but are not distributed (except via parallel import) in the United States, where the trademark name is held by the Smarties Candy Company, which manufactures its own hard tablet sweet under the trademark name Smarties.
In February 2005, the Smarties tube was replaced with a hexagonal design. The rationale behind changing the design was, according to Nestlé, to make the brand "fresh and appealing" to youngsters; "Smarties set to lose their tube", BBC News, 18 February 2005 the new packaging is also lighter and more compact, and the lid (which is now a hinged piece of cardboard) has a card clip which holds the lid shut when it is folded over. The new lid still features a letter like the old plastic lids, but it is in the form of a "what letter is a thing?" question, the answer for which can be read when the lid is open, next to the hole giving access to the rest of the tube.
Smarties are no longer manufactured in York; in October 2007, production was moved to Germany, where a third of them were already made. Outside Europe, Nestlé's largest production facility for Smarties is in Toronto, Canada, where Nestlé has been manufacturing its products since 1918. The factory located at 72 Sterling Road in the Junction Triangle was originally built for Cowan Cocoa and Chocolate.
In 1998, Nestlé obtained a trademark for a tubular Smarties package. It later sued Master Foods in Denmark, which was marketing M&M minis in a similar package. The Supreme Court of Denmark ruled that a basic geometrical shape could not be trademarked and ordered the trademark to be removed from the trademark register.
In 2021, the parent company Nestlé transferred the production of Lentilky, which had been produced in Czech Republic since 1907, to German Hamburg, and the ingredients are also being harmonized with the Smarties product.
In 2006, it was announced that Nestlé was removing all artificial colourings from Smarties in the United Kingdom. Nestlé decided to replace all synthetic dyes with natural ones, but, unable to source a natural blue dye, removed blue Smarties from circulation (which led to the common misunderstanding that the blue Smartie triggered hyperactivity in some children) and replaced them with white ones. In February 2008, blue smarties were reintroduced using natural blue dye derived from the cyanobacteria spirulina instead of the controversial brilliant blue FCF (FD&C Blue 1, E133).
Artificial colouring was removed from Smarties on the Canadian market in March 2009. The new range included all the colours except blue. Blue Smarties were re-added in May 2010.
Red Smarties were previously dyed with cochineal, a derivative of the product made by extracting colour from female cochineal insects. A pigment extracted from red cabbage is now used in the United Kingdom.
For the purposes of assessing an "active learning approach to epidemiology and critical appraisal", a mock randomised controlled trial tested the hypothesis that red Smarties could increase happiness. Based on a trial with 117 participants in four settings in Australia, Canada and Malaysia, red Smarties eaters were no happier than yellow Smarties eaters.
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