The world has changed around me and I didn’t notice! How did I miss it?What is this great event? Has world peace broken out at last? Do dogs no longer chase cats? Have traffic wardens decided to let you have a few minutes leeway? No, none of these - the event I am talking about is even more incredulous, it beggars belief, it is unthinkable, an outrage, without precedent, and yet another piece of my life destined to become one more fond memory to add to my ever increasing list of fond memories.
Are you ready for this? Smarties no longer come in tubes!
‘What!’ I hear you gasp, ‘It can’t be!’ But it can, it is, it’s true - Smarties no longer come in tubes. I know - I bought some in Wales at the weekend. I reached out for a tube of Smarties only to find that Smarties now come in hexagonal boxes made from a piece of flat, die-cut, folded cardboard and… brace yourselves for the ultimate disappointment – the box does NOT have a plastic lid! No lid? No press in plastic stopper? I know what you’re thinking… if it has no stopper how can you send it flying across the room when you slam your hand down crushing the tube flat and forcing all of the air contained within it to shoot the stopper high into the air making that incredibly satisfying ‘plop’ sound? Well, thing is you can’t, no stopper, no tube, no plop, all gone. Things have changed.
But when did it change, last year, last month, last week? Nope the round Smartie tube and the plastic alphabet lid which sealed it became a thing of the past in May 2006 when the hexagonal tube was introduced – over three years ago. How did I miss that?Well the same way I missed it when the cardboard tube no longer had a spiral construction but moved to a flat seam running down its length. A flat seam running down its length! But I remember unravelling my last spiral tube only a couple of years back, five years at most! Afraid not, the cardboard spiral tube was last made in 1987 over twenty-two years ago - I know, I know, that can’t be right…can it?
How our memory plays tricks on us. My first tube of Smarties was a wonder of spiralled cardboard tube with a plastic lid that had a raised letter of the alphabet on it. Under the Smarties name it read ‘milk chocolate beans’, the beans inside were very bright and there weren’t any blue ones, at least I don’t remember any blue ones. I used to pop out the cardboard circle at the bottom of the tube and pretend it was a spyglass when I played pirate. At infant school I used it as a big pea shooter, shooting balls of paper in class by blowing hard down the tube, and I waited years to find a tube of Smarties with a black lid and the letter ‘X’ pressed in it. Everybody knew that if you found a black ‘X’ then Rowntree Mackintosh would send you a lifetime’s supply of Smarties for free - and those very same everybodies knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who’d found one. I waited for years to find one… and I’m still waiting.
So the Smartie tube has gone the way of the NME, Postmen, and Woolies, still around but not as they were, evolved, different, and to my mind diminished. Yes, the hexagonal box is a miracle of cardboard engineering and has a certain charm, but it just isn’t the same. I’m sure that it is far more environmentally sound than the tube was, I guarantee that it’s cheaper to produce and easier to box and transport, I quite like the flip-up cardboard with its ingenious sealing mechanism – it has a quite satisfying flip action and accompanying ‘plip’ - but it isn’t a tube, you can’t make the noise of the wind by blowing through it, it doesn’t have a cardboard pop-out bottom and you’d have to work really hard to take somebody’s eye out with that lid.
You see it wasn’t the milk chocolate beans that made Smarties ‘Smarties’ - it was the tube. That’s why we bought them. It was never the sweets, they were just coloured candy covered chocolate, but what fun you could have with the tube. The tube was everything and anything you could imagine it to be – spyglass, tunnel, marble launcher, spider keeper, money box, rocket launcher, sister thumper - I once carried tadpoles with water home from Morton pond in one, it leaked a little but it did the job. I kept a collection of tiny fossilised ammonites for years in another, until it ‘went missing’ in one of my Mum’s tidying-up exercises.
Yes, it was always about the tube. I wonder what kids will play with without them?
How our memory plays tricks on us. My first tube of Smarties was a wonder of spiralled cardboard tube with a plastic lid that had a raised letter of the alphabet on it. Under the Smarties name it read ‘milk chocolate beans’, the beans inside were very bright and there weren’t any blue ones, at least I don’t remember any blue ones. I used to pop out the cardboard circle at the bottom of the tube and pretend it was a spyglass when I played pirate. At infant school I used it as a big pea shooter, shooting balls of paper in class by blowing hard down the tube, and I waited years to find a tube of Smarties with a black lid and the letter ‘X’ pressed in it. Everybody knew that if you found a black ‘X’ then Rowntree Mackintosh would send you a lifetime’s supply of Smarties for free - and those very same everybodies knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who’d found one. I waited for years to find one… and I’m still waiting.
So the Smartie tube has gone the way of the NME, Postmen, and Woolies, still around but not as they were, evolved, different, and to my mind diminished. Yes, the hexagonal box is a miracle of cardboard engineering and has a certain charm, but it just isn’t the same. I’m sure that it is far more environmentally sound than the tube was, I guarantee that it’s cheaper to produce and easier to box and transport, I quite like the flip-up cardboard with its ingenious sealing mechanism – it has a quite satisfying flip action and accompanying ‘plip’ - but it isn’t a tube, you can’t make the noise of the wind by blowing through it, it doesn’t have a cardboard pop-out bottom and you’d have to work really hard to take somebody’s eye out with that lid.
You see it wasn’t the milk chocolate beans that made Smarties ‘Smarties’ - it was the tube. That’s why we bought them. It was never the sweets, they were just coloured candy covered chocolate, but what fun you could have with the tube. The tube was everything and anything you could imagine it to be – spyglass, tunnel, marble launcher, spider keeper, money box, rocket launcher, sister thumper - I once carried tadpoles with water home from Morton pond in one, it leaked a little but it did the job. I kept a collection of tiny fossilised ammonites for years in another, until it ‘went missing’ in one of my Mum’s tidying-up exercises.
Yes, it was always about the tube. I wonder what kids will play with without them?
Tragic. And what about Kit Kats? No more paper wrapper to peel away from the fragile, barely concealed tin foil beneath. No more tinfoil to gently smooth onto the chocolate ridges & score with a fingernail. It was a wonderfully delicate & tactile piece of packaging which demanded a certain technique & even respect if you wanted to fully exploit the experience. The anally retentive (like me) would always carefully remove the red paper, taking care not to tear it or injure the pristine silver foil. Then the foil would be removed in one unbroken sheet, briefly admired & then rolled into a tight pellet. The unwrapping ceremony was the hors d'oeuvre to the chocolate main. More reckless & impulsive individuals would adopt the fingernail approach. I must admit to trying this in a moment of madness.
ReplyDeleteSherbert fountains are now in plastic tubes. Is nothing sacred?
I missed that too!
ReplyDeleteI remember that pond at Morton we used to have to wade through it on the run didn't we - sadists.
Have they done anything to Maltezers
i now transfer my smarties to the inside of a toilet roll before consuming them. i blaim those eurocrats in brussels for the demis of the tube. english jobs for english workrs, thts what i say.
ReplyDeletesorry, i came over all daily mai. then
Lynda Henderson Facebooked:
ReplyDelete"Smarties in the US never came in tubes! Boo."
Can't believe I've missed that. Then again, I am supposed to steer clear from the sweet things now. Orange smarties where always my faves. Also can't believe how many changes of packaging they have had.
ReplyDeleteI disagree about the contents....they were wonderful (but so was the tube)...I used to challenge myself to suck a handful of Smarties until the coloured covering had gone white and soft...if you were really strong-willed you could suck until the casing would simply crumble as you crushed the morass of goo against the roof of your mouth, then scrape it off with your tongue...mmmmmmm....gotta go now..assigmnments to write
ReplyDeleteIt was never the tube with Smarties, it was always the contents. I would empty a tube of Smarties and sort them by colour then eat the orange ones first. Orange smarties are the best - they're orange flavoured then eat the rest one colour at a time (still do when I treat myself to a tube / hexagon/ whatever)..
ReplyDeleteWell this IS causing a stir.
ReplyDeleteDJR Facebooked from Australia:
"Revels - will have to try and find some over here"
Linda Kemp commented Facebook:
ReplyDelete"Smarties, - especially the orange ones, yum"
"and I think the packet is cool; though the tube had its merits too"
The Mac Lad needs to get juiced and do some.
ReplyDeleteOnly very recently I purchased a pack of six, plain chocolate Kit Kats
that were all individually wrapped in tin foil and dressed in traditional paper livery.
The fore mentioned were purchased from a reputable retailer, and were well within the sell by date.
As I have said in the past and still do, if you need it you’ll get it.
As for Smarties, who really cares about the good old days? It is all about the relentless march of progress. It is easy to blame Brussels for what we perceive as an attack on our beloved childhood sweeties, or as an attack on the very heart of our national psyche. But no. It’s just some grey business men trying to give us less for our buck.
Not ponds again!
I can’t believe that I have again been drawn into this pittyful, nostalgic nonsence.
If nostalgia was a cul-de-sac, my house would be right at the end. You would easily recognise it, as it will be rather run down and one might mistakenly think it was derelict. The house number on the gate will have been whitewashed out and there would be a large sign outside where part of the hedge once stood saying ‘Any ball found will be popped’
Talk about having your skull squeezed!
Never again.
Smarties were always a second tier sweety for me. Midget gems were best, in crumpled white paper bags from a glass jar in the corner shop, I sprinted back to the house, my dad on the pavement in front of the garden watching that nothing happened as my little fat three year old legs ran back as fast as they could, my precious ten pence now gracing the lady shopkeepers till.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we would go for a special treat and walk through Heaton in Newcastle, to Cloughs. The greatest sweet shop the world has ever seen. All wooden construction inside, painted sky blue but slightly faded, as if it were just an approximation of the perfect sweet shop that exists somewhere in all of our dreams. It had shelves up to a high ceiling, filled with glass jars that held every sweet I could imagine and many more beside. The old man who ran the shop had a special ladder on wheels that he needed to reach the high shelves. My favourites (sweet peanutes, midget gems, cola cubes, pineapple chunks, floral gums, pear drops, candy twists) were all on the easily reacheable shelves, but I would often venture into more exotic realms of taste just to watch him wheel the ladder from one side of the shop to the other and climb a veritable mountain of confection just to retrieve whatever esoteric rarity I had spied with eyes that just peeped over the counter.
My little boy is just passed two now, and sometimes I mourn that he will probably never see a shop like that. That he will never watch the old man climb the mountain of teeth rotting dreams and bring back his prize, it was a simple joy that he will never know. But on the flip side he will never know smallpox either, so swings and roundabouts.
I'm completley gutted to learn that Smarties no longer come in a a tube that you can unravel and blue ones are just wrong. I don't care that I don't eat them any more, some things should not change.
ReplyDeleteI loved the way the colour from the Smarties would stain your hand if you held it for too long.
I share Lloyd's love of proper KitKat wrappers also.
Thanks for the sweet shop memories Jonathon - there is an old fashioned sweetie shop still in Malton that you could try - not as good as your memory but maybe a treat for your little boy.
I miss the old style Smarties too!
ReplyDeleteThose windee tube contraptions are rubbish and kids will never know what fun they could have with a tube that could become many a plaything. I used to love popping the lids!
Sainsbury's don't sell the new type of Smarties apparently because the packaging is so flimsy and the Smarties are always scattering out... Freedom for the Smarties but no doubt a major Health and Safety issue for Sainsbo's...
I always gave up on trying to collect the alphabet on smarties lids - probably because I was far too careless as a child to complete a collection of any kind but maybe I was just never that bothered. I don't believe it's true about the black 'x' lids - I never heard of that - and I consider myself something of a confectionery expert!