June 2022

 

 

 

Smarties Eh!

Nestlé

These are just Canadian Smarties, for better or for worse. There’s nothing different about these as a candy in any way than the regular Canadian Smarties. I enjoyed eating these as I always enjoy eating regular Canadian Smarties. The taste and texture score is exactly the same as regular Canadian Smarties. While I was happy that I got to eat a box of small candy coated chocolate disks that I knew I’d enjoy, I feel a little conflicted about how to mark this in the novelty area.

The slight difference between these and regular Canadian Smarties are the colours, more specifically all of the colours except red have been taken out and replaced with white. Actually I would say that the ratio of red has also been increased, so you get a pretty even split of red and white Smarties in each box. It’s a fun looking Canadian theme that works well enough, the thing is I feel like they could have attempted to try something with the flavour as well.

The first and most obvious choice would be to give these a slight maple flavour, or more ambitiously actually add some real maple syrup. I’m not sure how you would do this, but it seems like an obvious way to make these Canadian looking Smarties taste a little Canadian as well. If Nestle was willing to go even further, you could have added one raisin to each of these and give them a slight butter tart flavour. I’m pretty sure this would be nearly impossible to actually manufacture, but if they did manage to pull it off I would have given them a glowing novelty score.

These are a true Canadian treat, so in some ways they really pulled off a perfect Canadian version of an already Canadian treat. Could Nestle have gone out on a limb and tried to make these Smarties even more Canadian, sure, but I understand not taking this risk. As a bonus, for those of you who grew up in the 80s, this box of Smarties allows you to eat far fewer Smarties before eating the red ones last.