Smarties

Nestle chocolate in a crisp coloured sugar shell.
I have been eating these for years and the little letter you get underneath the cap has always been somehing nestle decided not to change, even though the packaging colour, design and logo has undergone some alteration since my generation were buying these as kids. Also despite my many years of munching away and putting each of these little caps into a draw, I am still un able to spell an entire alphabet.
So, if my spelling is a bit dodgey - blame the smarties! (as a child I was deprived a complete alphabet!)

PLACE OF PURCHASE: Asda
COST: £0.37p

Suitable for vegetarians: Yes [woo hoo! I hear the hippies cry]

Packaging:
The packaging is a cardboard cylinder tube about 5 inches long. Hard plastic pop on cap with a secret letter printed underneath. Brand new packs also come with a clear dotted tamper proof seal which covers the cap. The tube itself is made of cardboard and is multicoloured with pictures of smarties all over it. The nestle logo featuring the birds in a nest is present in the top left hand corner. Smarties is printed in a bubble font in a brown colour. The reverse has all info, ingredients, and a barcode etc on.

Appearance:
Hard sugar coated round discs which are thicker in the middle than at the edges. They are in all sorts of colours: brown, pink yellow, green, red, blue and orange. These make a terrible mess of your hands if you pour a whole handful out and hold then for more than 2 minutes you will get stains of these colours all over your hands - NB: licking does not get rid of these stains either, so you may be caought red handed eating someone elses smarties (one of my stories I'd rather not mention - lets just say I was 9 and not very good at lying).

Smell:
Sniffing the tube - just smells like cardboard and sweet sugary smell, simple and quite boring, sorry.

Taste:
Lovely milk nestle chocolate contained in a sugar shell. Eating them can take one of several methods: Crunching it up all at once, allowing it to melt in its shell until it becomes so thin that the milk chocolate seeps out, or biting it along its diameter and placing the two halfs on you tongue and leaving them there until the heat from your mouth melts them down.
I know you're not supposed to play with your food, but as long as no one tells my mother, hehe ;)
Okay, to analyse, i believe that each colour has it's own flavour but my friends argue this is a psychological thing and they actually all taste the same but you think they taste different due to the colours you associate things with.
However i believe they do taste different - especially a distinct noticable difference between brown and red colours. Well all i can say is buy a pack and get back to me on your opinion - let the debate continue.

Here is the ingredients so as printed on back of tube so you can see if there are any nasty E numbers you are allergic to, also some people are allergic to wheat so i thought i would provide the info:
Milk Chocolate (57%), Sugar, Wheat Flour, Modified Starch, Colours (E171, E104, E124, E110, E122, E133, E120), Flavouring, Glazing Agent (Carnauba Wax, Beeswax).

Nutritional information:
per 100g provides: Energy 1926kJ/459kcal, Protein 4.1g
Carbohydrate 73.5g, Of Which Sugars 68.6g, Fat 16.4g, Of Which Saturates 10.6g, Fibre 0.6g, Sodium 0.1g.

Contact info:
0800 000030
www.nestle.co.uk

Apparently they can also answer you questions and provide some cooking suggestions to make with Samrties, such as cookies, muffins and biscuits!

To conclude, These are lovely as a treat but do be warned they can be very addictive and if you leave them in your hands for too long they can stain your palms - or your little gremlin's plams a horrid mixture of colours which doesnt wash off very well. However if you have never tried these I would definately recommend them - although they can be a bit hard on your teeth - best eaten at room temperature and allow to melt before crunching into the smooth chocolate centre.