Which company makes smarties

The brand proved a hit and by , was so popular the firm had to build a new factory block solely for production of the sweet, which had to be expanded again just a few months later. They were phenomenally successful. By , the sweet came in four flavours - milk, plain, coffee and orange - and were sold in their now iconic cardboard tubes - a "fashionable" form of packaging that did away with the costly and clunky tins, said Miss Hutchinson.

This boom, however, was short-lived. Shortly after the outbreak of World War Two, production was stopped. Although the war ended in , shortages continued and sugar rationing lasted until The following year, it phased out its blue Smartie amid concerns over artificial additives and replaced it with a neutral-coloured white Smartie.

And although it seems the firm has no plans to reinstate the old tube for nostalgia's sake, the fuss kicked up by blue sweet fans had an impact. In , the firm started using spirulina - a form of sea algae - to dye the shell and the blue Smartie was reborn. And this year, after much lobbying from citrus addicts, the confectioner has released an orange-only tube of Smarties.

We knew they were our most requested product and we knew people loved them, but we've been overwhelmed by how much," said Miss Hutchinson. Bananas on the brink. The dark past of the Jelly Baby. Smarties set to lose their tube. Smarties have appeared in many novelty guises over the years, including Christmas-themed boxes. The chocolate bean originally came in four flavours - milk, plain, coffee and orange. From there, the candies travel via a conveyor belt into the wrapping room.

The wrapper gets cut and formed around the roll. Smarties are made with just five ingredients: dextrose a simple sugar , citric acid, calcium stearate, a mix of natural and artificial flavoring agents that vary by flavor, and food dye.

A classic roll has six colors, which are each different flavors: white is orange cream, yellow is pineapple, pink is cherry, green in strawberry, purple is grape and orange is orange. Perhaps another key to the candies' staying power?

Smarties are also vegan and vegetarian friendly, and the product is also allergen safe, free of most of the common offenders, including milk, egg, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soy. Though the packaging and branding have been updated over the years and improvements have been made to the production process, the classic tablet recipe has remained the same for three generations.

Currently, the company produces over 1 billion Smarties candy rolls per year, which equates to about 15 billion tablets. In the future, the women want Smarties to continue on as a family-run business and hope their children will take over someday. IE 11 is not supported. But this October is an ultra-special month for the New Jersey-based confectioner because it's celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Smarties Candy Company, as well as the 95th birthday of its founder, Edward Dee.

And despite, you know, being 95, he's still the chairman of the Smarties Board of Directors. Dee, a British immigrant and third-generation candy man, opened his first factory in Bloomfield, New Jersey in August , less than a year after he and his young family arrived in the United States. Less than 15 years later, he opened another factory in Toronto, Canada—because why should Americans get all that good-good candy?

The company still has two factories, and they run 24 hours a day, five-and-a-half days a week, so they can produce more than two billion with a B candies every year. We were lucky. Both of his Dee's eventually went into the family business and, perhaps unsurprisingly, so did some of his grandkids.