Candies of Childhood

I just went to look up the ingredients in Smarties, some of which have arrived in our house through neither of our volition, and the first link that pops up on Google is a BBC site that says the following: “In the USA, Smarties are completely different to the UK version,” causing me to read that aloud, then turn to Chimp and say, “In the UK, Smarties are completely different than the USA version.”

The Smarties website takes pains to point this out too, saying Do not confuse our Smarties® with Nestle chocolate Smarties! I will be sure not to.

No anthropomorphized candy on this website, unfortunately, just a batch of five kids carrying an enormous roll of Smarties including one heavyset kid with a slingshot in his back pocket. Do kids know what slingshots are still?

On some occasion when booster shots were taking place, my brother and I were allowed to choose a candy treat afterwards. I’m sure I probably didn’t deserve a treat at that point, never having been good at dealing with needles. I chose Smarties. My younger brother chose a lollipop; it was a Dum-Dum. (Hooray, there’s an anthropomorphized drum!)

I was a bad older sister; I implied that our choices of named candy correlated with our intelligence levels. My brother cried. I was scolded. I’m sorry, Bri.