> > Heh! Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Brunnen-G? IT'S A CONSPIRACY. HER 'SMARTIES' ARE NOT WHAT *WE* WOULD CALL 'SMARTIES'.
> The Smarties I encountered in England -- one of my favorite candies while there -- are completely different. Unfortunately, I don't exactly remember what they were (too long ago!), but they *looked*, if not tasted, like M&Ms or Skittles. When I was there, they came in a cardboard tube, and you could open it at one end by pulling a plastic plug thing out of the end. On the inside of the plug, there was an alphabetic character (upper case on the big tubes, lower on the little) formed in relief in the plastic. I never did figure out what that was for. Some "collect all 26!" kind of thing? Further information from our non-U.S. folks would be welcome.

Being a high achiever, one of my first jobs was loading artics with boxes of spiral bound cardboard tubes. Each day we'd send to Rowntrees about half a dozen lorries full of empty Smartie tubes (about 175,000 on each, as I recall - I could be very wrong though). Most were for the UK market but they were also printed in other European languages, and in Arabic (I don't know how the chocolate fared in the heat of the Middle East).

As for the lids - see the link...

enile