Chris’s note – I’ve read some wildly flattering spam over the years, but GOD DAMN. This is brilliant.

I guess it’s b/c they are made in different factories.. you can tell where they are made just by looking at them– the New Jersey made smarties have flecks of colour in them and Canadian made rockets or smarties don’t.

In Canada we can get both smarties(nj made) and rockets in October but just Rockets the rest of the year

Borris, I’ve done some research into this. Here’s the deal:

Nestlé manufactures the chocolate candy you know as Smarties. They are very similar to M&M’s candies here in the States, only Nestlé’s Smarties have a thicker candy shell and are slightly larger. M&M’s is not an abbreviation, by the way; that’s the proper name of the candy.

The candy we Yanks call Smarties are the same thing that you call Rockets. The manufacturer calls them Rockets outside of the US in order to to differentiate them from Nestlé’s chocolate candies of the same name. That may also be the reason we don’t have your version of Smarties in the US.

UPDATE: I’m not sure how this came about, but I reported in my article that the glucose-based projectiles above that came packaged with the KLIK launchers were Smarties and Au’some bubble gum. Well, that’s changed. That may still hold true for the older launchers, but the newer ones come with Smarties and Smarties bubble gum.

I’d never heard of Smarties bubble gum. I had to try it. So I went to the store, grabbed another Spidey dispenser and ate some. The Smarties gum is interesting in a sort of not very interesting at all kind of way. They do indeed start out like Smarties, which means you bite into them and they crumble into dust. Then, just as you have chewed them enough to swallow them, they turn to gum, forcing you to change the digestion direction your mouth and brain had already agreed upon. Its not exactly the most comfortable transition, but the gum tastes good. Maybe it was just a fresher pack than the Elektra, but the Smarties flavor was a little stronger and better than the Au’some gum. Of course, you have to eat the whole roll at once to equal one piece of Hubba Bubba, which I did, but all in all its not too bad. I wouldn’t buy it again, but I wouldn’t put up too much of a fuss if I found some in my Halloween candy bag either.

Here’s the first official pic of the suit for the new Iron Man movie.