This film is part of Free

Rowntrees Smarties: The Smarties Place

A child’s fantasy of being in a place where Smarties are overflowing, and there are no adults around to spoil the fun.

Advert 1982 1 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for Yorkshire Film Archive

Overview

Why should the glitz of a cocktail bar or the excitement of a disco just be for adults? Children too can experience these delights, only with Smarties taking the place of alcoholic beverages, and where these are shared with your mates rather than used to help chat up members of the opposite sex. This is the Smarties Place, where “things are happening”; which had been, a decade earlier, Smartie Land, where “you know your dreams will all come true”.

This is one of a large collection of films made by Rowntree’s of York (now Nestlé), most of which are adverts for their confectionary products. This advert would have been made before the concerns over the use of additives emerged in the 1990s, with later studies linking e-numbers to hyperactivity in children and other health issues. Eventually Nestlé removed the blue coloured Smarties, which contained these in 2006. They have subsequently re-introduced blue Smarties, now coloured with a seaweed extract called spirulina, which is claimed to be full of vitamins and minerals. 17,000 Smarties are still consumed every minute.