Children, adults alike love smarties. Those multi-colured circles of pleasure.

Hands up now...who hasn't emptied a tube of smarties, to line them up in colours to see which colour there is more of? Please say that's not just me.

The colours of the crisp shell that hides the chocolate inside are bright and attractive. Suck a smartie long enough and the colour bleeds away to leave a white shell; I am also sure that each colour tastes slightly different, although there are many that disagree with me on that point.

I remember when the tube used to be round and the lid was a plastic top with a letter moulded onto the underside. My children both had hours of fun trying to make words out of them, they would collect them if they found them on the street and they used them for learning, not just how many calories has mummy put on by stuffing herself with sweets again? but making words. Not being able to leave things alone, which is often the case with things these days, they changed the packet to a new hexagonal shape and made the lid an easy close cardboard one, where is the fun in that? Also what happened to the boxes of smarties you used to be able to buy? They used to cost 75p and I would love opening the cellophane, undoing the box and looking into the paper bag inside the box at al the amazing colours, I would eventually start to eat them once I had lined them up in colours. Purple ones always lasted till the other colours had been demolished.

They do still come out with the large tubes at Christmas but these should be available during the year, how cruel is it to make us wait an entire year to buy these. Also bring back the giant smarties, the black and white ones and the ones with faces on, I used to love them.

All in all, smarties are a classic sweet and one that will be around for years to come.