A soft spot for Blue Smarties

LittleOne has reached the age of treats now. Which means we have a lot more treats in the house.

The treats have, for various reasons, focused on chocalatey delights. But not any old chocolate.

Plain Cadbury chocolates have been given the thumbs up. Terry's Chocolate Orange has been deemed too strong (we're working on this), and Caramello Koalas, with their liquid caramel centres, have not been a hit (I get this, LittleOne - it took me ages to like them too).

Smarties have been a ...moderate hit. They're often on the "please, can we?" list at the supermarket, but LittleOne's intake at home can be quite low. Even when I suggest them with rattling, dancing packets.

Which means there are often Smarties in the cupboards looking at me, Which is such a pity. 

You see, I have a funny old soft spot for Smarties.

You see, when I was growing up in Mauritius in the 1980s, we had Smarties, of course. And they were your standard chocolatey treat.

But, when we moved to Perth, Australia, we didn't know anything about the world we'd just landed in. The geography, the architecture, the names of suburbs, shop names, strange TV shows and strangers reading the news... all the things which are the backdrop of strangeness, when you're a stranger in a land that's strange to you.

I still have a memory of the first time we went to a shopping centre (even the experience of a shopping centre was novel to me). We'd made the mistake of walking to the shopping centre. It was a very, very long walk. That was our first physical introduction to how spread out Perth was, and how you couldn't realistically travel Perth on foot, unlike Mauritius, where all the things are within walking distance. 

We went straight to a café to recover. It was called Miss Maud.

It had - what I would vaguely guess at being - a Swiss/Scandanavian vibe. Wikipedia has just provided me with the back story, which confirms its origin story as being Swedish. It was based on the founder's preferred bakery in Stockholm.

What I remember as a kid new to Perth, was ordering something (I can't remember what), and receiving a dish of cut-glass crystal heaped high with a mound of whipped cream and scattered with Smarties. Including blue Smarties.

Imagine a kid who hasn't learnt yet to act like a too-cool-for-school tween, and you can imagine the intake of breath and wide-eyed delight with which I looked at this treat. 

What was this amazing world we had just moved to?? 

Perth - and Australia - was indeed a developed, economically-advanced, confectionerily-superior, first-world place! 

Blue Smarties!

I'd never had whipped cream before, so that was another new experience. I quickly realised I didn't really like whipped cream, so I focused all my attention on the awesomeness of the blue Smarties. 

I relished every blue Smartie (even though they don't taste like anything in particular, but that's not the point. They were blue!)

Bits and bobs of the experience are coming back to me as I type, and I now remember that the server who looked after us was extraordinarily kind. She chatted with my parents, tried to talk to me (I was shy), and was altogether very lovely. 

So much so, that I think we went back another time soon after. We were delight to find "our" server on duty again. Even though the depth of the kindness connection wasn't the same. I think I also tried to order something different and was disappointed when I got towers of whipped cream again, but without the blue Smarties.

I think that was our second and last trip to Miss Maud. We settled into our chosen suburb, got to know our local shopping centre, fell into routines, got used to the names of places, got to know the roads between places, made friends and networks and connections, the particular Australian landscape faded into the everyday backdrop, and we breathed in the smell of gum trees, dry summer days and the petrichor of rain on summer days as every day scents. 

In other words, Perth became home. 

Even as I tried to keep Mauritius present too - but that's another story.

But I will forever associate Miss Maud with those early experiences of arriving in Australia and encountering the blue Smarties. Tiny, real, little memories.

Bounced off, built on, overtaken and left inconsequential among myriad others.

Until now. 

When I nibble my LittleOne's stash of Smarties and the memories of the blue Smarties come back to make me smile.

Postscript: Since writing and sharing this post, I was shocked and amazed to discover that what I think of as standard Smarties mean a very different kind of confectionary in the US. This Wikipedia entry explains the discrepancy.

This certainly explains why M&Ms, which I've always thought of as a copycat and not-as-good-as-Smarties treat, have gained such prominence. Ah, the quirks of trademark registrations strike again.

I was then amazed and amused to discover this little snippet also on the Wikipedia page, about the history of the blue Smarties - it was part of a blue Smartie protest at the Nestle take over of Smarties in 1988. Although, my blue Smartie experience took place in 1987, so I'll just leave the intricacies of timing in the mists.

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