The Vintage Candy That Was Manufactured With WWII Ammunition Machines

It's no secret that war can, at times, drive innovation forward. Penicillin, duct tape, and cooking with microwaves are just some of the many breakthroughs that came from wartime technological advancements, and candy bars owe their origins to World War I. Following a similar trend, it turns out that the origins of Smarties candy can be traced back to World War II machinery. 

Smarties were invented by Edward Dee, who came from England to New Jersey in 1949. He set up shop in a garage in Bloomfield in August, 1949, where he used a machine that had originally been used to compress gunpowder into pellets for munitions to, instead, compress sugar into the Smarties candies we know today to taste like six fruity flavors, which he sold to local shops.

His candy was a hit, and he moved the business, first to Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1959, and then to Union, New Jersey in 1967, where it resides to this day. Between that latter move, the candy went international, as Dee opened up a Canadian factory in Toronto, where they produced the candy Canadians refer to as Rockets due to the existence of Nestle's Smarties, which are closer to M&Ms than the sugar tablets we in the States know and love.

While tastes may change over the years, Smarties is still going strong, with the Union, New Jersey factory dishing up over a billion rolls per year. The business, which was renamed from Ce De Candy to Smarties Candy Company, is a family affair, with Dee's granddaughters running operations. In a world of company consolidation and monopolies, that makes it somewhat of a rarity.

However, it's just another part of the Dee family legacy. Dee's brother, David, helped create the British candy Fizzers, which are essentially the British version of Smarties, in 1933, joining forces with a pair of sweets-making brothers to form the company Swizzels Matlow. Like the Smarties Candy Company, Swizzles Matlow is still run by members of the Dee and Matlow families. Just as the history of Smarties was impacted by the war, so too was Fizzers. While Smarties came from repurposed war machinery, for Fizzers, it was the opposite: Swizzles Matlow candy-press machines were repurposed to create water purification tablets for the British army.

It's safe to say the wartime impact on the two candy companies didn't rise to the level of, say, the origins of Salisbury steak, which was invented to stem the overwhelming number of dysentery cases among Civil War soldiers. But nonetheless, it's an interesting origin story to some classic candies.