Jason Santa Maria asked me to contribute to his monthlong Candygram series, celebrating the joys of candy. I took on Smarties in my essay “Brain Food.” Here’s a sample:

The Smarties package of my youth was an exercise in minimalism. Its graphic interest, the stripes of color, came directly from the different flavors inside. Its structural integrity came from stacking the tablets atop one another and twisting them tight. It’s as if Ce De Candy channeled Hideyuki Oka’s classic “How to Wrap Five Eggs” when they concocted the package. Today’s Smarties differ in one unfortunate respect: they depict the package on the package itself. Maybe it’s a symptom of our meta-obsessed times, or maybe it’s a fear of pure abstraction, but this minor graphic revision leaves the prospective Smarties consumer feeling a bit of the Dröste Effect with a dash of Cluckin’ Chicken thrown in for good measure.

Read the whole thing here.