to expect a tube of smarties to contain a roughly proportionate number of each colour?

[abigboydidit]

It is DDs birthday party tomorrow and I am attempting to decorate her cake. I had planned a lovely rainbow made out of smarties but so far I have opened 8 tubes (if you can call them that) & have about 30 of every colour except the pinkish red, which I have just 9 measly smarties.

My design is fucked. I am tempted to eat them all in protest

It would ruin my lessons on fractions, ratios and proportions if there were equal numbers!

Your cake sounds lovely! Hope you have enough reds for your rainbow.

If not, you can always buy another eight tubes and eat all the non-reds!

Pah. Am in a huff. Opened 4 more tubes but only got 3 more reds! What are they made from? Unicorn blood or something? Going to make it without red or may resort to m&m's. Or do they have writing on both sides?

And the new tubes are rubbish so I can't even console myself by bashing them and pinging the lids off

This is why Ialways bought my children's birthday cakes from Marks and Spencer -to spare myself this grief! (That and the fact I can't bake...)

YABU- there should be at least double the orange ones to the rest.

It bugs me too! I had a tube of fruit pastilles a while back that had only red and orange ones in it. I like them the least.

DD will be getting chocolate buttons on her cake for this very reason, or hundreds and thousands.

Isn't the red made from cochineal aka crushed up beetles? So maybe it is more expensive.

you can get tubes of just pink ones. Officially pronounced the best thing ever by a three year old of my acquaintance.

Apparently it's some exotic fruit Viva so that may be why (more expensive than beetroot and radish am guessing)

YANBU! Same thing happened to me at Christmas. I was making 'Rudolph the red nose reindeer cupcakes' - bought 4 tubes and there was only about 6 reds. Cakes ended up being Rudolph and his brown nosed mates (loads of browns of course). Thought it was just my dodgy tubes. Obviously not...

I was about to post exactly the same as
reallife I had the same problem when making Rudolph cupcakes! Your cake sounds lovely though, op, can we see a picture?

Hah! They don't have the same number in each pack, either. It can vary by quite a bit...

I had this exact same problem a few weeks ago making a rainbow cake, was not impressed!

LOL at Rudolph and his brown-nosed mates.

'Oooh Santa, we think you're the best boss ever and did you know, Rudolph says you smell of elf poo...'

I feel your pain.
I had a cake decorating related meltdown once due to disproportionate colours of smarties.

can you repaint them with rainbow coloured Sharpies? you have to lick the incorrect colours off first though.

[RainbowGate]

YANBU. And there are NEVER enough orange ones these days.

I have considered dunking some of the many (many) lilac ones in red food colouring.. But may just skip the red layer. Or give up on the whole idea! Was going to nip out for more smarties but no point as I think I would be to get about another 10 tubes just to get the same amount as I had in 8 tubes for the other colours.

Smarties are a mere ghost of their former technicolour selves. I can't even look at them.

YANBU, i actually emailed them and complained when making a cake that i needed red for (to much time on my hands) and they set me lots of free smarties, still not enough red but was free smarties, were appreciated.

I love that you complained!!

there are never enough greens for me!

we need a colour swap help club!

Since the colours have been changed they are so wishy washy (like someone has already sucked them)

M&Ms much better (though they have the pesky m on them )

Ah this reminds me of a thread about frozen peppers

I once complained that a tin of travel sweets had no lemons in it (the best ones obvs) and was sent two free time plus a stamp to replace the one I'd used!