Crispy snacks
covered with chocolate!

Smash! is a unique Norwegian invention consisting of salted corn cores covered by Nidar’s milk chocolate. This combination of salt & sweet, light & crisp is, as far as we know, the only one of its kind in the world. 

Smash! started its life modestly in 1988, as a favourite of a chosen few. However, it did not take many years for the relatively unknown product to become a big hit. Now Norwegians consume approx. 250 million pieces of Smash! every year. We belive this is related to the fact that once you start eating Smash!, it is hard to stop!

The salty snack and chocolate complement each other, making Smash! a product that just tastes so very good. If you take one, you just have to take another and another and another... 

Several studies from Norway show however that Smash! is for young people. 4 out of 10 Norwegian youths say that they often crave something salt when eating something sweet. 32 % claim that they often eat salty snacks and chocolate at the same time. Thorough research in Finland shows that there also is a big potential for a salty-sweet snacks here. Norwegian and Finnish youths seem to have incredibly similar taste buds.

 

The Smash! story

Smash! was launched in 1988. In a period in the 1990’s the product changed its name to Maize Snacks, before it returned to its original name in 1998. In 2003 a red version with paprika taste was launched, but disappeared again in 2005 as the red variant was just too much like the yellow.

Today Smash! is available in one flavour, but in three variants: a small bag of 100 grams, a large bag of 230 grams and a chocolate bar of 40 grams.


Smash! chocolate bar

Nidar launched the Smash! chocolate bar in Norway in 2006, and it was immediately an enormous success. The advantage of the Smash! bar is that it is simpler to eat when walking, on the bus or when you just feel like having a bit of chocolate (it is a fact that it is difficult to stop, when you have opened a bag). Further the bar is a smaller product and costs less than the big bag. Now everyone can afford the taste of Smash! no matter the size of their wallet.

Smash! bar is only available in Norway.

 

 
Smash! launched in Finland


In January 2008, one of Norway’s biggest chocolate successes, Smash!, was launched in Finnish candy stores.

 

Smash! is the first of Nidar’s brands to be exported since the early 90’s, hoping that the Norwegian Smash! fever will continue across the Finnish boarder.  4 out of 10 Norwegian youths say that they often crave something salt when eating something sweet. 32 % claim that they often eat salty snacks and chocolate at the same time. Thorough research in Finland shows that there also is a big potential for a salty-sweet snacks here. Norwegian and Finnish youths seem to have incredibly similar taste buds.


Watch the Finnish version of the Smash! commercial! 

A crisp invention

Smash! was developed at Nidar's lab in Trondheim in the 1980's, and is therefore a real Norwegian invention.

A confectionary developer in Nidar wanted to try out the combination of salt and sweet knowing that people eat chocolate and salty snacks together. He bought a vast amount of different types of salty snacks and dipped them in our milk chocolate. Most tasted terrible - until he tried corn cores. Salt and light corn cores covered with milk chocolate tasted really good, and Smash! was invented!



Production

The first step in the production of Smash! is to produce the fryed and salted corn cores. The prepared cores are then sent to Nidar’s factory in Trondheim where they are spread out on a conveyor belt where they sort of dance through a ‘wall’ of chocolate - actually quite like the pictures you can see in the advertising film.