FOR years the famous Smarties tube has been a favourite with children, but now it is being ditched in favour of hex appeal.

The hugely popular sweets, which are produced in York, have been packed in bright cardboard cylinders with plastic caps for almost 70 years.

But the powers-that-be at Nestl Rowntree have decided its days are numbered. It will be replaced by a six-sided "hexatube" pack.

The move will undoubtedly be a blow to all those Blue Peter-inspired young modelmakers, for whom no creation was complete without a Smarties tube somewhere in the construction.

And a new cardboard flip-top lid will mean no more of those happy playground games of trying to pop the plastic top the furthest.

But the makers insist the change is essential to give the product a contemporary look and keep the brand "fresh and interesting" for youngsters.

Smarties have been sold in tubes since the sweets were launched in 1937 by what was then Rowntrees of York.

They were originally called Chocolate Beans, and were renamed a year later.

Since then, empty tubes have been used by creative children to turn into everything from space rockets to castles.

But Nestl, which bought Rowntrees in 1988, has decided that 68 years of traditional must come to an end, and the hexatube will arrive in shops in the summer.

Marketing director Neil Ducray said: "We do not change something this famous just because we feel like it. We decided on the Hexatube shape because it has a tactile feel with lots of edges."

The new pack will still contain about 48 sweets of the same eight colours.

About 570,000 tubes of Smarties are made in York every day, and many are sent to the Middle East, Far East and South America.