  The young SMC cluster NGC 330 contains a number of blue stars that lie above
the main-sequence turnoff found from our isochrone fitting and below the
position of the blue supergiants. We used our own, new spectroscopy and
published data on these stars to investigate their possible nature. Problems in
interpreting the evolutionary status of the blue giants have been found in
several preceding studies. In theoretical H-R diagrams, these stars lie in the
rapidly traversed post main-sequence gap, similar to the unexpected
concentration found by Fitzpatrick & Garmany (1990) in the H-R diagram of the
LMC. We argue that these stars probably are core H burning main-sequence stars
that appear as blue stragglers resulting from binary evolution as described in
the simulations of Pols \& Marinus (1994) and effects of rapid rotation. Many
of the blue stragglers are Be stars and likely rapid rotators. We suggest that
there is evidence for the presence of blue stragglers also in NGC 1818, NGC
2004, and NGC 2100. We point out that blue stragglers may be a general
phenomenon in the CMDs of young clusters in the Magellanic Clouds and discuss
the implications for IMF and age determinations.
