Cornucopia

What’s the Worst Halloween Candy?

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I’m pretty sure I discovered it at Big Lots yesterday: Tweeterz, which consist (according to the packaging) of candy-coated triangular shaped bits of Twizzlers.

Any contenders for the title?

109 comments for “What’s the Worst Halloween Candy?”

  1. The worst Halloween candy would be dum dum suckers. That’s why I always give them out–because I know I won’t be tempted to eat them myself. My daughter gives out cans of pop, and is a very popular Halloween hostess. The best I ever got was a full-sized Snickers bar, given by the reclusive old lady up the street who we kids knew was a witch. We pretended to be nervous about eating the candy she gave, but somehow we managed. My little brother Ben loved to give out treats for Halloween. When we ran out of candy corn, he’d go to the pantry and get all sorts of goodies: potatoes, macaroni and cheese (just a few macaroni noodles), onions…

  2. I always hated when you trick or treating to the neighborhood dentist’s house and they give out like floss or a mini toothbrush with a tube of Crest. I mean c’mon!

    That’s a dentist with no soul.

  3. Best is when they give out FULL SIZED candy bars. Worst is peanut butter flavored hard candy

    Also good joke:

    90% of parents admit to taking candy out of the kids bags when the kids are asleep. The other 10% are lying.

  4. Brian G,

    Here in the South, there’s usually one or two houses that will give out a tract explaining why Halloween is satanic. I think that’s worse than floss. :)

  6. When I was a kid, Bobby Betheard owned a horse boarding place down the street. He always gave out raisins. I hated that.

  8. He’s still brimming with helpful urban legends, this time about Hallowe’en candy. He says that there are some hippies “who don’t want Reagan to be president, so to disrupt the election, they’re gonna inject the candy with heroin and turn kids into addicts.” The others ain’t buyin’ it. Sam says that you just have to watch out for razors and pins, and Bill adds rat hairs to the list. Harris tries again: “The word on the street is they’re putting their poo in Fun Size candy wrappers and giving those out.” Neal suggests that you’d, um, probably notice what it really was before you consumed it. Harris is one of those great conspiracy theorists who’s got an answer for everything: “They dip it in chocolate first so you can’t tell the difference until it’s too late.”

    Freaks and Geeks, episode 3 recap from Television Without Pity

  10. Peanut Putter kisses–the candy wrapped in either black or orabge paper. Terrible.

    Candy corn was invented bt the Devil himself.

  11. There’s a term for this that has been used by some in my family – ‘nasty candy’. You find someone who has a job that means standing around with little to do, and buy them a bag of candy that they wouldn’t normally consider eating. If you put your mind to it, you can find some pretty horrible things that masquerade themselves as treats.

  12. I hate the Tootsie Roll asorted pack stuff.

    I told my in-laws that in Canada we celebrate “Tatonka” instead of Thanksgiving and we give out gifts of Candy Corn. They bought the whole thing.

  14. The tootsie roll assorted pack always seems to be left over from last year, especially the orange tootsie pops and the dots.

    Last year, we didn’t buy candy, for halloween but just gave out our daughter’s candy she had already gotten from the church halloween party a few nights before. She was 2…

  15. The worst candy I ever had was candy my brother brought back from Denmark. There was one in particular that was hard black-licorice flavored candy coated (I kid you not) in fine ground black pepper (like the kind that goes next to salt on the dinner table) and had more black pepper in the middle.

  16. I second the “Chick Tracts” (though they make for some pretty fun reading).

    Also, you know you’re desperate when digging through the candy and you find yourself eating those black or orange wrapped peanut butter things (that would be my second guess).

    I, myself, like candy corn.

  17. I think Russia might have even worse candy than Denmark, though Starfoxy’s description is pretty brutal. The candy my folks brought back from Russia was unsweetened cranberries covered in unsweetened yogurt. Yuck.

  18. I agree with Dum Dums and those black and orange peanut butter things (so bad they don’t even have a name.)

    We always give out Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for Halloween. It’s a tradition.

  19. When people claim to hate candy corn I know it isn’t true. I know that really, deep down inside, they just hate themselves.

  20. Julie,

    If I got a tract explaining why Halloween was Satanic when I was a fourteen year-old boy I probably would have come back later and lit their lawn on fire and screamed, “Who’s Satanic now?”

    But I’m a lot more mellow now.

  21. I agree with Frank.

    Circus peanuts, on the other hand, are thoroughly Satanic.

    Dums dums are great because of all the weird artificial flavours. I always hoped to score a couple of cream soda ones.

  22. If you mix the candy corn with peanuts and chocolate chips, it’s very good. Equal parts if I remember right. This is an old Utah tradition, at least in my neck of the woods.

  24. How about “Gravy Way”? It’s just like a Milky Way, but it tastes like gravy (Everybody Hates Chris is a great show). The absolute worst Halloween “treat” would have to be religious tracts (e.g., Jack Chick’s stuff). Fortunately, I have never received one personally, but I have heard the horror stories.

    bbell: 90% of parents admit to taking candy out of the kids bags when the kids are asleep. The other 10% are lying.

    You mean to tell me that some parents actually wait until their kids are asleep to take the candy?!?! :)

  25. I know personally here in TX evangelicals that refuse to celebrate Halloween. Its very akward esp in Business meetings

    But it gets worse. We had a bishop 3 years ago that refused to celebrate it either in any fashion.

    Our ward got split on October 25th. The first act of the new bishop was to institute Trunk or Treat in the church parking lot.

  26. The worst candy ever isn’t even a Halloween candy; it’s those candy hearts that say “U R MINE” of some such thing that flood the world every Valentine’s Day. My theory is that sometime back in the late 30s or early 40s, FDR’s New Deal involve a program to pay some candy makers to start cranking these out, as a way to create jobs. They ended up making roughly 360 billion of them, and they’re stored to this day in giant silos on farms that were repossessed after their owners lost everything in the Dust Bowl. Every Valentine’s Day, some federal contractor hires a hundred truckers or so, and uploads some millions of those stupid hearts and ships them out to retailers all around the country, who occasionally update their messages. Anyway, that’s why they all taste like they’re 60-year-old cardboard. My grandchildren will still be eating them, I’m sure.

    The best Halloween treat was my beloved grandmother’s homemade doughnuts and a tall class of milk. For several years, after me and a bunch of my siblings were done trick or treating around our neighborhood, Mom would pick us up and we’d all drive to grandma’s for a late Halloween snack. After a hour or two of snacking and getting high on various empty, sugary snacks, a good doughnut was heaven.

  27. Our Arkansas ward’s Trunk or Treat was a huge local deal; we’d get visitors from other churches that refused to anything on Halloween. Seriously, the missionaries should have used it as a fellowshipping activity.

  28. Not a Halloween candy, but “Peeps,” an Easter candy, has got to be the worst. I’m pretty sure I haven’t yet digested the last Peep I ate, which was in 1982, if I recall correctly.

  29. I help teach my children the principle of tithing by making them give me 10% of their candy. My 9-year-old is smart enough now to challenge the “tithing” claim, so this year (if she challenges me again) I will make it a tax and take 38%.

  32. Matt,

    You’re correct that peeps are nearly indestructable. But you’re off the mark to suggest that they’re not Halloween candy; Peeps also come in ghost form for Halloween. (And besides, given their indestructability, you’d be able to save them for six months and then hand them out at Halloween, wouldn’t you?)

    But since they are primarily an Easter candy, I prefer to see them as a symbol of the ressurection. Or immortality, maybe. Or perhaps sin. In any case, an indestructable marshmallow chick associated with Easter has to be symbolic of something, doesn’t it? There are no coincidences.

  33. Ok how about this?

    My dad worked at the ice cream plant when I was little. They ground up these industrial sized 5 pound Heath (English toffee) bars to coat their chocolate and ice cream bars. Very yummy.

    When a fork lift would occasionally hit a stack of these Heath bars and damaged them, my dad brought them home instead of throwing them away and put them in the food storage. We couldn’t keep up with eating them and we gradually accumulated hundreds of pounds of them. (No, my dad did not drive the fork truck.)

    One year we gave them out as Halloween treats. Five pound candy bars! Quickly the word spread and soon we had hundreds of kids on our street. The problem was that some of the candy bars were quite a bit older than others and they got little white worms in them during the long months in food storage and we didn’t know it. (A great example why you should rotate your food storage!) Some kids came back and tried to throw them through our windows and we caught quite a bit of flack for it at school.

  34. Candy Corns. They look tantalizingly good and then they taste like mud. Actually mud tastes better.

  35. Kaimi: Swedish fish. Swim back to Sweden, you little red Scandinavian abominations.

    Interesting little tidbit about Swedish Fish: If you throw them into oncoming traffic, they’ll sound just like a rock when they hit the windshield. (From the point of view of the driver of the car being hit, I mean.)

    Great story about the worms in the toffee, btw. It makes me wish I’d had worm-riddled toffee to hand out when I was a kid.

  36. I agree with that getting a toothbrush was/is the worst thing to get on Halloween.

    Even as a kid I remember thinking “Why would this dentist give me a toothbrush? Doesn’t he want me to eat candy and get cavities?”

    Next to getting a toothbrush, I hated getting salt water taffy.

  37. Here’s a few memorable bad candies:

    BIT ‘O’ HONEY
    SIXLETS
    CIRCUS PEANUTS, or whatever those marshmallow-ey peanut things were.

    Those root beer barrels were good back in the day, but I find them inedible now.

    What about wax lips?

  38. Swedish fish are great, but they are best if they are very fresh. They lose their appeal if they become too chewy.

    On the other hand, Peeps are best when they are properly cured (i.e. slightly stale). My favorite is the bunny shape. To cure Peeps, you make a slit along the lenght of the package and let the air circulate through them for a couple of days. They are fully cured when the sugar they are coated in has turned into a nice crust and a very thin layer of marshmellow beneath has become a bit chewy but the bulk of its volume is still soft and gooey.
    ——

    Mike: I had a friend who wasn’t allowed to eat candy so of course he developed a bit of a sugar habit. But because of his deprivation he tried to get the most sugar for his hard-owned buck (he had a paper route). One day I was helping him with his paper route. We went to the convenience store and he discovered a large paper bag of bulk malt eggs on sale (i.e. Whoppers with an even waxier coating). No worms — but definitely one of the worst culinary experiences I have ever had.

    This same friend also bought a gallon of lime ice cream (ice cream — not sherbet) because it was on super sale. Lime ice cream is not good.

  39. I don’t know why, but my wife insists on buying Peeps as Easter time. Even the dogs won’t eat them.

  40. Someone at work yesterday gave me a small wrapped piece of what looked like hard candy from the outside. “Try it, ” she urged. “It looks like candy on the outside, but it’s really tuna.”

    Curious, I untwisted the ends of the foil wrapper and looked at the cube that emerged. It looked like a beef buillon cube, and smelled like dried squid. I popped it in my mouth. The texture was not unpleasant, reminiscent of shredded beef jerky. The taste, however, was pretty much what you might expect — salty and tuna-y. Not the mild, melt-in-your-mouth maguro kind of sushi tuna, or even the chicken-like flavor of canned albacore tuna, but more like the cheap canned tuna that you make sandwiches out of, but you don’t use all the tuna, so you put it in a bowl in your refrigerator and forget about it until a couple of weeks later when you’re cleaning out the fridge and make the mistake of pulling the plastic wrap off the top and giving it a sniff.

  42. Kaimi said: “But since they are primarily an Easter candy, I prefer to see them as a symbol of the ressurection. Or immortality, maybe. Or perhaps sin. In any case, an indestructable marshmallow chick associated with Easter has to be symbolic of something, doesn’t it? There are no coincidences.”

    This is good. Peeps = ressurection, Easter, immortality, sin, indescructable… keep going, you are but one or two moves away from “sacrament.” Hey, we substituted water for wine, why couldn’t we substitute Peeps for bread?

    (Was that too irreverent?)

    William Morris (#38), or should I call you Bizarro Julia Child? Your “recipe” for cured Peeps is clearly the product of a diabolical and deranged mind. :) Have you had your stomach and/or intestines X-rayed recently? If you’ve had any problem with digestion, you might want to explore that option — I wouldn’t be surprised to see several dozen Peeps doing the Macarena in your stomach.

  43. #24,

    My attitude is “dude whats in your bag” daddy is hungry. They share with us then off to bed they go and we eat some more of their candy.

    This goes on for several days until its gone.

  46. Any candy originating from a country that is not the United States or in Western Europe I will not put in my mouth. Too many bad experiences outweigh the risk.

  48. Bit O Honey. Blech.

    I love circus peanuts, incidentally, although they make absolutely no culinary sense. My dad used to hide them in his office, and when we visited him at work, we could always score some. Complete nonsense, though. Orange colored, squishy candy that is shaped like a peanut and tastes like a banana. What?

    One year I completely forgot about Halloween. I was studying for midterms in grad school, and suddenly there was knock at the door. I was totally confused, and even more so when I opened the door to a hopeful looking princess. I had NOTHING in the house, and finally gave her some money. She gave me a look, letting me know exactly how lame she thought I was, and walked away. I told her to come back in 10 minutes, and I ran frantically to the store to buy the only thing they had left–2 bags of Mini Milky Ways. As I was getting into the car, the mom called after me, ‘You don’t have kids, do you.’

    At least I didn’t give her Bit ‘O Honey.

  50. I find peeps best if completely cured- that is to say- chewy through and through, and rock hard on the outside. It takes months of open air for them to get to that stage. Once I tried to make rice krispies but only had peeps on-hand, it turned out very different, but really good. It was almost like that Rice Krispies Treat Cereal they had a few years ago. I think it was the extra sugar and the rapid hardening that did it.

  51. Love Candy Corn (what’s not to love? All natural, just sugar and lard). Love Love those little bottles with sugar water. HATE anything licorice, like Good ‘n’ Plenty– YUK! Thinking about eating actual black licorice might actually make me vomit.

  52. Hurray for Bit O Honey, Tootsie Rolls, Dots, everything from Mars and Hershey; will trade a dozen Butterfingers for one PayDay. Hate Valentine Heart chalk and Peeps, but candy corn are the worst candy ever. Except for the pumpkin-shaped variety. That’s the worstest.

  53. Kaimi, You’ll be grossed out to know that I had swedish fish for dinner last night. Around midnight I realized I’d failed to eat dinner and ran to the campus WAWA for a diet Dr. Pepper and swedish fish. What can I say? It’s application season ’round these parts.

    It also appears that I’m the only one who likes Mary Jane kisses. That’s what those peanut butter, orange and black wrapped taffies are called, by the way. YUM! I’m glad that they’re not popular because I can always find them reduced by 90% the day after Halloween.

    D. Fletcher—I’m with you on hating Good n Plenty (seems to me those would make any child wail). I also like candy corn, but only as a decoration on homeade Halloween cookies (i.e. one or two at a time) And what makes you think candy corn has lard in it? It’s just corn syrup, honey, wax, and artificial colors.

    I hate sour patch kids and anything else that’s sour (pixie sticks) or that is meant to fizz or explode in your mouth. It’s actually one of the reasons I don’t like soda (the self-medicating diet dr. pepper from last night notwithstanding). Why drink something that hurts going down?

  54. The lard thing was a joke. I like Candy Corn, but I can’t eat too much of it at once.

  55. Julie beat me to the punch: the Halloween is Satanic tract. We always got at least one every year in Florida.

    Close second: Bit O’ Honey

    My husband has always volunteered to take the kids trick or treating. Somehow our newborn or nearly toothless toddler always comes back with a big stash. Dad helps her/him eat the 90% of they candy they are unable to appropriately masticate.

    He’s also been known to charge a “fee” for supervising and chaperoning trick or treating.

    NICK! Those cordials are YUMMY!

    Paula, what the heck neck is that?

    Russell, thanks for the history of candy hearts. But you forgot to mention that they were made of Maalox.

  56. But Candy Corn is fun to eat.

    First, you eat the white tip, then you eat the orange middle, then you eat the yellow end. I like to eat all the white tips and then throw them back in the mix.

  57. I’m rather fond of Peeps. Even more fun than simply eating them is playing “I’m a fluffy Peep” (a rip-off from “I’m a fluffy bunny,” which is done with marshmallows), which involves seeing how many you can put in your mouth at one time and still manage to say “I’m a fluffy Peep.” (Though I must admit that I’m not sure I’ve completely recovered from my last attempt at the game several years ago.)

  58. The other thing that’s cool to do, well, it’s not really “cool” to do, but it’s a good way to get a variety of candy without leaving your house, or the trunk of your car, as the case may be, is the ole candy switch technique.

    When you give out the candy you reach way into the bag, sack, plastic pumpkin, whatever and you drop your nasty ole candy corn, or peanut butter taffy, or anti-Halloween propoganda while at the same time you scoop up that yummy looking bite-size Butterfinger bar you saw on your way into the bag and palm it.

    If you master this you can nab two pieces of candy for every one you give out, and you don’t have to even leave the comfort of your home. However, you will feel bad for that kid who opens his pillow sack back home and has half the candy he started out with and it’s all circus peanuts, candy corn, and peeps. But you get over that.

  59. Pepper-flavored candy sounds dreadful, I have to say. It reminds me of my elementary school, where many of the students were of Mexican ethnicity. They brought some fun stuff for lunch, but some of their candy was quite appalling. Mango lollipops with a chili-powder coating, for example–yuck!

  60. No no no, Brian G, in 56, you have it all wrong.

    When you get candy corn, the correct use is as follows:

    First, you take four of them out, and stuff them in between your lips and teeth, with the broad side toward your gum. Two on the top, two on the bottom. Just outside of your incisors.

    And then you walk around and tell people, in a bad German accent,

    “I am Vlahd. I vould like to have you over for dinner.”

  61. I have never before commented here, not wanting to start a blogging habit I could’t quit.

    But I already can’t quit bit-o-honeys, and y’all hate them. I’ll take ’em! Ros has my address…

  62. Pixie Sticks. You never quite feel like you have gotten all of the powder out of that tube and it makes you feel gipped. I think it has to do with the moisture you introduce to the product when you start consuming it (ok the spit).

    My wife says: I hate the peppermint candies. Especially in our humid Midwestern climate because over time they are regifted and get sticky mushy on the outside.

  63. In regards to Lynnette’s comment (57), may I take this opportunity to assure the Times & Seasons readership that the only thing sicker than playing “I’m a fluffy peep” is watching two of one’s sisters fall on the floor in spasms of laughter as they attempt to stuff fistfuls of peeps into their mouths.

  64. I didn’t get to trick-or-treat much as a kid – only twice that I recall. My dad said it was “begging.” So, my experience is with my kids. I do take from their candy. I like the tithing/tax idea. ;-)

    My not-favorites: peanut butter kisses, gumdrops, Bottle Caps. My favorites: nearly anything with chocolate.

    What we give out: miniature chocolate bars of varying kinds. We want to be known as one of the “good” houses because it’s better to give (good candy) than to receive (unwanted attention in the way of pranks) on Halloween.

    In our family, though, there’s probably somebody that will like whatever kind of candy we get, so then we get the benefit of sharing. “Here Grandma, I’ll give you all this candy – look at all the peanut butter kisses, Bits O’Honey, black licorice … “

  66. *I*love*Bit-o-Honey* (except for the silly way they wrap it so that you can’t ever get all the waxy paper off). Janet (61), I’ll flip you for ’em. Heads?

  67. How scorned will I be if I confess that I have never yet met a candy I couldn’t stomach?

    Smarties, SweetTarts and the like don’t tempt me much, but I have been known to eat them when there’s no other sugar available.

  68. Rosalynde, this was a brilliant post. You’ve tapped into the inner child in all of us. Congratulations.

    (Somebody doesn’t like Sixlets? Apostasy!)

  69. When I was a kid, there was a serious panic over trick-or-treating in general, plus I was in Highland Park, CA (for those who don’t know, it’s a not-so-nice part of Los Angeles — and it was a lot more not-so-nice twenty years ago) so I never really went Trick-or-Treating when I was the right age. When I was 11, my stepmother was so annoyed about the fact that I’d never actually gone that she actually drove me to someone stranger’s house on Halloween, and I went over and rang their doorbell and got, I think, gum. Then we went to the Glendale Galleria and I got real candy. The next year I was living with my mom in suburban Michigan, and I got to Trick-or-Treat for real. The worst thing I got, before I got tall enough that I started getting “aren’t you a bit old for this?” comments, was cheapo plastic toys (the kind you can buy 12 of for a dollar at the Dollar General store.) Many of which were themed suspiciously — like maybe they were leftovers from someone’s superhero birthday party.

    I hate all of the “pure sugar flavor” candies (pixie sticks, etc.) as well as anything chewy, anything with peanut butter, anything flavored like toffee, any fruit flavors other than orange and cherry/strawberry, anything that tastes like black licorice… my sisters LOVED Trick-or-Rreating with me for those few years, as they could usually give me one chocolate piece for two or even three Smarties or Reese’s cups. And they knew that well before Thanksgiving I’d hand over the overwhelming majority of “weird” (chocolate plus fruit, usually) or non-chocolate candies, because I knew Christmas was coming. Come to think of it, they love Christmas for the exact same reason, since I usually stock up on chocolate candy after each of the major Spring holidays. And my mom never remembers all the candies I don’t like, since both of my sisters love them. They always come away with an impressive stash, and ironically, I usually lose weight over the holidays, since candy is so expensive.

  70. Anything licorice or sour is horrible, chocolate and marshmallow is wonderful. Peeps are the greatest thing ever, and they’ve become popular enough that I’ve seen them at Easter, Christmas, Halloween and the 4th of July. Like others, I recommend opening the package, setting them on top of your refridgerator for a few weeks, then eating them until you get sick.

    We had trunk-or-treat for a couple of years, it was horrible. Everyone showed up at the parking lot at 6 p.m. Open the trunks and kids run from car to car usually finishing in less than 10 minutes. The whole thing is over in 15-20 minutes. It would be just as fun if we took all the candy from a ward depository and delivered full bags of it to each child in the ward.

    Thankfully the Stake President put a stop to it. People in the Stake that weren’t members had complained to him that no children came to their houses, and non-member kids didn’t feel welcome at the church parkling lot. Now we’re back to good old door-to-door. I love it and my daughter loves it. We walk until we freeze, saying hi to all the other children, stopping to talk with the older couples that never made it to the parking lot, and just enjoy each others company. I hope we never go back to trunk-or-treat.

  71. WHere I live hardly anyone goes trick or treating–and we still do the trunk or treat–but its fun! We all decorate our trunks and have a halloween bash at someone in our wards with a lot of property.
    THe kids love it. But we don’t get a lot of trick or treaters–and we only go to a few houses.

  72. I like to sit in the driveway and hand out the candy while my DW takes the littles out pillaging. I always keep some dog biscuits on hand for the people who bring their dogs out.

    I’ve got to admit that I really dislike it when teenagers come Trick or Treating. If you can shave, you shouldn’t be Trick or Treating. I’m nice about it. The only time I went off on someone was when a guy my age was out trick or treating for HIMSELF!! Any way, one year I had given a group of teenagers some candy when one of them turned around, came back, and asked for more. I had a dog biscuit in my left hand and I dropped that in this bag. He smiled real big, thinking that he’d scored, turned and ran back to his friends. My son came home from school the next day and told us about the kid in his class who was telling people about the dog biscuit someone gave him.

    Don’t eat the Korean bean flavored candy. Nasty.

  73. I’m wih jjohnsen. We did trunk or treat in our Florida ward, but it was more of a bonus night, not on Halloween itself, and preceded the ward party.

    Here in Utah, however, we do it because most of our ward members live on over 5 acre ranchette lots. The houses are so far apart that you have to walk about a quarter mile to go to a half dozen houses. No sidewalks, etc. Too much for the little guys. So the trunk or treat is understandable, but it’s not nearly as fun. It’s over so quickly that you wonder why you spent so much time and money creating six costumes for ten minutes.

    My kids LOVE peeps. Their favorite thing is exploding them in the microwave.

    Great post. I’m supposed to be finishing the corporate taxes and my family can’t figure out why it’s so funny.

  74. Every Easter we roast peeps over a fire, this is the only way to eat them.

    The worst halloween candy is definitely candy corn.

  75. Does anyone remember “Jujubes”? I always liked them, even though there was something about them that made me wonder if they weren’t dipped in a mild soap solution at some point in the manufacturing process to give them their unique flavor…

  76. I had some born-again type neighbors once who gave out cookies decorated with frosting that said “Jesus Saves” and I think some were in the shape of crosses. It was just weird.

  79. Holy cow you kids are funny! I am a lurker who is home sick tonight, flying on pain killers. I cannot stop laughing.

    queuno you are brilliant to go from tithing to tax. I am so impressed. My parents were never that smart.

    Honestly, all candy is fantastic. If you don\’t believe me, try any of them you think you hate next time you are on medication, you will change your mind.

  80. i’d rather a teenager be out trick-or-treating than doing whatever else teenagers can find themselves doing unattended at night. what irks me are the babies. i buy individually packaged zwieback and save it for the parents with enough gall to walk up with eight month old emma, adorably dressed as a pea pod, and then hold out a bag for candy.

    i’m a grinch this halloween. i don’t buy candy for my family because it’s expensive and not good for you and i’m thus having a tough time thinking about buying it this year. my kids are toddler/preschool age and it’s not like we’ll get any return on our investment, ha. plus we’re in a bad area (not far from where you grew up, sarah!) and i’m not sure people will even come around. of course, i’m also scared of what might happen to our home if we pack up and get out of dodge. i haven’t ever been a halloween grinch before and i think the difference is the neighborhood… it used to be fun to hang out outside and see how everyone dressed up. now we’re too worried about drive-by shootings.

    the ward is playing “let’s make a deal” on the 28th.

  81. True story: Someone I know had a high school boyfriend who clearly wanted to kiss her. Instead of being direct, he clenched a candy corn between his teeth with a little sticking out, and wanted her to bite off the end. Candy corn was never my favorite candy, but now I can’t see it without thinking of that story! :)

  83. Definitely the worst halloween candy is those tasteless wads wrapped in black and orange wax paper! I can’t believe someone actually likes those! You can have all of mine from now on, okay? =)

  84. I want you to know that *I* know that T&S is true, with every fiber of my being. At the end of Relief Society this morning, Janet (61) handed me a bag of Bit-o-Honey in response to my 66. I didn’t even know she was *that* Janet!

    I am now actively engaged in pulling out my fillings by indulging in a Bit-o-Honey.

  85. Encouraged by the thread\’s thought of peeps as a fall candy, I tried curling up with a cood cup \’o hot chocolate and using peeps as the marshmallows. WARNING: DON\’T TrY THIS AT HOME.It ruins perfectly good hot cocoa by giving it an \’FDC Red\’ flavor. I\’ll try TDS\’s roasted marshmallow peeps instead.

  86. I don’t know what the worst candy would be, but the worst soda I ever had was this corn candy flavored sludge. Horrific. I don’t mind corn candy itself, though–during the halloween season, that is.

  88. The worst candy I ever had was given to me by Margaret Young’s father. He called it Eskimo candy; it was really whale blubber.

  89. Matt Thurston (#28) and all the others who wrote about that unnatural abomination, “Peeps”:

    Candies come and candies go, but Peeps ye shall always have with you. That last Peep you ate in 1982 is probably still sticking to the side of your intestines (next to the Twinkie), and is likely to remain there until your body is renewed on the dawn of your resurrection! :-)

  91. It belatedly occurred to be that I’m reading a conversation about Halloween candy and one of the conversants is M&M. M&M commenting on the candy thread; it’s sort of surreal, vaguely like the time Neil LaBute commented on Rosalynde’s film thread.

    So:

    We love you, M&M; Swedish fish and candy corn and Peeps all tremble at your presence; you are truly the Queen of Halloween candy.

    Hmm. Unless there’s a Baby Ruth in the bag. In which case you get demoted to Princess, or maybe high-level functionary of some sort. I must maintain my priorities, after all.

  92. “I don’t know what the worst candy would be, but the worst soda I ever had was this corn candy flavored sludge. Horrific. I don’t mind corn candy itself, though–during the halloween season, that is.”

    Ugh, I saw that stuff at the store a couple of days ago. It sounds horrible.

  93. Charles (#89),

    Thanks for the reminder. If I ever have an emergency apendectomy (or other such surgery in the general area), I will ask for a two-fer and have the surgeon to remove the “little yellow chickie thing” that has been absent-mindedly swimming around in my stomach for the past 24 years. Peeps are very un-Jonah-like in their ability to adapt and thrive in the bellies of their “consumers.” In other words, if Jonah were a Peep, he would have said, “Ninevah? No thanks, I quite like it in here.”

  95. I love all candy. I even like the horhound candy they hand out at the beehive house. I even like menthol cherry cough drops. I even like salt licorice (I’ve never tried pepper licorice, but I wouldn’t be suprised if I liked it.)

  96. Kaimi, I bow to you. Anyone who places Baby Ruth #1 and M&Ms #2 has pretty much every celestial qualification I can think of. I hope you mean Peanut M&Ms, but either way…

    Looking for junk food for a party at the store the other day I noticed the Oh, Henry! right above my beloved Baby Ruth. The double homage to baseball reminded me that just a few days before one of my daughters was digging around in our storage boxes and found an old baseball. It says, “To Alison: Best wishes, Hank Aaron.” She asked me if it was the same Hank Aaron of candy bar fame (!) and why I had the ball.

    Both he and I were at the Special Olympics at BYU in 1984. I was representing the Miss Orem royalty and he was the celebrity host. I didn’t quite know how to explain to my 13-year-old that the ball was the consolation prize when I refused to accompany Mr. Aaron to a convention in Salt Lake for the weekend…when I was 19 and he was…what?…80? I assume the draw was that I was the only person there wearing a tiara…

    Really, then, Oh, Henry! is probably the worst candy I was ever offered. But I digress…

  97. sugar coated beans from Japan are the only candy I have ever had that I couldn\’t swallow.

  98. Harry Potter\’s dirt flavored jelly belly beans.
    My grown kids gave this to me to try a \”new\” flavor a couple years ago. I said, \”This tastes like dirt!\” They laughed. I\’m glad I didn\’t get the vomit flavored one!!

  100. I\’m pretty much with FMHLisa…I love all candy. I have my favorites, but when nothing else is around, I\’ll pretty much settle for anything.

    As for a favorite: 2 years ago my kids came home with a disproportionate number of these new candy bars called \”FastBreak\”. I took a fastbreak to try the FastBreak, and guess what? I L.O.V.E. them! I ate ALL of the ones my kids got (after 3 days of labor–I get to do what I please with their halloween haul).

    After I ran out of the funsize bars, I saw the big bars in stores and tried them. But you know, there\’s something not right with the full-size. The chocolate-to-nuget-peanutbutter ratio is off. The small bars have it right. I thought it was just me, but in conversation with my sister about how much I loved these new treats revealed that she, too, loves them and has the same feeling about the big bar. Problem was I couldn\’t find small bars during the year. So it was with much excitement that I approached last halloween. Went on the same route, and didn\’t get a SINGLE FastBreak! I tried to find them in stores, but I guess they just didn\’t market them in New England. The first year must have had a big promo or something.

    Anyway, now the word is out, and I\’ve had people actually send me FastBreaks in the mail, and now I can find them in ten-pack fun size in stores.

    Other favs: I love recees, snickers and almond joys. I think wax lips are lame, as were those chalky fake \”cigarettes\” that we had in the 70\’s.

    M&M, your story is SO funny! Thanks for pointing me to this blog from FMH.

  101. I discovered recently that if you put on Old Spice deodorant \”Pure Sport\” and then eat M&Ms, it tastes similar to step throat medicine mixed with Hershey\’s syrup. So if your tonsils are sore, just apply some Old Spice with a long swab. It cannot fail to cure.

  102. I have become my own worst candy-giving nightmare. I bought three huge bags of candy that will sit at the bottom of kids’ bags simply as background for their real candy. Their hershey’s bars, etc. will swim in the mire of our chewy and hard bag fodder. They will gaze disbelievingly when the chocolate is gone, willing their to be something else and swearing, as I did, to give better candy. May they be promise keepers.

  103. OK. So now I want to see a post about the most tempting Halloween candy…you know, the kind that disappears before you get a chance to give it out. I bet I can eat more Smarties in one sitting than any of you.

    And, yes, I do love M&Ms. :)

    (Sorry, I HAD to threadjack because I just ate, well, several packages of Smarties and thought about this post….Soooo glad there were extras in the bag (gotta do treats for preschool tomorrow….))

  104. HA! my family claimed not too like candy corn, or those mary jane pb kisses.. i bought both… put them in candy jars……. they are eating them like the worlds gonna end !~ lol…….
    and they tell me i eat a lot of sugar? well , i do anyhow lol :D

  105. chic-o-stix, the orange and black candy, the hard white candy with the black stripes, peanut brittle, black licorice, yes peeps are awful, any off brand candy, and any foreign candy especially mexican candy bleh

  106. The weirdest item I ever received on Halloween was a paperback book about how to care for household plants and a nickel from the same man. STRANGE.

  108. Peanut Chews: Good for one thing back in the day: Take a bunch to class, chew ’em up into a big slobbery wad and splap ’em up underneath your desk. By the time it dries, it takes a jackhammer to get it off.

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