Halloween Candy: The
Good, The Bad, and the Just Plain Awful
Halloween is around the corner. For many, that brings to mind ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. For me, Halloween has always meant snack nirvana. Halloween is the only American holiday that isn’t associated with a nutritious meal. Who needs that when you have candy? When I was kid, my siblings and I would sit around after trick-or-treating salivating over delightful piles of Almond Joys, Snickers, Butterfingers, and Hershey Bars. Woe betide any house that doled out one small Tootsie Roll. They were obviously cheap child-hating SOBs who should have their house TPed. (I plead Not Guilty.)
Some Halloween treats have been around for a while.
Candy Corn
Candy Corn was supposedly invented by George Renninger in
the late 1800s. It was designed to look like chicken feed since half of
Americans worked on farms. By 1900, it was mass produced by the The Wunderle
Candy Company of Philadelphia. There are no niblets in candy corn, but there is
corn in the form of corn syrup. Nowadays, different colored candy corn can be
found at Christmas, Easter, and Fourth of July. I consider them a sacrilege.
There are also a plethora of candy corn flavored ales on the market. If you
drink enough you can forget the entire candy corn debacle.
Apples
Although not technically a treat (let’s face it, they’re too
healthy), they’re also associated with Halloween. Celtic folk used them for
divination, so did early Americans bobbing for apples. Whoever snagged an apple
from a big bucket filled with water, hands tied behind the back, would wed
soonest. Whoever didn’t, drowned, and got his candy stolen. If you didn’t die
from apple bobbing, there were Snap Apple Night parties. An apple was jammed into
one end of a suspended stick with a lit candle at the other end. Participants
tried to take a bite of the apple while the stick was spun around. Winners got
a bite of apple, losers set their hair on fire. A forgotten hero of Halloween
is Kraft Foods employee Dan Walker or as I refer to him, Saint Dan. In the
1950s he elevated the mundane apple to candy nirvana. While experimenting with
excess caramels from Halloween sales, he melted them down and added apples.
Ta-da. Vito Raimondi of Chicago, Illinois also deserves an honorable mention.
He patented the first automated caramel apple machine in 1960.
The worst Halloween candies.
(Doling out these is tantamount to child abuse.)
Twizzlers: Technically, they aren’t a candy, but solidified
wallpaper paste.
Hot Tamales: Wallpaper paste flavored with cinnamon.
Necco Wafers: Wallpaper paste scraped from the shoes of employees
at the wallpaper factory and pressed into disks to punish children.
Life Savers: The worlds most boring candy, also dangerous to
your mental health because they prompted the Aussies to make a flavor called musk,
not to be confused with musk sticks which, apparently they also savor. Both are
equally disturbing.
Dots: The only thing they’re good for is to freeze them and
use them as ammo in blow pipes.
Circus Peanuts: Seriously, who eats these? I once owned a
dog that ate everything including cat poop from the litter box and he buried
Circus Peanuts in the backyard.
Tootsie Rolls: Only if you want to be known as the cheapskate of the neighborhood and have your house TPed. (I plead Not Guilty again.)
Serious about trick-or-treating and want to make tracks to the state that doles out the best candy? Check out this interactive map from CandyStore.com
L. A. Kelley writes sci-fy and fantasy adventures with humor, romance, and a touch of sass. She's stocking up on toilet paper.
6 comments:
LOL! Thank goodness my family is in the candy bar section and not the dreaded Circus Peanuts (aka packing peanuts)! My favorite Halloween memory is sorting the booty we scavenged from the neighbor . . . but then only being able to eat one that night. (Boo, hiss!). I'm suffering from Halloween withdrawal because my plethera of decorations hasn't been dragged up from the basement yet. I go ALL out!
Does anyone actually like Tootsie Rolls? We usually do mini chocolate bars and chips. It will be interesting to see how many trick-or-treaters we get this year. Before the pandemic, the numbers were dwindling. But, during the pandemic, we had a lot of younger families move into the neighborhood.
We had one neighbor who gave out full size candy bars when I was a kid- you can bet it was everyone's favorite house!
Are you sure you innocent? LOL. You have a clever sense of humor, and I enjoyed your take on Halloween and the reason little ghouls brave the chill to go from house to house with their bags. Of course, I had to look at my state to get the inside info on candy. The favorite is Butterfinger, and none of my offerings are BF. I hope I won't be TPed!
Wow, sure am glad we hand out candy bars. Pretty popular around here. Love candy corn!
Enjoyed your post. Thanks for sharing! Looked for Smarties this year, but couldn't find any. Those are also popular around here. Happy Halloween!
Love this post. I agree about Tootsie Rolls. Add suckers as a cheap treat. I really do not like candy corn. Won't touch the stuff. Weather is supposed to be good here on Monday, so we expect a lot of kids. I might even count them this year. LOL
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