Top 10 Crappy Halloween Treats

Yes, I'm well aware that Halloween is past. I know that it's November. But since I went to the store on November 1st and saw all of the left over Halloween candy pushed into a lonely corner on one end cap next to Kitty Litter and Kitchen aids I realized that everything around it was glowing a red and green Bing Crosby Christmas. That's right, CHRISTMAS. I don't blame the stores being antsy to get the Holiday season going what with the bad economy and all but PLEASE can I have just one weekend of Turkey and Pumpkin Pie before we go full bore into the Xmas fanfare?

In a move that is directly opposite the stores, I am moving backwards into Halloween again to talk about the candy. Those of you that know me know I have a penchant for the sweet. One of my favorite pastimes was running a Candy store at a company I used to work for. After seeing my son come back from his All Hallows Eve door to door night o' beggin looking like a burgler that had just come back from the biggest heist since Oceans 11, I watched him sort through his candy with a seriousness that rivals young brides sifting through diamonds. He was putting them into piles according to his tastes. This is what has brought me to this list of notable crappy Halloween treats.

10. Coupons - Did I say candy? Well I meant candy, but this is even better kids! A coupon for 1/2 off of a BIG candy bar! Not some lame 'fun size' candy bar. You can use this baby when all of your other candy has been eaten and puked all ready. LAME. I got this one when I was about 10 years old and wondered who if anyone would actually use a coupon for halloween candy. This is very very much like trying to buy off a hit man with S&H Greenstamps to not kill you.











9. Tooth Brushes - Hey Mark Didn't you say Candy? Well, technically I said treats, which could be nearly anything. This one is a little worse than number 10 because you really are adding insult to injury. Not only are you not getting candy, but you are getting anti candy. The biggest problem is these tooth brushes are usually inferior quality brushes that you wouldn't scrub grout with in a Frat house bathroom much less your own pearly whites.














8. Red/white Mint Discs/Candy Canes - This is Halloween right? Just because you had to clear out your Christmas decorations in order to get to the Halloween ones doesn't mean you can try to foist last years yucky candy canes and mint discs on those unwitting kids this year. You should be ashamed of yourself. You cheapen the Spirit of Halloween.














7. Live Fruit - What are you? My Mother? An apple? REALLY?! Everyone knows you put a razorblade in there anyway. At least that's how the urban legend goes. How about a little tiny plastic bag with baby carrots in it? Wrong answer. If you don't make with the sweet and gooey pretty soon, you will have a hard time distinguishing your house from egg salad.









6. pennies - pennies. I got pennies in my bag a few times as a youth. I don't blame them too much because it was usually on the last few houses on the route and they had run out of candy. When I was a kid, there was a point in time where I wasn't certain that there WAS any curfew on Halloween. So I would be ringing doorbells WELL into the night. So I very likely deserved the pennies. I had actually heard that there was someone that was giving out baked pennies that were red hot that would melt through those pumpkin head treat buckets. Probably not true, but I think Iwould like mythbusters to check it out.



5. Plastic Spiders - This is not a treat and it's not a Toy. It's a crappy Plastic spider that you can get from the oriental trading company for about 3 dollars for a gross of them. Nobody plays with these. In fact they are thrown away nearly as soon as they are found and shown to mom with the appropriate fake look of terror response. I would have had more enjoyment out of 1 peanut m&m.








4. Milk Dud(s) - If you perchance to look inside a childs Halloween haul, you will find one or two of these little boxes of glory. Any one of these little 'butes could rip out a filling in 2 chews. It's a wonder that Dentists weren't giving these away by the gross. They are in a box that will contain anywhere between 1 and 4 milk duds. In candy biz these are called 'FUN' sizes. Fun my sweet mothers girdle. If a regular candybar is normal or 'business' size and these sorry excuses for candy are FUN size. I suppose those little candy sprinkles that you find on cupcakes could be packaged individually and sold as 'Riotous Living' Size.

3. Smartees - The reason these make the list is sheer numbers. These little discs of compressed chalk are rolled up into tubes and called SMARTIES. They have an off brand kosher cousin called Fizzers. They Fizz about as much as smarties make you smart. I have nothing against these candies normally, but if you eat about 5 packages of them, you get really sore taste buds that take roughly 2 days to heal, and everyone knows that one of the essential pieces to Halloween is gorging ones self on candy to the point of nausea. This doesn't help that cause.









2. Peanut Butter Taffy - In their Trademark Black and Orange wax paper wrapping this little treat was a staple of cheap handouts in the 70's and 80's and I have still seen them today. The taffy is ok, but there is just something wierd about a process candy that has no logo and no company information. If you would like to try the RETAIL version of these things, go and find yourself an ABBA-ZABA, they are the same. For all you know, that old lady handing them out made it herself with Exlax to get back at the neighborhood kids for spray painting rude words on her silhouetted cowboy leaning against her house.



1. Pixie Sticks - Yuck. These little paper tubes filled with crushed smarties are horrible. they either broke in your bag and left a residue that contaminated all the other candies and made your hands sticky just from handling them. Or worse yet, they survived and you ate them with very unsatisfactory results. I suppose they ARE candy, but really, they aren't much of a candy. In fact, mostly they are just the promise of candy. One year my brother and I decided to try to pool our resources of pixie sticks and pour them into a glass of water in the hopes of discovering a new replacement for kool-aid and thus quenching a growing world thirst for that fat glass man's smiling pitcher of liquid delight. We failed miserably. We used too much water and not enough pixie sticks. But the truth is, there isn't enough pixie sticks in the world to make something good out of them. More bad, just equals more BAD.

As always thanks for reading! and Merry Xmas!