As mentioned in a prior entry, there were always four Halloween candies that stood fats and sugars above the rest in my book: Snickers, Twix, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat bars. For millions, this quartet of treats-not-tricks has and forever will be the reason to live out the old cliche of repeatedly going to the same candy-offering house in slightly differing costumes every fifteen minutes for the duration of Halloween. This article doesn't include Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, but we've got the other three. Jurisprudence must be so pissed at me.
Fun-sized Snickers and Twix (and a whole bunch of other favorites) have upped the ante by first connecting themselves with the swear-it's-still-timely hit movie Shrek 2, tacking a glow-in-the-dark feature on the wrappers just to make absolutely sure that no other candy gets bought this season. Just knowing that there's some glowy fun to be had was bad enough, but seeing it advertised in the classic radioactive green glowing font to boot? I say what the Borg say to that one. But I wish I didn't say it because it sounds so lame.
One of my favorite aspects of Halloween that I could just be making up on the fly was the infamous Trading Session. After touring the extended neighborhood with your friends, occasionally splitting off if only to preserve the individuality of each of your loot bags, you'd scurry back to the assumed base position to pour everything out on the table and finally, finally provide a reason for painting and hanging a "SWAP MEET" sign on the door of your clubhouse.
Oh, what a great hour it was. Candy would be traded, eaten, swiped and thrown through windows recklessly and nonstop, a sight impressive enough before you remember that everyone's dressed as vampires and mummies. Of course, certain candies were worth more than other candies to us. Mary Janes were the perennial penny: a good way to balance out uneven trades, even if none of us really wanted them. Any of the candies I mentioned earlier were generally worth 2 or 3 pieces of someone else's stock -- and I'm talking about the good stuff. The stuff that later made you wish that God made us with little torso doors so we could remove excess food from our stomachs before they had a chance to make us sick. Attaining any of the Four Holy Chocolates put instant power in your hands. Did you use it wisely?
The glow-in-the-dark feature is something I probably should've examined before writing this. I can't tell you much about it; I did a quick test, it looked glowy, blah blah. I'm assuming it works. Various characters from Shrekdom grace the back of each wrapper, daring you to hold candy under hot lamps so you can run to a cave and find out what clever secret thing Donkey will say next.
Hey, if they can provide play value with a candy wrapper, I've got nothing but admiration. I just wish we could replace Shrek with naked zombie women with no noses, because then everyone would be talking about Snickers wrappers and it'd be really interesting to see where the fad led.
Without the coup of glowing wrappers, Kit Kat bars needed some other gimmick. Something competitive, something that flows with the season. Spooky bags with bat graphics just aren't gonna cut it these days. If one of your competitors isn't glowing in the dark, it's being made available with trained live chimps who will literally peel the chocolate from its wrapper and hand-feed it to you in the desired increments. I so should've reviewed those instead.
Bag decorations wouldn't be enough. Kit Kats needed an extra boost of Halloweenosity. And they found it in dye safe for chocolate.
"Halloween Kit Kats" are, in fact, orange. They won't be around in November. Except at the deli you never shop at for reasons just like that.
