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September 14, 2005:
By now you know that one of my favorite parts of October is seeking out all of the wild "Halloween edition" foods at grocery stores. It's a love affair that's introduced me to many fine snacks and beverages I would've never otherwise picked up, evidently because pumpkin graphics and bat-shaped marshmallows are capable of making anything seem appetizing. There's a sense that these items become iconic to that year's particular Halloween, sort of like how I'll never be able to think about the 2004 season without my tongue immediately doing sour reaction flips in remembrance of Mountain Dew Pitch Black.
I get pretty upset whenever I miss such an event, and even more upset when I know it's going on but can't join the party because the item in question isn't available in my area. Many holiday-themed food oddities only appear in select cities, and sometimes, the cities a company selects aren't anywhere near my private dungeon lair. I'm not saying that I'm not the type of person who would drive to Utah if that was the only place where they sold Dracula Pepsi, but just because you're the type of person who would doesn't mean you're the type of person who can. In cases like these, I just sit and fester. Even in recent years when anything unattainable becomes attainable on eBay, I've spited myself and refused to bid. It's just not the same if you don't find it yourself. This is what happens when you don't go to college, kids. You don't get the scavenger hunter out of your system till you're like, sixty-seven.
I didn't catch the Hallofood we're going to EAT today when it was introduced, and was first tipped off on it by a reader named Kelly a few years back. She offered a can she'd saved from the previous year, but in the kind of ignorance that defines me and will ultimately kill me, I politely declined, thinking it was new enough to at least nail one follow-up during the then-upcoming season. I went to the grocery store with eyes as big as ears that October, and it wasn't there. It never came. Christmas didn't come. Luckily, Kelly offered up the goods again this year, and I wasn't about to make the same mistake. "Bring it on," I said. "Send me that Halloween soup."
Campbell's Jack-O-Lantern Soup, to be exact. Featuring pumpkin-shaped pasta pieces that grow gooey in steamy chicken broth, it's a curiously risky venture from the soup giant. During October, I like to think about and dwell within the Halloween season as much as possible...but not when I'm eating soup. Not during the soup. It's too close to milky, too odorously indistinct, too much like too many of the assorted gross things associated with the holiday. I can't have that going on during soup. I don't even want to deal with Halloween immediately following soup -- you've gotta give the stuff a chance to smolder off your palette before delivering your brain back to the Halloween sea of blood, guts, gore and slime. I'm glad Campbell's did it, but it's pretty obvious why they ain't doing it no more.
Arriving in 2001 and costing Kelly 89 cents, the soup label's witty cooking directions make it impossible to resist. I assume that the only reason Kelly didn't eat this is because she is from Neptune and her alien biology cannot survive Earth soup. Now well past its expiration date, I know I can't compensate for Kelly's Neptunian shortcomings by downing the soup in a big gulp like so much Gatorade. Doesn't mean I can't open it and use those funky plastic tongs my lab kit came with to examine the only Campbell's product in history officially sanctioned by Lawd Lucifer.
I'll give you twenty bucks if you lick it.
The soup hasn't kept well, absolutely stinking like chicken juice, with many of the pumpkin-shaped pasta pieces turned from their standard orange to hues closer to tan. Others are deep brown, with a few pale yellows in the mix -- it's interesting to see the varying levels of decay on display within a single can of soup. A single-serving sized can of soup, no less. I haven't been filled with this much worldly ponder since first being introduced to those shrimp-inhabited, egg-shaped ecospheres several years back.
The jack-o-lantern shapes aren't perfectly defined, having the correct border of a pumpkin but with a bunch of irrelevant pasta strands holding the frame together. They remind me a bit more of waffles than Halloween, but I'm willing to forgive that since the can came with free tattoos. Free tattoos always buy my silence.
It's a nice collection of six temporary tattoos, ambiance leaning more towards "creepy" than "cartoony," with a ghoulish hand, an evil spider and an eyeball just as big. I've always been a staunch supporter of soup that comes with free gifts, and while the tattoos aren't epic enough to serve as someone's Halloween costume, they're enough to make my forearms scare the shit out of children.
I don't expect Campbell's Jack-O-Lantern Soup to ever return, but I'm not ruling out a temporary renaming of tomato soup as Campbell's Vampire Cocktail by the second week of October. I know it's just wishful thinking, but that's what Halloween does to me.
Big thanks to Kelly for sending me a can of old soup. It's alls 'bout the little things.
- Matt (9/14/05)
One year ago on the Halloween Countdown:
The WPIX Shocktober Commercial!
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