September 21, 2005:
Admit it -- you wouldn't like Halloween half as much without the candy. In old times, the traditional sweets passed around during the season were obviously not prepackaged and sold in fun-sized varieties, but rather lovingly homemade. As is the case with candy apples, certain aspects of yesteryear's contributions have survived, but for the most part, we've done a society-wide shift to dissing whatever Grandma's been cookin' for big sacks full of super-processed chocolate Chocolate CHOCOLATE. The soul of the Halloween season is fat and satiated, with sticky fingers and sugary lips.
For people who want to see, feel, smell and breathe Halloween as early as possible, the candy is salvation in a bag. It's the first stuff to hit the market, filling our heads with ghoulish goodness in the early weeks before costumes, blood capsules and spooky lawn ornaments finally waltz their little asses down Boo Boulevard. While the selection of candies have been generally set in stone for at least the last fifteen years, new contenders creep up every season, busting their humps in a grave ditch effort to become part of Halloween's exclusive annual club. Put it like this: You're a new Halloween candy. Who do you look up to? Snickers and Twix. You want to be like them. You want to come in and go home and come in again next year. If you don't succeed, everyone will know you suck. Nobody will eat you the following year. You must prevail.
Which brings me to this. I went on a crazy adventure (I drove to the grocery store) and picked up a bunch of this year's new entrants, though I say this with a disclaimer -- these candies may not really be "new," but it's the first I've seen of them in my area, in tiny-for-Halloween sizes, at least. Some of these debuting sweets may last for years and years. Others will die by November and never be resurrected. If you see something you like in today's Countdown entry, it's up to you to support it. If you dig the candy, eat the candy. If you dig the candy, give it out on Halloween. If you don't dig the candy, just do what you've been doing. Absolutely nothing. You atrophying motherfuck.
Snickers: No, Snickers aren't new, I'm not DUMB. The packaging is new, sort of rehashing last year's concept of having glow-in-the-dark wrappers that reveal hidden phrases. Last year's pop culture wrapper reference went to Shrek and his idiot monkey pals; this year, it's something I'm far more familiar with -- Star Wars. In a fairly late tie-in with Revenge of the Sith, the Force-fueled Snickers wrappers feature various character art and random trivia questions that will only reveal answers when their glow-in-the-dark powers are activated. Who's home planet is Dagobah? TURN OFF THE LIGHTS AND SNICKERS WILL TELL YOU. The range of different characters pictured is impressive, most impressive. Like, for instance, the fun-sized Snickers bar I'm chewing on right now came out of a wrapper with Count Dooku's head on it. If they made it all the way to Dooku, there must be plenty of different wrappers.
Spooky Nerds: Nerds candies have become very synonymous with the holidays for me, mostly because it's something I rarely get the chance to get high on unless it's one of the special holiday editions -- which I've now been writing about and eating without fail since X-E came online back in 1976. If you search the site, you'll see a lot of Nerds-related holiday fun, but nothing as capable of tormenting the souls of the innocent as "Spooky Nerds," tiny boxes of ghastly pebbles flavored and colored in either fruit punch white or orange orange. Discarding the orange oranges because I more or less hate them, I however concede that the white fruit punchers are already sitting beside two incense burners and an athame in my living room, waiting to be worshipped. Then I'll eat 'em, because while some get by accepting the Body of Christ, I think I'll do just fine with the Body of Fruit Punch Nerds.
Trolli Sour Frite Crawlers: I don't live in such a cracker neighborhood that seeing bilingual food labels is completely out of the question, so you can understand my plight when it took me twenty minutes to realize they're cleverly misspelling "fright" and not giving the Spanish translation for "crawlers." Frite Crawlers? Come on, that soooo reads "Free-tay Crawlers." I would forgive this misfire if I ever saw a reason to hop on the sour gummi worm bandwagon, but I haven't, and I still don't, and I'm just absolutely disgusted with unimpression. The only saving grace is that they've been redecorated for the Halloween season, with each batch of suitable colored mini-worms packed in pumpkin-drenched baggies of woe. If only the bags weren't sized more appropriately for dollhouse props, we'd be half our way to onto something.
Reese's Pieces With Nuts: Figure out why this makes sense, and I'll love you forever: Resse's Pieces With Nuts is like E.T. having sex with Al "Big Boy" Caprice but leaving the Pink Floyd album off. It's a tough one, but if you can't decode it at least know that it wasn't very interesting to begin with. The addition of peanuts to Reese's Pieces makes for one hell of a candy, capable of standing toe to toe with Peanut M&M's, which are incidentally the same exact size. This new competition wasn't an accident, folks. Reese's Pieces have thrown the edible gauntlet right at the yellow M&M's stupid cartoony face. Each snack-sized box contains around five pieces -- barely enough for a mouthful when you say "oh fuck this" after eating a couple one by one. Colored to appease Mr. Halloween with spookily decorated boxes to match, both the Reese's Pieces and the nuts agree that together, they can kick your vinyl cape-wearing ass and knock you straight to November 1st.
Wild Animal Tattoos: You've read it before, you'll read it again -- I firmly support any company willing to come up with something interesting for families to give out on Halloween besides candy. It has nothing with being health-conscious. Kids need the variety, they need the little thrill, the little surprises that make Halloween more than just a night to be a face-painted asshole. If it's food, you were expecting it. You walked up to the house not knowing exactly what they'd be giving away, but you certainly believed you'd be able to eat it. You're not going to eat Wild Animal tattoos. You were surprised. In a rare twist, you were both tricked and treated. Regardless of what you think of the tattoos (granted, they're pretty lame), it's nice to have some other activity to do when you get home other than eating too much. You'll eat, eat, eat eat, eat, apply a one-inch lemur tattoo and eat again. It'll all just blend together into one big forgetful mess without that lemur deal in the mix. Each boxed booklet contains eight tattoos. The animals aren't to scale, unless I've been mistaken all these years and wolves really are taller than kangaroos.
Haribo Gummi Bears: From the original gummi bear masters at Haribo come these, the cutest little baby gummi bears you ever did see. Oh my God, they're adorable. So tiny. Smaller than the smallest. I admit that they've lost some of their once championed detail in the miniaturization process, but I will happily trade that in for gummi bears small enough to hide in my ears. Even the little bags are cute. Everything about them is cute. They taste the same as they always have, which is to say, positively addictive. I've barely touched anything else reviewed here, but I'm already looking for the baby gummi bear who stopped, dropped and rolled somewhere on the floor last night because I've already plowed through all of his buddies. I don't know how children will react to these unassuming classics in a world of candy so rife with hip stylings, but it's not Haribo's fault kids are idiots.
In closing, candy is good for you and you should eat it all the time.
- Matt (9/21/05)
One year ago on the Halloween Countdown:
"Grosser Than Gross" Party Favors!
Two years ago on the Halloween Countdown:
The Bloody Blade!
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