September 20, 2006:
I can write a thousand articles about costumes and horror movies, but when it comes to Halloween, I know you only care about one thing: CANDY. C-A-N-D-Y. It's candy that makes you tick, and but for a single added letter, candy would make you a tick, a thought that warms me so much that I've just got to thank CANDY by writing about it instead of sleeping.
Halloween candy comes in all shapes and sizes, and yes, there are plenty of sweets that will forever remain top drawer dawgs no matter what else comes out -- things like Twix bars and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups will always be among the elite pack of stomach-busters that make kids refuse to egg the holy houses willing to give them out...but this doesn't mean that new candies can't try to romance their way into becoming bona fide classics, too.
I'll be doing a few hundred candy-related articles throughout the Countdown, but this will probably be the only one where I like everything I'm writing about. I wouldn't know which one to marry if marrying candy was cool with my city's mayor. All these candies do for me in so many different ways.
Take a gander at six of 2006's best new contenders in Halloween Candy World, and don't you salivate on my website.
Kellogg's Triple Spooky Berry Twistables: Where have I been? Why have I refused to buy Twistables before these came along? Twistables, as it turns out, are freakin' fantastic. They are freakin' fabulous. Freakin' far frout for freal. Picture something that tastes like a Fruit Roll-up or a Fruit By The Foot or some other lunchbox dessert brand with the word "fruit" in it. Now picture that something, but with the consistency of a slightly stale wad of pull-and-peel Twizzlers. And then picture that all twisted! God has a new face, but it's not really a face; it's a package of Twistables.
Making Twistables more amazing is that they've dived into the Halloween pool balls-first. They're not like all of those other candies that creep in with their shirt on, no way. These "Triple Spooky Berry Twistables" are Halloweeny in every way, shape and form. Let's review:
1. They're called "Triple Spooky Berry Twistables." That's German for "HALLOWEEN."
2. The bags are totally done up with pictures of candy bats, candy zombies and candy graveyard dusk. Webs, too!
3. There are 17 candies in each bag, and 17 x 39.176470 = 666.
4. Each treat consists of three twisty fruit strands in orange, green and purple. Orange, green and purple ain't Christmas colors, Charlie.
I'd like to think that I know kids today well enough, otherwise the stack of them I keep malnourished in my basement is all for naught. I have to believe that Triple Spooky Berry Twistables would be more than "just welcome" in a child's trick-or-treat sack. Families that give these out are going to find black lipstick kisses all over their front door the morning after Halloween.
The spooky Twistables are about half the size of the year-round versions, a fact that ceases to matter by eating six of them in a sitting.
Spooky Shapes Tootsie Pops: FINALLY, Tootsie stops relying on tradition to get its lollipops into the sacks trick-or-treaters. FINALLY, they've done something to truly deserve being among our candy loot.
Growing up, I got more Tootsie Pops than I could stand on Halloween, and it's not that I didn't like them...it's just that getting a Tootsie Pop on a day when any candy could be yours was like going on a game show and leaving with 250 bucks. Any other day of the year, fine, but when you're on a game show? You can do a lot better than a damned Tootsie Pop. But this...this makes it all better.
There are five different Spooky Shapes Tootsie Pop flavors available, but they only come in four different shapes. Tootsie, you fools! You were -this- close to getting Shang Tsung to say it. You know you love when he says it. You get 30,000 bonus points whenever he does. And then you get to rip Kano's spine out and put a candy-coated Tootsie Roll ball on the end of it.
There should've been five shapes, but I can live with the four. They're a cool four. First, notice that they used "milky" colors so as to better pronounce the various creatures' features. The Tootsie people thought this through, and that's great, because it means they all sat around a table debating how to make ghost-faced lollipops look their best. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.
Like a big jerk, I mistakenly photo'd the skull-headed lollipop twice, neglecting to include the really cool lollipop shape based on some kind of vampire bat creature thing. Sorry, vampire bat creature thing. More closely inspecting the pictured three, the skull looks cool, the ghost looks like it was supposed to be a bleeding heart but got vaguely converted at the last minute because some suit up in Tootsie HQ was a pussy, and the pumpkin looks totally comfortable with the prospect of being bitten in half. They really don't seem to have the exact same consistency as a normal Tootsie Pop, but maybe that's just because my apartment is 5,000 degrees and capable of melting the Undertaker's urn into Kama's thuggin' necklace.
Hubba Bubba Mummy Tape: Hubba Bubba owns the "Bubble Tape" brand, and three years ago, they gave it its own Halloween edition. This year's Hubba Bubba "Mummy Tape" is new in name only, as it shares the same curled up blob of black raspberry bubble gum as the 2003 version. Still, I think rechristening Bubble Tape as Mummy Tape and sticking a picture of a mummy on the package warrants tribute, so, here it is. I'm not going to make it long, though.
Mini Oreo Cookie Bags: Well, admittedly, there's nothing at all Halloweeny about the cookies; they're tiny-sized Oreos, and that's pretty awesome, but that's all they are. No tiny etched-on bats or orange filling or anything. They're just small Oreos placed in fall-themed bags, but I'll stick to my guns and give them the nod because hot damn, a trick-or-treater who gets a little bag of Oreo cookies is a trick-or-treater who just learned to oreogasm. Look, you get enough lollipops and you get enough little candy bars -- but Oreo cookies? Tiny Oreo cookies? That's a real boon to your trick-or-treat sack's vow to provide variety. Trick-or-treaters needn't be nuts over Oreos to appreciate their in-sack presence, because the art of trick-or-treating is judged not by what we like, but by how cool our spread of goodies looks on the kitchen table when we get home from the hunt. Tiny bags of Oreos add to the sum.
And they're so small! With a penny as our guide, we can assume the cookies to be roughly nickel-sized, and we ca--
Wait, wait. Wait wait wait. Is that what I think it is? An ultra-rare 1971 "D4" copper penny, one of only four minted in history?
Nestle Grave Bandit: How do you sell ten bucks worth of candy for twenty? Put it in a cool box! The "Grave Bandit" is just one of the many ways Nestle has made their classic fun-sized candy bars feel like all new affairs, but where previous seasons only found tiny Butterfinger and tiny Baby Ruth bars placed in black bags with Dracula graphics, here we're getting an impressive cardboard coffin that screams things when you open it.
With 75 candy bars inside, the "Grave Bandit" contains enough chocolate for many us to cover all of the trick-or-treaters who'll come-a knockin' on our doors. Using it for this purpose is a great way to identity the assholes who try knocking for treats multiple times. If you pop the box open in their faces and they don't emote when it starts screaming, you'll know that they've seen it before. And then it's legal to punch them.
The noises range from high-pitched lady screams to low-level howls to mid-ground chains and trouble. The high-pitched lady scream is clearly the most affecting, and I find myself opening and closing the box over and over again, refusing to take my candy until it's prefaced with "AAAAYYYYIEEEEEEEEEEEE!" I so love the lady scream.
Adding to the awesome is the cardboard coffin itself, marking the deaths of such cleverly named dead fake people as "Baby Ruthless," "Nancy Crunch" and "Butler Finger." When you're done with the candy, the cardboard coffin is free to become one of your annual Halloween decorations, placed beside the hearth yearly even after the lid-activated voice-box runs out of talk juice. Until it does, you're free to listen to its pleas and not know how to help.
Pumpkin Patch Orange Pop Rocks: These taste awful, but people don't eat Pop Rocks for the taste so much as the symphony. I was thrilled to see something so rebelliously unchanging as Pop Rocks slap five with Satan -- has Pop Rocks ever had a holiday-themed version of itself before? I can't believe the papers haven't been talking this up.
The candy inside is orange and green, but a really muted orange and green that looks less Halloweeny and more these-are-staley. We can pardon that, because the packages are mighty respectful of October 31st with their orange and green trim, pumpkin graphics and sworn allegiance to the color black.
