This time of year I face an age old moral dilemma, one I like to think of as The Candy Crisis. In order to identify your own moral failings- I provide you with this quiz. There is no scoring, as that would take me too long to figure out. You want a quiz with scores go buy yourself a Cosmo magazine.
Do you:
a) buy Halloween candy now in an effort to be organized and have to see it laying there, tempting you until you consume it all in a flurry of torn wrappers and chocolate smears?
b) wait to buy the candy until the day before Halloween and risk having to give away chocolate covered turnips because all the good candy is picked over?
When selecting candy, do you:
a) buy stuff you like and risk having to hand out saltine crackers because you ate it all?
b) buy some form of chocolate that you despise even though if you grow desperate you may lick the offending chocolate?
Are you the one in the neighborhood who:
a) gives away high end name brand candy?
b) gives away the cheap candy made from pressed chalk dust and sugar?
c) gives away pennies wrapped up in foil because you ate all the candy?
d) gives away something good for you like raisins which makes kids want to egg your house and not with the organic free range eggs either?
If you give away a healthy treat, do you:
a) really believe raisins are nature’s candy instead of dead grapes that fell behind the food crisper drawer?
b) have unresolved anger issues from your own childhood that makes you want to rain on the chocolate parade?
I have this theory that Halloween candy used to be better when we were kids. I’m pretty sure the mini candy bars were larger. We also rarely worried about someone trying to kill us. There were rumors that someone might stick razor blades in your apples- but that just gave us an excuse to purge the healthy snacks and go right for the chocolate. I think the candy was better too. I used to love those caramel suckers they made- Slo Pokes. I don’t think they make them anymore. Tragic really.
What was your favorite thing to get at Halloween?
Have no fear! You can still get your slo pokes. I saw them here:
http://www.nostalgiccandy.com/
You only have to pour through about 14 pages of nostalgic candy–it’ll be a trip down candy lane (Oh, Candy Land! My FAVORITE game as a kid! One of my LEAST favorite games as a parent–that and Chutes and Ladders, which is game hell, IMO) .
My favorite, by far? Sugar Daddies–much like Slo Pokes only better 😉 . My kids got a few a couple of years ago for Halloween which I immediately scarfed up. And then I felt compelled to search the universe for my own. Got a bag on sale at Target (pronounced Tar-jhay) and was so happy until I realized my teeth would be broken if I really attempted to eat the things, so I had to concede that in the interest of retaining my own teeth, I’d better toss the Sugar Daddies…
I feel like I have to make up for all of the houses of TERRIBLE candy that scarred me as a child. My sister does this too. We give away the good chocolate. We just hand it over….
When I was a kid, there was a house on the next block that gave away the good chocolate too. Kids would hover around the house. It was the FULL SIZE Milky Way or Snickers bar. It was unprecedented. However, there was a catch. You had to walk up to the spooky porch and stick your hand in a black cauldron that had dry ice inside of it in order to pick up your candy. I, bravely, sent my brother to get mine.
Isn’t it funny that we can remember what happened on Halloween so long ago?
1) i buy candy all the time, but at this time of year it’s as simple as adding about five of those huge bags from sams…and, yep, i break that bad boy open and eat some!
2)always the stuff i like cause what if no one comes to my house and then i’m stuck with raisons?!
3)high end baby!
4)”…if you give a healthy treat…” i laughed and a snort came out! no helathy anything at halloween!
my favs to get were anything chocolate…and since there were five kids in my family we each would hide our stash from the rest. for some reason my candy was always the first to be eaten. one the up side, i was always great at hide and seek!
There is a source for slo pokes? really? Uh-oh.
I’m all about the mini Milky Ways. We give out the good candy, and lots of it.
Hey, it’s only Halloween once a year.
Down with Raisins,
Lisa
Definitely Milky Ways! In fact my mind draws a blank on anything else.
You’re in fine form with this one, Eileen. 🙂
I don’t know my favorite candy, but here’s a memory this post triggered: Halloween, 1985. We’re trick-or-treating with the neighbor kids through the country (driving door-to-door for candy…ah, country living), and we stopped at this cute little ranch. Turned out a woman with Alzheimer’s lived there; she didn’t know it was Halloween, so she gave us a bunch of money.
I still feel a little guilty about that today.
There’s more than one online resource for Slo Pokes.
http://www.oldtimecandy.com/slo-poke.htm
Candy lasts me forever. I have it around, usually in the freezer so it doesn’t go bad. When we were kids, it used to drive my brother crazy because he would eat all his and I would still be bringing out a piece to eat in front of him a month later. The year the dog ate every piece of his candy on Halloween night (except the red devil gobstoppers, which had teeth marks in them) was a really good year for me torment-younger-sibling-wise.
I ate my candy so slowly my mother would sneak into my room, take some, and leave me money to assuage her guilt.
Until this year, I lived in a retirement resort area so I haven’t had any trick or treaters. This year, there are kids, but we live up a long, scary driveway. I intend to put out lots of pumpkins all the way up to encourage the brave and then I will give away Cadburry candybars!
Funny Eileen!! Since you’re not scoring the quiz, I’m not answering it except to say that I NEVER buy the candy until a day or two before because otherwise EVERYBODY in the family eats it and I also buy decent (not the giant bars) candy but not the kind I love and one year I did the raisin thing and that was a total disaster.