Horror Roundtable - Week Sixty-Eight
Describe your least favourite Halloween candy.
Jeff O’Brien.
These little menthol tasting semi-clear mints that the old British lady on our block used to hand out. Mothballs would taste better!
Curt - Beyond The Groovy Age of Horror
Candy corn. Fact: it was never meant to be eaten, but was created for decorative purposes only.
Stale popcorn sweepings with a sweet pink candy coating AND a cheap plastic toy inside? Now I know why they added an asterisk after “Lucky.”
Pretty much anything with coconut. Not only does it taste like you’re chewing plastic, but I’ve got to wonder about someone who would choose this as the candy they are going to hand out to children on Halloween. You’re almost saying, “I hate you and want you to suffer” by making that choice. I’d rather get one of those razors my mom was always warning me about.
Dave - Rue Morgue’s The Abbatoir
That’s an easy one: those sick-ass, puke green/brown filling-destroying toffees in the orange wrapper with the cats and bats on ‘em. I think this is one with updated packaging. The only thing worse than getting those little barf pills were getting raisins. Anyone heinous enough to give children raisins might as well hand out little signs that read “Egg my house, I’m an asshole!”
I’m sure somebody is going to name Mary Janes, but I’ll give them a preemptive defense since I like those little guys. I dig the molasses flavor, don’cha know– that’s why Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews are the best candy ever. But we’re not here to talk about good candy today. No, we’re here to talk about bad candy. And for the ultimate in bad candy, nothing can dethrone the Unholy Duo of Circus Peanuts and Necco Wafers.
Ostensibly, Circus Peanuts are banana-flavored, but I never would have known that if I hadn’t just looked it up. No, instead the two most prominent flavors in a Circus Peanut are Artificial and Nasty. (ArtiNasty? NastiFicial?) They’re simultaneously bitter and cloyingly sweet, with maybe just a hint of mildew. The texture of a Circus Peanut, of course, is no better than the taste. They look like they might have the satisfying rubbery resistance of a marshmallow, but instead your teeth just sort of melt through, and once inside your mouth the Peanut sucks up your saliva and dissolves into a lumpy, gritty slime. Finally, you swallow, and are left with nothing but the aftertaste of despair.
Necco Wafers, on the other hand, come in eight different flavors, but they’re all bad. Necco.com lists them as orange, lemon, lime, clove, chocolate, cinnamon, licorice, and wintergreen. I don’t need to go into any further detail, on the grounds that several of these are obviously bad flavors to begin with, and trying to recreate them artificially can only end in heartbreak and tragedy. In any event, once the elves (Gnomes? Kobolds? Trolls?) in the magical Necco tree have created these wretched flavors, they apply them to… well… chalk. There’s no beating around the bush here. It’s just like chewing on the colored chalk you stole in first grade when Mrs. Gottlieb wasn’t watching: powdery and dry. Only now, it tastes like wintergreen and clove.
Frankly, if these are supposed to be treats, I’ll take the trick.
Tootsie Rolls. I always used to have a ton of them sitting in the bottom of candy bag after Halloween. They were the last thing I would eat when all the good stuff was gone. They’re supposed to taste like chocolate, but nothing could be further from the truth. Blah!
I don’t know exactly what it’s called, but you know that peanut butter taffy-type shit that is wrapped in blank black and orange wrappers? Goddamn is that shit nasty. I don’t think it has an official name, but they are always the last thing you eat after you’ve eaten all the good stuff, and even then, you’re just doing it out of obligation to Choknoog, the God of Candy.
I respect the tradition and all, but those light brown taffies with the orange and black wrappers are the worst crap candies ever. Give me the ol’ apple with a razor blade any day.
Candy Corn is what bile would taste like if it were taken straight from the stomach of a month-dead corpse and reshaped into that familiar conical shape using Elmer’s Glue.
Rony
The worst halloween candy ever is that gross toffee stuff that has the orange and black wrapper with bats and moons on the wrapper. You know which one I’m talking about. you get it ever year and ever year it tastes like someone has shit directly into your mouth. I don’t know one living soul who enjoys that garbage.
Children under eight years of age.
Too much “baby fat.” I’m watching my weight.
I hate the small bags of chips. It is not even candy, and hardly a bag of chips!
Three out of five Canadians agree, Allan kisses are shit. Thanks to this week’s contributors. They’ve suffered so you don’t have to. If you have your own Halloween candy horror stories, please feel free to share in the comments below.
October 14th, 2007 at 4:35 am
“Finally, you swallow, and are left with nothing but the aftertaste of despair.”
HA HA HA HA!
This is one of the best roundtables ever. So much gross candy I’d forgotten about. And I’m so glad I’m not the only one whose dreams are haunted by that ass-toffee. The stuff is so bad it could make a Jack-’O-Lantern frown.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:32 am
I’ll go with Popcorn Balls as my most despised Halloween candy. I don’t know if these vile treats are indigenous to the American Northeast or not but for those who may not know, they’re literally clumps of popcorn shaped into a ball (held together by God knows what) and wrapped in wax paper.
How they actually tasted, though, I couldn’t tell you. Because popcorn balls are handmade and only wrapped in wax paper, they were always deemed unsafe by my mother and thrown away. I HATE people who make homemade Halloween treats! Don’t they know that even though we’re at their house begging for food that we don’t trust them not to poison us?
October 14th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Please send me all your unwanted candy corn! I LOVE that nasty stuff.