For me it was a textural thing…or maybe it was the method of consumption…I disliked most if not all hard candy…lollipops (even tootsie pops) suckers, root beer barrels, any kind of hard candy designed to be sucked. (go ahead, the jokes are there, just waiting for you)
I loved most chewy candy including those black and orange wrapped caramels, tootsie rolls, any kind of toffee, Bit O’Honey etc.
Of course the best of the best were the candy bars and my personal favorite, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Anything chocolate except those containing coconut which are just not my cup o’ tea.
Smarties, sweet tarts and Necco wafers were somewhere in between but I hated and continue to hate Candy Corn. Yuck!
We never got Halloween Candy, the tradition here was to give out apples, pears and different types of nuts. I remember having bowls and bowls of monkey nuts every Halloween. Bad Halloween “candy” was to get an apple with a bite mark in it. Its only in the last few years that people started to get sweets, chocolate and crisps.
The very worst was the nice old lady at the end of the block. We’d get to her door, ring the bell, she’d open it–
“TRICK OR TREAT!!”
“Oh my!” she would say delightedly. We open wide our sagging treat bags and…
…she scoops out a ladle full of gravy into each one.
***** Sorry— I’m afraid I manage to include this joke almost every year around this time in some Halloween thread or another. It’s from a bit my friend used to do in his stand-up routine.
The last time we had this thread, some poor unfortunate soul reported that some of his neighbors would deposit Chick Tracts in his bag instead of candy. I would have put a Molotov cocktail through the kitchen window of anyone who tried that crap on me, let me tell you.
There was the old lady who gave out pennies. At the time I was pissed, but now I wonder if it wasn’t just the case that she was on a fixed income and couldn’t really afford Halloween candy (which, now that I’m an adult, I realize is EXPENSIVE!)
I hand out full size candy I get from Sam’s Club every year. My daughter found a new playmate in the area this past weekend. He asked where she lived and she pointed to our house. “WOW,” he said. “You are the ones that give out “REAL” candy bars each year.”
Didn’t know such a thing was so impressive.
As I recall, when I was younger I only liked the chocolate, gum and tootsie rolls. Gave the rest to my siblings.
Circus peanuts have been around forever - but who actually eats those? I don’t know anyone who likes them. Maybe they are hiding out with the folks who like fruitcake. Yech.
DumDum suckers were OK by me as long as they weren’t the pineapple ones. Those were horrifying.
And I also remember the first - and last - time I bit into a Mallo Cup, thinking it was a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. ::shudder::
My favorite Halloween stuff was the novelty candy or candy you wouldn’t normally buy youself, like the Hershey’s Miniatures, the fake cigarettes (either candy or chocolate, didn’t matter to me) and gold foil coins.
Yeah, full size candy bars are SERIOUSLY cool, like an “olden days” kind of thing. Particularly when the “size of fun” seems to shrink more every year.
I only get about 20 or so trick or treaters a year, this year I am giving out full size Mounds, Snickers, Reeses Peanut Butter cups and 3 Musketeers. Along with this I have a big box of McDonalds Happy meal toys, a couple dozen Hot Wheels cars and some Crayola Crayons. The younger kids are a lot more impressed with the toys than the candy.
Growing up with 5 brothers and sisters, there was always a lot of wheeling and dealing after trick or treating. I gladly traded anything by Nestle, Zots, red licorice, and Necco wafers. Most of my siblings did not like coconut so I would get all the Mounds and Almond Joys.
What’s with all the hate on candy corn? I love that stuff. Except for the heretical new age candy corn with the chocolate layer on the bottom, where God intended a yellow layer to be.
You can get a bag now with regular candy corn, Indian candy corn, and the little pumpkins! I brought one to work and it’s almost all gone now. I’ve given myself a Halloween tummyache off it.
My wife brought me one of those last week. I ate the orange-yellow-white candy corns and the pumpkins. But I threw away those instruments of Satan, the candy corns with the chocolate layer. :mad:
I hated hard candies EXCEPT the atomic fireballs. I didn’t like the black/orange peanut butter kisses at first, but grew to love them (hey, they were candy. I ate 'em.)
Anything else was fair game, but candycorn/pumpkins were probably the last eaten.
This may be a hijack of this thread but a great use for candy corn for all you candy corn haters is to mix it with dry roasted peanuts. Together they taste a lot like those nut roll bars.
