http://www.halloweencandybuyback.com/about.html
The dentists have an organization that sends the candy to troops overseas. I guess they figure soldiers can handle the sweet stuff.
When I was a kid round the end of the Dark Ages, we got homemade treats jncluding donuts, caramel apples, popcorn balls and brownies as well as lovely candy.
On Thursday’s episode of The Goldbergs, Mrs. Goldberg wouldn’t let the youngest son eat any of his Halloween candy until it had been X-rayed. They also referenced other urban legends like Pop Rocks mixed with cola will kill you, etc.
Well, if you dump the poprocks in your ear and then dump soda in your ear your brains will blow out!
Then you might be dumb enough to eat the fast food hamburgers that are made of worms.
After another really cold Halloween, walking around for 2 hours, I have noticed a disappointing lack of Reese’s Percocet Cups in my kids’ haul.
Excellent plan. We should force everyone to adopt it for universal safety.
…or chew the Bubble Yum bubble gum that contains spider eggs.
Perhaps this year she’ll make her kid wait three weeks to make sure nobody in the neighborhood caught Ebola from their candy.
I knew someone personally that it happened to (work acquaitance) it is possible there were extenuating circumstances like where the article entions a parent poisoning a child. I don’t remember the names of the people involved in this case as it was 30 years but the mother told me that her child was given candy that had lye in it and he was in the hospital.
There are some stories out today about kids being hit by cars while trick-or-treating. Still rare, but actually happens.
Sometimes food gets adulterated in the manufacturing process, and it could happen to Halloween candy as much as anything. If caustic agents (or maybe even soap) from washing down equipment didn’t get thoroughly rinsed, candy could get adulterated, and possibly end up registering as “lye” when a sick child’s blood was examined for poison. I suppose 30 years ago, when people still gave out homemade stuff occasionally, it was possible to get oven cleaner accidentally mixed in with something. I don’t know if oven cleaner still has lye-- I just remember it being notorious for having it when I was a kid.
Unless the kid’s stomach was pumped, though, or he had more of the candy with him, there was really no way to be sure that the lye came from the candy, especially if it was a little kid. A kid could get into something in the house out of a parent’s view, and then eat candy within a parent’s view, get sick, and the candy get blamed. IIRC, that would be particularly true of lye, since I think you can get poisoned by inhaling it, or even through your skin (making it kind of a bad choice as a candy contaminant, because you don’t want something that will eat through the paper).
If the police really suspected that a neighbor had deliberately put lye in candy, I think you would have remembered newspaper articles. Just because the mother speculated that the candy was poisoned doesn’t make it so.
I’m not questioning that you are reporting the story as you got it, nor that the mother believed the kid had been poisoned by candy. I’m just saying she could well have been wrong.
That’s actually probably the biggest danger, since a lot of kids have masks that limit their vision, and a lot of the kids are not used to being out after dark by themselves, plus, they’re excited, hyped up, and not being as careful as usual. Drivers need to be extra-cautious on Halloween.
And don’t get your kid the “Invisible Pedestrian” costume, even if he isn’t blind.