Where the hell is it that you get Trick or Treaters without costumes? Honestly, I never see this.
It really, really depends on the neighborhood. When you get a lot of parents escorting the kids that are grade school and younger, you tend to have far fewer of the older kids, and those teens that do go out tend to be in costume, and not in a gang of half a dozen or so. If you live in a bad neighborhood, the parents are afraid to let their little kids out, and will take them to a safer neighborhood, or take them Trunk or Treating, or take them to the mall, and the teens run in gangs without costumes.
First three panels… amusing little tale that does sound like it’d be fun to try.
Fourth panel… aww, and they’re in love… wait, does the balls spilling out into the hall and the heart mean they broke the barrier with a vigorous round of acrobatic sex?
How about those honeyed things wrapped in orange or black waxed paper? Those take the joy out of *any *occasion. Since they’re allegedly a treat, nobody will hassle you, esp. if you have a big, merry grin on your face as you hand them out. You might even get them to note to themselves not to come back next year.
Then the best solution is to turn out your porch light and not participate, than think of ways to screw the teens.
Tell them “you look old enough to have candy from the special bowl!” Then come back with a bowl that stays suspiciously at crotch level and invite them to reach in all the way to the bottom. (Whether you actually stick your penis in the bowl depends on how much you like being featured on websites that people check before buying a house in your neighborhood.) This should discourage all but the most candy-hungry teenagers.
I’m with these guys.
And I’m with Asceneray. Treat kids like they’re jerks and they learn to treat others like that. It’s one night a year and candy’s cheap. What’s the big freaking deal.
Oh. So we should screw the little kids, instead?
Yeah, I got a few like that. I just made lighthearted fun of them and gave them candy anyway. Like the teenage girl who asked me how my dinner was (I was eating takeout on the porch, we just got back from the gym, I needed food!). I told her it was excellent, how was trick or treating with an iPhone? Was she using an app to mark all the good candy houses, and mapping her progress? 
Your scenario said little kids weren’t let out and went to safer neighborhoods or trunk and treat events instead, and bands of uncostumed teens were running around.
Color me confused. Which is it?
Yep. But we do save the “healthy” treats for the bigger kids. Little ins get one healthy and 1 or two candies. This year we had Snickers, M&Ms & Skittles. “Fun” sized of course.
Healthy is mini-granola bars, those fruit-snak things, etc. Still tasty and hardly to be sneered at.
I also have a few mini-glow sticks we hand out to tweens who are wearing all dark and forgot their lights.
I do agree, they need to be wearing costumes or I give them the fish-eye.
We had about 60 kids. The last ones after 9PM were all what the Op is ranting about I think, 13 or 15 yo.
We had a few little ones, not many, but a few, in the old neighborhood. In this new neighborhood, we have mostly little ones, and only a few teens. So it’s not 100% of one or the other. Since we lived just a couple of houses down from one of the big churches in the old neighborhood, we’d get some Trunk or Treaters who’d hit our house after they left the church parking lot.
How about not screwing anyone and just letting everyone have a bit of fun?
So if its just normal teens, not the gangs of rowdy teens roaming the neighborhood you described in your scenario, then I’m back to my original impulse, which is ‘meh’.
My feeling:
Teens can trick or treat. It’s great if they dress up. If they don’t, it’s not worth it to make a big deal.
If it’s gangs of jerky kids, teens or younger, I’m probably not going to participate, especially if the little ones aren’t even around.
A ladle-full of delicious, hot, gravy.
Agreed. I did too. But now it seems like Halloween has evolved into a watered-down, parent-supervised outing for very young children. Many parents even take their toddlers to special neighborhoods that are regarded as ultra-safe for trick-or-treating. There are never any trick-or-treaters on my street, because it is in a mixed neighborhood in a border region of Saint Louis, Missouri, between a white area and a black area, and things are extremely polarized and demarcated here.
When I was 6 my older brother was 7 we went trick-or-treating in Pasadena, California right around the time of the Watts riots, and that was a mixed neighborhood. Us white kids had to deal with things my parents were never even exposed to because they attended the virtually all-white Pasadena City College while we went to Jackson Elementary and we were outnumbered and sometimes attacked by black kids who seemed very upset about us even being in their neighborhood. But we trick-or-treated in that neighborhood, albeit in a group with other kids, but no parents whatsoever. The only rule was not to eat any candy until we brought it home and we dumped it all out on the living room carpet and gave everything a close look with our mother’s help.
Things were more dangerous back then. Crime rates were higher, and the neighborhood was not really totally safe. But it was okay. Nobody ever tried to abduct me. So perhaps as a result of the kind of loose parental control I experienced, I sort-of feel that society has developed a kind of hysterical paranoia about dangers that are really insignificant.
So, teenagers are discouraged from trick-or-treating. I suppose that’s to keep the holiday as infantilized as possible, in order to ensure that it remains a completely defanged tradition.
Small-town Eastern Kentucky, in one of only a handful of walkable neighborhoods in several counties. We buy candy for 350 and run out within an hour; best estimate is that 500-700 kids come through each year, depending on weather and what else is going on. It doesn’t take a large percentage going out without costumes to add up to a fair few kids.
But yeah, this is the only place I’ve ever seen anything of the sort.
These are also exactly the children who will stand there and argue with you about how much candy you’re giving them. I had one actually tell me “If you live in this neighborhood you’re rich and can go buy more candy.” I was sorely tempted to reply that if he could grow facial hair, he could get a job and buy his own candy.
Just give the older, sullen kids Circus Peanuts.
Fool! You can’t give them anything they want!
Never! No costume, no candy, especially if the damn “kids” are taller than I am. They get nada. Maybe candy corn.