A dear old friend, some dear new friends and I were having dinner the other night. We were sharing tales of how DearOldFriend’s mom used to terrorize us with mid 70’s health food cooking.
Tritacaeli vermicelli anyone?
This brought a question from DOF, “What did my mom give out for halloween?” My sister and I thought about it, and we both concurred that it was those little honey and sesame sticks from the Health food store.
Eww, ick.
WORST HALLOWEEN TREAT EVER.
-discuss-
There was one old guy who lived in the “rich” section of our neighborhood, on a semi-circular street with its own private park in the middle. Anyway, for years he would give out packets of peanuts purchased from some Shriner charity promotion. This would be fine, except that they were raw, unsalted peanuts clearly bought the previous July and stored in a damp basement until Halloween Bleh.
We never learned though.
That god damn candy in the orange and black wrappers
Hard-as-a-rock factory made popcorn balls.
A chicklet.
A dentist in our neighborhood used to give out toothbrushes.
Apples (whether with or without razorblades). I wanted CANDY, dammit!
Jack Chick tracts. Why ya gotta piss in some poor kid’s cornflakes on Free Candy Day?
Pennies. Come ON, old lady, show me some silver!
The aforementioned toothbrushes (although now a free toothbrush sounds pretty sweet).
Get with the program, people. We want sweet. Give it over and there won’t be any problems. I didn’t get all dressed up in this vision-reducing, breath-restricting, leg-tangling, probably-highly-flammable monkey suit so you could throw me a SaranWrap square full of motherfucking Jiffy-Pop.
A house near my school gave me a “Jack Chick” tract. They had a son with severe birth defects hand it to me with his one working hand. I think I said thanks, but I certainly didn’t mean it…
Jizzin’ in the plastic pumpkin.
yep.
Nickels. And not even because children clearly expect CANDY on halloween, but because of the way the guy would give them to you. You had to knock on the door and hold your bag up to the mailslot. Mailslot would open - out pops a nickel! It was just freaky. I always hated getting apples, too.
There was a time during my childhood when I lived in a very rural part of Tennessee. There was one farmhouse within walking distance from our place and the old farmer who lived there was sort of a reclusive, uncivilized type. After gearing up in sheets & old clothes & whatnot and trekking over there, we found he was indeed expecting trick or treaters (we were the only kids within miles). So what’d we get? Baked sweet potatoes…
Not the worst treat I ever got, and looking back on it, there’s something rather poignant about it. But when you’re a kid and your only hope is for candy…
The candy from four years ago that I hid from my son and just found. Heh. Bunch of it, too.
Yes, I threw it out. But it did make me giggle for a few.
Stale, broken pretzel rods. And pennies.
Then there’s the famous “I got a rock,” and NOT in a good way (sorry, Charlie Brown!).
Patty
I once gave out candy AND toy whistles. Yes, an assortment of slide whistles, little kazoo things, and such. I had a HUGE bag of them, it was my first year handing stuff out, and I was generous. Within 30 minutes of trick-or-treating you could hear them all over the neighborhood. I was thrilled, but it turns out the neighborhood parents weren’t. What a bunch of spoilsports!! (Hey, at least I didn’t have to listen to them once they got off the porch- and you should have seen their little faces light up! TOYS and CANDY!! This lady ROCKS!!!)
The beige globs of poo wrapped in orange and black paper.
As for non candy treats - rolls of pennies, mini-coloring books with 1 mini crayon, tiny bibles and those little bottles of shampoo from hotels.
Yea, the orange and black paper-wrapped candies sucked ass.
How about MINI-toothbrushes? Not only are they not giving out candy, they’re not even giving out decent toothbrushes.
My mom was a huge cheapskate and would buy those bags of generic candy from, like, Wal-Mart, the kind that’s just random hard candies that all taste pretty nasty and are usually stuck to the plastic. So I apologize.
One teacher always gave out pencils (cheap ones). Most kids didn’t bother going back once they figured that out.
We should set up a candy co-op! I like the orange and black poo gobs! I’d be happy to take them if you take these circus peanuts and Dum Dums.
Dum Dums suck too, I’ve blown bigger pieces of candy out of my nose laughing at Wang-Ka stories.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating…Circus Fucking Peanuts. They are by far the most revolting foodstuff ever invented.
Second worst is candy corn. God…it reminds me of rotten teeth.
Third runner up would be the black-and-orange shit blobs.