Crazy Treats (or Tricks?)

I love Halloween. It probably ranks higher for me than Christmas. Growing up, I dressed up and went trick-or-treating all the way through high school. My first year of college, I attended the school with a notorious reputation for having an amazing (and sometimes riotous) Halloween.

The day after Halloween, I was listening to the radio and they were discussing unusual things people ever received as treats on Halloween from trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. These items range from the uber-generous (one house in my neighborhood handed out full-size candy bars every year! Jackpot!) to the healthy (toothbrushes, mini-granola bars, stickers) to the annoying (pennies).

I talked to some friends about this, and thought I'd investigate it more thoroughly.

First, let's talk about candy. You've got the candy you like, the candy you dislike, and the candy that looks like it was bought off a street kid in Tijuana.

Top 5 candy I like: 1. Mars Bars (hard to find anymore) 2. Reese's Cups 3. Butterfinger 4. M&Ms 5. Can we just agree that it's chocolate?

Bottom 5 candy, in my opinion: 1. Any weird, unidentifiable candy that makes me afraid to eat it 2. Tootsie Rolls (and what could be cheaper than someone giving out ONE measly little Tootsie Roll?!) Some consider Tootsie Rolls a "chocolate" candy. I feel sorry for those people. Tootsie Rolls are the farthest thing from chocolate. 3. Double Bubble, Bazooka, and their kin. The hardest piece of gum on earth, the sugar/taste are gone in seconds, and you can't make a bubble unless you eat 10 pieces. 4. I am here to confess something shocking. I do not like candy corn. I like it as a "decoration" piece, I even have candy corn jewelry, but I don't like to eat it. Not at all. 5. Jolly Ranchers and Now & Laters. The smell of a watermelon Jolly Rancher is one of the most hated smells for me. Jolly Ranchers, any flavor, make your mouth a cesspool of drool. It's just disgusting. Now & Laters are so hard and so sticky that they'll pull your fillings out. I've never met a flavor of Now & Laters that I like. I don't like 'em - not now, not later. 6. Good-N-Plenty. I think it is a testament to the advancement of society that you hardly ever see these anymore. They look so cute and pretty and harmless, then you bite into one and BAM! You're assaulted by the disgusting taste of black licorice that sears your taste buds for hours. 7. Skittles. I have never liked them. Save your rainbow, freaks.

Scary at first, but amazingly yummy: 1. Those weird peanut-butter candies (Peanut Butter Kisses, I think) wrapped in orange and black wax paper. Where do you get those things, anyway? 2. Bit-O-Honey. I know a lot of people hate them and think they are disgusting, but I really and truly like them! 3. Wax anything. A strange idea, but the little bottles of liquid that you chew, or even the wax lips, are strangely satisfying as long as you don't swallow it. 4. I used to make fun of Sweet-tarts and Smarties, but they're fun to eat and the flavor is decent. It's like eating solidified pixie-sticks. 5. Candy cigarettes. I swear these used to be bigger when I was a kid. Where can you even buy these anymore? Somehow they keep appearing. And they don't taste half bad. My favorite part is the red end so it looks like the cigarette is really burning. Oh, and don't forget how cool you look while eating one. 6. Sorry, I had to add some numbers here. Boston Baked Beans. They sound gross, but I love 'em. Peanuts in some sort of weird candy shell. They're like peanut M&Ms without the chocolate. 7. Any kind of "____heads," ie: Lemonheads, Cherryheads, Grapeheads, etc. Lemonheads are the easiest to find, but you can find the others if you try real hard. 8. I know I said I hate Tootsie Rolls, but I DO like Tootsie Pops. Somehow, that outer shell of fruity hard candy makes the Tootsie inside taste better. 9. Necco Wafers. Completely bizarre, but surprisingly tasty if you like Rolaids.

Weirdest candy: Halloween peeps (sorry, black peeps shaped like bats do not sound appealing...), Whistle Pops (a whistle that's a candy lollipop? Get OUT! I loved trying to actually play music on these things!), Sugar Daddies/Sugar Babies (While there is a fun "Little Rascals" retro feel to these, where do people even buy these anymore?)

Now, let's move on to more unusual Halloween stuff. These are not things, for the most part, that I've actually encountered, but that I've heard of.

Religious Tracts: Thankfully, I've never received these in my trick-or-treat bag, nor have I seen them, but I've heard that people get them all the time. Basically, these are leaflets or comics about Halloween being the "Devil's holiday" and sharing "the good news of Jesus." You'll enjoy the little gem I found called "The Little Ghost." Does this kind of propaganda really work?

Pennies: Come on! Who is so cheap that they're handing out pennies? Just turn out the light and watch Wheel of Fortune, for crying out loud, and don't bother answering the door.

Healthy Stuff: I'm actually of the mind that receiving a full-sized toothbrush is a "score!" Heck, that's definitely worth more than a piece of candy! Some even hand out dental floss or toothpaste. OK, so that's not quite as "fun," I'll give you that, but just think of the value. I'm amazed that people still hand out raisins or fruit, although I think we all know that finding a razor blade in your apple is an urban myth. This year, I saw mini-granola bars for trick-or-treat. They were packaged like small candy bars and were in the Halloween candy department. Pretty ingenious.

ONE of something little: this includes ONE Hershey's kiss, one small tootsie roll, one Starburst, one Starlight mint, one hard candy, one piece of Bazooka, and probably worst of all, ONE PENNY!

None candy items that are unusual, but not exactly weird: pencils, microwave popcorn, package of peanut crackers, gift certificate for a small frosty from Wendy's (which is often smaller than a dixie cup!), freezer pops (one lady said her husband pulled out the plastic tube of blue liquid and was like, "What the hell is this? There isn't even a label!" She had to explain to him it was a freezer pop), coloring book, Little Debbie snacks, spider rings (I never see those anymore, and I loved them!), bags of chips/pretzels,

Here's the fun part - these are actual things kids have received in their trick-or-treat bags:

• Boullion cubes (I wish I was kidding), package of Lipton soup mix
• Dog poop (one person tells of her brother putting dog poop in her candy sack when she was 7, which led to extreme ass-beating)
• Milkbone dog biscuit, baggie full of cat food
• Airline peanuts (if you take enough flights, you could really stock up on these things!)
• Pseudo-Barbie in a box - someone called in to the radio station and said their kid actually received one of those knock-off Barbies in a box (like from the dollar store) in her treat bag
• Ramen Noodles - another radio caller confessed that one year she ran out of candy and was resigned to fishing around for something else. What she had in large quantity? Ramen Noodles.
• Small bottle of finger nail polish (I heard this one from both a caller on the radio and someone on the web)
• Loose, unshlled peanuts
• Mini Babybel cheese wheel
• Condom (that's scary!)
• Pop Tarts
• Leftover Easter candy
• An ice cube (one person wrote about getting an ice cube in their paper bag, which melted and created a wet hole in the bag, through which half their candy fell out!)
• White garden rocks wrapped in tissue paper (handed out by an elderly neighbor)
• Cough drops
• Old magazines
• Old Happy Meal toys
• Cans of Spam or Vienna Sausages
• Packets of Sweet-N-Low
• Little Hugs - those "juice" things in little barrel-shaped plastic containers
• Packets of soy sauce from a Chinese restaurant
• Package of instant oatmeal
• Old books (not even kids' books)
• Old golf balls
• Headphones
• Old candy canes
• Those free AOL cds
• Beef jerky or Slim Jims
• Packet of Kool-Aid
• Jalapeno peppers
• Michael Bolton 45 records (one person says her neighbor handed these out)
• Can of soup
• Shoe horn
• Box of diskettes
• Many, many people write of receiving a handful of loose popcorn
• Rotten potato
• Rolaids
• A marshmallow on a toothpick
• Sugar-free candy
• Pocket Bibles

Apparently, it's OK to hand out whatever you have laying around the house. Forget having a garage sale, get rid of that old crap on Halloween!

On the "more scary than weird" scale, a man in London in 2003 was arrested for handing out sample-sized packets of Motrin and Tylenol, along with dog food in easy-to-open cans.

At work, we all dumped our extra Halloween candy into the candy bowl (which I have somehow taken over maintaining, which is fine since I don't like hard candy, so that's what I put in there and don't eat). Someone put in a whole bunch of JuJu Fruits and the like, and I was so excited, I grabbed a bunch of them. Well, apparently, these are not the way I remember them. They used to be hard and would soften as you ate them. I tried 2 different packs of them, and they were ultra-soft, apparently a new recipe. They were disgusting in flavor, something exceedingly unnatural, and left a weird film on my teeth. What a disappointment.

On the web, I read that one person gave candy to the kids, and jello shots to the adults! What a great idea for next Halloween!