Top-10 List: WORST Halloween treats

Our neighborhood is GREAT for Halloween trick-or-treating. It’s well lit with sidewalks and tons of families with kids.

So this weekend, we bought Halloween candy in preparation of the upcoming spooky fete – here’s a tip all the REALLY good candy is given out at our house (e.g. full-size Snickers, Reese’s PB cups, Super Blow Pops, Sour Patch kids…etc.)

However, I’m always stunned at some of the crappy treats that are still on the market – which prompted this little confectionary tirade of the top-10 WORST Halloween treats.

10. Malt balls – these are the genetically inferior distance cousin to the supremely better Milk Duds. Don’t confuse them!

9. Bit ‘O Honey/Mary Janes (or any other of those Depression Era candies still wrapped in wax paper) – nuff said!

8. Black Licorice – this is reminiscent of Vicks Formula 44D Original cough syrup (bleech!) and is the sugary bastardization of the far superior red licorice made by Twizzlers or Red Vines respectively.

7. A small box of raisins – any other day of the year raisins are awesome, but they are a complete bummer next to all the other Halloween booty in your bag of goodies. Raisins on Halloween are like taking your sibling to the prom – just weird.

6. Tootsie Rolls – I know I’ll catch a lot of flak opposing that iconic candy but honestly what is a Tootsie Roll? It’s like a waxy chocolate facsimile that was phoned in by drunken pixies. I’ll take raisins please....

5. Tootsie Pops – the only thing worse than a Tootsie Roll is encasing it a thick patina of off-flavor rock candy and then making you WORK to get to the congealed center, yuck!

4. Mallo Cups – this is the saddest candy on the list because it comes so close to ultimate greatness. No one can refute that the greatest chocolate candy is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, yet the misguided folks at Mallo Cup took Hershey’s perfection and cobbled together a culinary stink bug…so sad.

3. Giant Orange Circus Peanuts – these are those unnaturally orange, thumb-size stale “treats” (and I use that term very loosely) that are sold 500 in a bag on the bottom shelf at grocery stores.  I guess they’re packaged in such bulk since they can also double as dunnage when you have to mail fragile objects across country.  These are the most confusing treats since they are not individually wrapped (so no parent will let their kids eat them) and are very unappetizing – they are what I envision the petrified droppings of the Sugar Plum Fairy might look like - muted orange grossness.

2. Necco Wafers – I prefer to call them Necro Wafers since they taste like death in your mouth, little more than flavored chalk. The absolute worst is the licorice Necco Wafer (ugh!), followed closely by the 2nd worst flavor, chocolate Necco Wafer.  I’d just as soon pop a Rolaids or Tums and get the same chalky mouth sensation with at least fresher breath.

1. Candy from ANY other holiday – as a kid growing up, there lived on our street a mean old widow named Mrs. Egan. Every year you’d get candy from her that came from other holidays such as candy canes from Christmas; Easter marshmallow Peeps; or an assortment of Valentine’s Day Necco hearts. I was convinced that she couldn’t pawn off that junk candy when it was fresh on her grandkids, so she saved it up for street urchins like me and gave us the stale goodies for Halloween. I actually got a Boy Scout merit badge for “Community Service” when I listed this annual refuse collection as a civic duty I voluntarily undertook.

Please share the ones you agree and disagree with – but if you disagree, your arguments better be better than mine!