Trick or Treat
Josh picked out the Halloween candy this year, so I haven’t bothered to open it yet. When I buy the Halloween candy, I get something I like (I know — totally counterproductive) and sneak pieces of it in the days leading up to Halloween. He went with Reeses Pieces, which are fine, but not a candy I crave. And he bought Hershey miniatures, which again are fine, but since we go to Hershey often it also doesn’t feel like an enormous treat. If it had been up to me, I would have gone with that chocolate mix that contains Snickers (which go in the freezer), Twix, and M&Ms.
I think the biggest shame of Halloween is that you can only get individually-wrapped candies. Everyone knows that the best candies do not come individually wrapped, with the exception of Cadbury Easter eggs (though it would probably look a little off to pass out Cadbury eggs in October).
The three best candies I’ve ever had were (1) Koppers cappuccino cordials. There was a store where I grew up that had candies (including these cordials) in bulk along with a multitude of glass jimjicks.* If we behaved while we were out, my mother sometimes got us a small bag of candy at the store. (But watch out! It was also a trap because if you — for instance — yanked your sister’s hair while the woman behind the counter measured your candy into one of the clear plastic bags, and said sister pushed you backwards, you could break one of the 3000 glass items in the store. It was a minefield with candy on the other side if you could make your way around all the glass.) I’m not even a fan of white chocolate, but these are the most insanely fantastic candies ever.
The store also sold (2) Bogdon’s Reception Candy Sticks. I was recently in a store that also sold them, and it took all my willpower to not introduce them to the twins. I felt like it was a responsibility thing as a parent much in the same way that I wouldn’t give my kids crack. I do not want them to experience the same Bogdon’s Reception Candy Stick addiction that I went through. I used to like to suck off the majority of the chocolate and then eat the stick using only my two front teeth. See, just as attractive as a meth addict.
My last candy was (3) a tiny circular tin of mints that I picked up at Disney World when I was little. Each mint ball was about a 1/4th the size of my pinky nail — tiny! — and matte and pastel-coloured and crunchy. I’ve never had a better mint, and I’ve never found something like it. The closest I got were the “refresh” mints the HTC gave out this summer at BlogHer right before the Community Keynote. We have since finished ours, and they were a damn fine mint. Only a shade underneath my memory of the Disney ones.
What are you passing out at your house? What do you wish you could pass out to everyone because it is an insanely good candy?
* Back when Josh and I were dating, he said he wanted to marry me because I was the type of person who used the term “jimjick;” most often as an adjective rather than a noun (eg. “She has the most jimjicky apartment I’ve ever been in.”). I often wonder if he still thinks it’s a good reason to marry someone.
23 comments
I have to go look up that word now…
We aren’t giving out candy. I live on the side of a mountain and we have no sidewalks, so I rarely get anyone. We are turning out all the lights and heading over to my sister’s house. My oldest nephew will hand out candy while the rest of us take the little ones around in her neighborhood. I will offer to pitch in for the cost of her candy, but no idea what it is.
What on earth is a “jimjick”??
We are giving out the usual Nestle assortment — Coffee Crisps, KitKats, Aero bars & Smarties. These may or may not be available in the States & even if they are, they may not be quite the same as what we have here in Canada. (My mother is addicted to KitKats & even though she is a proud American, born & raised, she always travels in the States with a stash from home, because she says the American KitKats just don’t cut it.)
What I would give out, if I could: full sized chocolate bars, of any sort. I can’t believe how tiny they’ve gotten. When I was a kid, they were about half the size of a regular bar, I would say today they’re barely 1/4.
My favourite treats are Lindor milk chocolate balls. I keep a stash in my desk drawer at work. I’m not sure I’d give them out, though. I think most kids don’t care if it’s the really good chocolate or not — they just want the sugar, lol. And lots of it.
We don’t hand out candy–we live on a main road in the city, BEHIND another house…people don’t usually see our house. 🙁
As bummed as I am by not getting to do one of my favorite Halloween traditions, I have gotten used to it over the years–and its more fun to take the kids out and see all the displays. (Oh, and I sneak some of the Snickers bars from my kids bags–yeah, I am that parent…hey, they get tons! if I happen to sneak a couple Snickers and Butterfingers and my old reliable M&Ms they don’t mind…well, they do–hey, look at that scary skeleton over there!)
My house was always dark in the years leading up to having my son. While I have good childhood memories of Halloween, somewhere around high school I began to hate it and carried that well into my adulthood. The first Halloween after my son was born, I bought king sized bars (Hershey, Hershey w Almonds, Reese’s, Kit Kat, Nestle’s Crunch) and for four years our house was THE house on the block to come to. That first year, we passed out 36 bars and by the fourth it was over 100. It was so much fun to see the look on the kids faces (and their parents, too).
We moved this year and won’t be passing out candy (as we’re taking our son trick or treating, twice (2 neighborhoods) for the experience of it as he doesn’t much like candy). I’ve thought about warning the tenants at our old house. There are going to be some disappointed kids this year :(.
This year we’re giving out FunDip, because I noticed that neighbor kids went wild for them last year. I also bought an extra bag of Snickers, but it’s not likely we’ll have any left by this evening. In the past I’ve given out Snickers, Twix, and Kitkat, which are always popular, but it is just way too tempting to have all three of my favorites in the house.
We usually have 40 or fewer trick-or-treaters. (It was SO disappointing to find that we are on a crappy block for trick-or-treating. Most of the neighbors on our long street don’t turn on their lights.) It would be fun to hand out king-sized candy bars, but DH won’t go along with this. Insert comments about childhood obesity rates in our community, modern kids being spoiled and having too-high expectations, and so on. Plus we don’t want to attract the hordes of costumeless teenagers who hit the streets around 8 pm.
Hubby is a PE teacher. We hand out glow-in-the-dark bracelets and bags of pretzles. Also – we don’t get many trick-or-treaters so if we buy a bunch of candy I’ll eat it all and since I’m already 20lbs up from what I was last Halloween (thank you baby E for the complete lack of sleep in the last year!), I don’t need any additional incentive to eat crap. Yay pretzles (she says, dripping with sarcasm and disappointment).
I discovered that D bought our Halloween candy last week, and I almost shot him…how dare he buy it so far from the actual holiday? I made him hide it (he got only semi-good stuff, Dots and Tootsie Rolls, which I like but I don’t binge on.) I then spent three days looking for it. I get you on the meth addict.
My favorite candy besides frozen snickers? I love Peppermint Patties, Reese’s Pieces, and any chocolate from Israel. Mmmmm.
What are your kids wearing for Halloween???
We’re dealing with a nut allergy this year so I was going to skip candy altogether but got sucked in (pun intended) and bought a couple bags of Dum Dums and Toostie Roll pops. Everyone is also getting a pumpkin sticker.
I have four 5- pound bags of the Costco chocolate assortment. Snickers, M&Ms, etc. We get a lot of trick-or-treaters. It’s quite alarming, really. People drive in to our neighborhood from all over town. I just picked up three black-light bulbs from Home Depot. We’re gonna glow this year!
We usually pass out the miniature chocolate bars, dumdums, smarties, kitkats, etc. DH is in charge of picking the candy because I don’t like chocolate, so I don’t know what’s coveted. If possible, I’d love to make cookies or candy to pass out but there’s no chance of that ever being acceptable.
What on earth DOES jimjick mean?
We usually get candies I like, but that’s not hard to do. 😉 It’s hard – we got snickers this year, but I really shouldn’t eat them. Boo. I’m just hoping we have enough; we’re taking n out this year for the first time, so I’m paranoid about running out while we’re not here.
I let my husband pick the candy. He eats candy every day anyway, and his palette is far closer to that of the average grade-school-aged child than mine. He usually gets candy I don’t like much, which is good.
Since I’ve been pregnant, nearly all candy either turns my stomach or gives me horrible heartburn. But in the normal way, I love Godiva and Ghirardelli chocolate, more expensive and rich than most children would appreciate.
We’re handing out kitkats, milk duds, smarties, peanut butter cups, and snickers. 😀
Our parents always gave out “fun size” chocolate assortments. I told the Hubby that when we got married and handed out candy at our own house we were gonna get full size candy bars. We usually get a assorted box from Costco of about 10 different things. Lots of chocolate and some fruity stuff like Skittles and Starburst. We also get a box of fruit snacks for the really little kids. If I get what I like (york peppermint patties) it would be gone before any trick-or-treaters come. I love seeing the look on their faces when they see all the candy. I do have a rule though, if you don’t say trick-or-treat you don’t get anything.
My grandparents were always a “good house” at Halloween and gave out boxes of Cracker Jacks, since it’s one of my favorite memories of Halloween, I make my husband promise that we can be a good house too and give out full size candy bars – we have an assortment of snickers, M&Ms, skittles, starbursts, kitkats, peanut butter cups, and hershey bars.
Is jimjicky anything like jolly?
I used to love Twix but then they replaced the chocolate with some waxy chocolate substitute and now they’re super-resistable. I’m not much of a store-bought candy person.
My all-time favorite candies, the ones I wish I could give to the world to make it a better place, are the dark chocolate salt caramels you make. I dream about them. In jimjicky techniflavor.
Sadly, we don’t buy candy to give out because kids don’t come to our building. And with just getting the GD under control, I’m not willing to risk temptation.
That said… if I could I would give everyone full size boxes of Smarties (not those chalk-y little candies… *shudder* the Canadian Smarties, most comparible with M&Ms, but the chocolate is sooooo much better). The little halloween sized boxes are just too small.
Jimjick is another way of saying “thing.” Like doohickey, only less used.
Oh, I’m thinking about bringing back the salted chocolate caramels for Christmas candy this year. Mostly because there have been many requests for the homemade nutella cups (like reese’s peanut butter cups) from last Purim to repeat this Purim.
OMG!! I love those reception sticks. Cost Plus sells them and I bought a box for my desk. And. At them all myself. LOL
We’re passing out milky ways and M&Ms and we would be passing out three musketeers but those are my favorite and I ate them already (we bought candy last month.)
OH, and if I could pass out anything it would be See’s Milk Chocolate Bordeaux. Well, no, I wish someone would pass that out to ME.
We pass out mini containers of playdoh and pencils. Most of the kids in our neighborhood are really little.
My husband chose the Halloween candy this year – the 3 pounds of candy we got at a parade earlier this year. Normally, I would feel bad about recycling candy, but I left the bowl full of candy on the front step while we were out trick-or-treating, and came back to find the bowl missing entirely. My SIL found it – empty, in the bushes. It was mostly tootsie rolls and suckers – normally I go for the chocolate.
I don’t understand the appeal of the frozen Snickers. Caramel should be nice and soft – if you could freeze the rest but leave the caramel part soft, I’d be in. My favorite “candy” is Ghirardelli 60% cocoa chocolate chips. I wouldn’t hand that out, though. I’d hoard it!
Our record number of trick or treaters in this house is 2 families, and one of them is now too old, so I bought a case of individual servings of Pirate Booty since we can use that ourselves later but if I’d bought candy I’d be the only one to eat it (Burrito and Tamale haven’t yet discovered candy).
For my own candy consumption I try to buy the finest chocolate possible, spare no expense. Quality over quantity. My preferences and trick or treat candy have almost no overlap.