The Black Chuckle...

I'm having trouble typing this morning as my hands are trembling from Halloween candy-withdrawal DT's. I have spent the weekend fully exploiting one of the perks associated with parenting very small children - the right to steal their Halloween candy without any consequences. Hubby and I, in the course of two days, depleted by nearly half our progeny's hard-earned high-fructose booty and they are none the wiser. I know my time to enjoy this sugary treat oblivion is limited and in just a few short years my kids will know the number of Reeses's peanut butter cups and mini Snickers bars in their sacks the way Henry Paulson knows the national debt down to the penny, trying to make them last until Christmas.

This plastic pumpkin pilfering brought back a flood of memories from my own childhood and to eleviate the guilt I felt stuffing Kit Kat after Almond Joy into my mouth I thought about all the terrible candy my sister and I gave up willingly to our parents to keep their greedy mitts at bay. While we all have our own lists, which I am hoping you will share with me, I have a Monday Top 5 for you.

Top 5 Worst Halloween Candy (aka, Candy for Mom & Dad)

5. Chunky - I know some of you will be horrified I have included a chocolate item on my list because not much that is associated with chocolate can be bad (except for novelty shaped chocolate - weird). It is not the chocolate that I find offensive in this confection, rather the incredibly dense, brick-like quality of it. Embedded in said, density you will find raisins and peanuts. The peanuts I have no issue with, but the raisins, you kind of have to pull out with your teeth and they leave this weird raisin-shaped impression behind that always reminded me of Han Solo in carbon freeze and creeped me out. My father? Huge fan.

4. Mary Janes - Or really any candy that your parents had "penny candy"stories about (boring, now back away from my Hershey's, old man). The Mary Jane wrapper has a picture of a weird girl on it and is a putrid yellow. While I have grown to love them since I can not dislike anything peanut flavored, the weird textural combination of something taffy-like with peanut bits stuck in it reminded me of chewing gum after eating and getting food stuck in your gum. Bleh.

3. Old people candy - You know what I'm talking about. Anything from Brach's qualifies, but specifically, butterscotch candies. Also in this category, those strawberry flavored candies with the wrapper that tries to look like a real strawberry. If you can find it in your grandma's purse, it's a sucky Halloween treat.

2. Good and Plenty - My mother's favorite, Good and Plenty's with their intense licorice flavor, could blow the taste buds off a five year old's tongue. I was desperate to enjoy them as a child with their adorable pink and white color scheme, but once you cracked off that cheerful coating a jaw-breaking, tongue-burning experience made you regret trying.

1. Chuckles - Specifically the evil, black one. Getting a pack of Chuckles was a score on Halloween because you got five giant gum drops. While not really that tasty, the sheer magnitude of sugar was enough to make you appreciate them as a kid. Ignoring the alarming contrast in consistency between the chewy gum drop and the crunchy sugar they were coated in (which felt like eating something that had been dropped in a sandbox), the flavors were the usual pleasant artificial cherry, lemon, lime and orange. And then there was the black one. How can candy be black? How did this creation pass testing phase? The black Chuckle was so bad my sister and I would dare each other to eat it. Again, a fave with my moms, and she could have 'em.

So Happy belated Halloween to you all. I hope you all have more honest sources of candy to enjoy. My middle one melted my heart yesterday when she handed me a peanut butter cup saying, "Is this your favorite Mommy?" not knowing I had eaten the other fifteen she had culled from the neighbors.