0: total number of cases of fentanyl in Halloween candy in 2022

October 31, 2023 11:22 AM

Why Halloween’s ‘Poison Candy’ Myth Endures. “If you think about it, Halloween sadism is the best thing in the world to worry about,” he says. “There is somebody in your neighborhood who is so crazy, they will poison little children at random. And yet, they’re so tightly wrapped, they’ll only do it one night of the year,” he says. “So on November 1, you wake up, look around the breakfast table and count noses. If everyone’s still there, you can say, ‘OK, we don’t have to worry about this for another 364 days.’”

From Slacktivist.

The blood libel and all of its Satanic baby-killer variations are not borne of a legitimate, innocent concern for the safety of our children, but from pride, self-righteousness, and the need to pretend we are Good by accusing some marginal Other of being superlatively evil.

There’s more than a hint of that in the Poisoned Halloween Candy legend.

I think there’s a distinction here between urban legends and conspiracy theories. The former, I would say, are distinct in that they do not require the existence of some nefarious, secretive, all-powerful cabal. The hook-handed serial killer terrorizing teenagers on Lover’s Lane is not part of some vast conspiracy. The story doesn’t involve or require any monstrously evil “They” or “Them” for it to be accepted as true.

posted by spamandkimchi (160 comments total)

Wait, what am I supposed to do with all this fentanyl now?
posted by mittens at 11:28 AM on October 31, 2023 [52 favorites]

The former, I would say, are distinct in that they do not require the existence of some nefarious, secretive, all-powerful cabal.

There is no cabal.
posted by briank at 11:30 AM on October 31, 2023 [10 favorites]

Share with your local disabled person being denied their pain med prescription, mittens! Win/win!
posted by epj at 11:30 AM on October 31, 2023 [20 favorites]

A friend of mine posts the same meme on Halloween every year -- pictures of ecstasy tablets captioned "Attention Parents: This is not Candy" And then: These are ecstasy pills and they are expensive. No one is giving them to your children. It makes me laugh every year.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:36 AM on October 31, 2023 [42 favorites]

I was a kid when the original(?) "razor blades in apples" scare was going around. Even at the time I thought it was stupid. EVERY kid was going to be able to pinpoint the house giving out freakin' apples!
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:36 AM on October 31, 2023 [27 favorites]

i don't know why parents are so worried; these pathetic "fun-size" acid hits hardly do anything
posted by phooky at 11:37 AM on October 31, 2023 [61 favorites]

The brown Brown M&Ms that are circulating … is not specifically too good. It is suggested that you do stay away from that. Of course it’s your own trip, so be my guest; but be advised there is a warning on that one.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 11:42 AM on October 31, 2023 [12 favorites]

A friend of mine posts the same meme on Halloween every year -- pictures of ecstasy tablets captioned "Attention Parents: This is not Candy"

I've been enjoying all the parodies of these that I've seen, though. What are people sneaking into children's candies this year? I've seen "a USB Stick With The Full Contents Of Wikipedia", "the Windows operating system", "An Ocelot" and "Delaware."
posted by mhoye at 11:46 AM on October 31, 2023 [26 favorites]

You can still use the candy to stun cops by just telling them it has fentanyl in it as you throw it at them.
posted by Artw at 11:47 AM on October 31, 2023 [64 favorites]

1982... I remember this or the following Halloween, having been 5 or 6, and hearing all kinds of dread from adults.

I wish I had photos of my awesome robot costume, though.
posted by doctornemo at 11:53 AM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

The Liberal Elite Are Hiding Critical Race Theory In Your Children's Candy
posted by phunniemee at 11:53 AM on October 31, 2023 [91 favorites]

I've been enjoying all the parodies of these that I've seen, though. What are people sneaking into children's candies this year? I've seen "a USB Stick With The Full Contents Of Wikipedia", "the Windows operating system", "An Ocelot" and "Delaware."

They are all over Fedi:
kiwa (@[e-mail])

Remember to check your kids Halloween candy! I AM SERIOUS. i just found this Netware 4.11 install with 15 years of uptime inside a mars bar

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:05 PM on October 31, 2023 [28 favorites]

Twelve Hours Of Alan Watts Lectures
posted by toodleydoodley at 12:06 PM on October 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

Well...this just happened. Some grade schoolers got sick when cannabis candy got mixed into a trunk or treat event.
posted by toastyk at 12:06 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Attention PARENTS: People have been caught handing out AMERICAN CHOCOLATE in children's candy! Be sure to CHECK your kids this HALLOWEEN! It might look like a harmless treat, but it tastes like SHAREHOLDER DIVIDENDS, CORN SYRUP and BROWN.
posted by mhoye at 12:09 PM on October 31, 2023 [63 favorites]

My theory, which I hold lightly as I try to hold all theories for which I have little to no evidence, is that the candy companies, who directly benefit from parents being told that only plastic-wrapped treats from a factory are safe for children to eat, have quietly been pushing this poisoned candy legend for years.
posted by gauche at 12:13 PM on October 31, 2023 [39 favorites]

I never understood how you were gonna sneak a razor blade into an apple an no one notice. it's not like a kid gets an apple and has to eat it right then, either.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 12:13 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

"If I stop putting drugs in the Halloween candy, where will the media get its next moral panic from? Our dysfunctional political system? The oncoming destruction of the entire planet due to climate collapse? Olivia Wilde’s salad dressing? Please."

IT’S ME, THE PERSON PUTTING DRUGS IN THE HALLOWEEN CANDY
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:17 PM on October 31, 2023 [10 favorites]

I'm still bitter about the house that gave out boxes of raisins 40 years later.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 12:27 PM on October 31, 2023 [15 favorites]

Best says the fear of poisoned or otherwise tainted Halloween candy has come to serve as a proxy for very legitimate societal anxieties. In a modern world rife with looming threats—overpopulation, climate change, economic collapse, global pandemic, political instability, technology run amok—it is useful to be able to funnel these fears into a less unwieldy receptacle. By offloading anxieties onto a manageable yearly event, people can fend off a feeling of helplessness, says Best.

Dear god, The Purge is going to be real, isn't it.
posted by slogger at 12:35 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm still bitter about the house that gave out boxes of raisins 40 years later.

Across the street and two houses down. I remember them still.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:37 PM on October 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

Police in one of more rural cities here (in fact, the city where Leave it to Beaver's fictional Cleaver family lived) posted a picture of a nail embedded in a tootsie roll that was reportedly discovered in some kid's bag of candy this weekend and I'm very curious about what happened there. One nail, one piece of candy, feels more like an accident somehow than anything. Super weird.


https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/mayville-wis-police-report-nail-found-in-tootsie-roll-during-trick-or-treating
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:38 PM on October 31, 2023

I love Niko Stratis' comment about this phenomenon on BlueSky: "The people who think drug dealers are sneaking their product into kids' candy on Halloween have never tried to get free drugs from a dealer"
posted by Kitteh at 12:41 PM on October 31, 2023 [16 favorites]

I love that AO illustration from the detective magazine, with the woman opening a box of chocolates and painstakingly shooting them up with whatever, because the kiddos won't bat an eye at getting unwrapped chocolates, no sirree.

As for me, I'm putting micro SD cards with crypto in them in the candy this year. With Sam Bankman-Fried's trial looking more and more like a no-hitter in the prosecution's favor, this may be the last year for that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:42 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

check your kids halloween candy. my cousin found the assassination of archduke franz ferdinand in sarajevo by serbian nationalist gavrilo princip inside a snickers bar
posted by Pyrogenesis at 12:43 PM on October 31, 2023 [45 favorites]

I found out last year that someone I know had to collect all her candy and then accompany it and her parents to a local hospital where it was dutifully x-rayed before they could eat it. That would have been early to mid-eighties. People get really invested in these ‘threats’.
posted by meinvt at 12:44 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

But was it a full-size Snickers?
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:44 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Shit's getting real.

Annika Batscream 🦇 (@[e-mail])

Be sure to check your kid's candy this year! I found a "be sure to check your kid's candy this year" meme in a chocolate bar

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:45 PM on October 31, 2023 [32 favorites]

I'm still bitter about the house that gave out boxes of raisins 40 years later.

Not to mention, they probably thought they were providing a healthy alternative, but a small box of Sunmaid raisins has 18 grams of sugar, the same amount as a fun size Snickers bar!
posted by jeremias at 12:45 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

In preparation for tonight we bought a bag of assorted Hershey's products, which included some strawberry Twizzlers and other non-chocolate candies.

Every single piece of chocolate in this bag tastes like strawberry Twizzlers.

I almost don't want to give these out now. Were these things made in July and kept in a hot warehouse all summer? What a bummer.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:58 PM on October 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

This time last year Tim Harford's Cautionary Tales podcast focussed on this, and the one actual documented case (which was perpetrated by the boy's father as an insurance scam.)
posted by Major Clanger at 12:59 PM on October 31, 2023

Less fiber in the Snickers, though.

My workplace isn't allowed to give out candy (because kids could eat it and choke, eat it without stopping to think about their deadly peanut allergy, etc...) but they didn't say a damn thing about RAW SWEET POTATOES. At least one little kid in a Spiderman costume was super jazzed to get a yam for later.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:59 PM on October 31, 2023 [20 favorites]

I'm still bitter about the house that gave out boxes of raisins 40 years later.

Several houses in my youth did this. And they were loved because as pointed out later, they're loaded with sugar
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 12:59 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I removed a local chiropractor’s office would do free x-rays of Halloween candy in the early to mid 90’s. My parents through both the myths of tainted candy and chiropractors were bunk.

There was an older lady who would bake cookies for trick or treaters, and I think some parents had to tell her that the schools were telling kids not to bake at anything homemade
posted by CostcoCultist at 1:02 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I did give some kids chicken bouillon cubes one year. Long story.
posted by Naberius at 1:10 PM on October 31, 2023 [36 favorites]

I got an entire (unopened) box of 'nilla wafers one year, because the dude in the house had run out of candy but also forgot to turn off the light and it's uncool to send kids away empty-handed if the porch light is on. That's just, like, basic trick-or-treat etiquette right there. So he told us to wait, rummaged in the kitchen and asked my little group if we were cool with splitting the box of cookies, noting that it was still sealed so it was ok. In retrospect, while there were no drugs in the box of cookies, there may have been drugs in the dude who answered the door.
posted by Karmakaze at 1:18 PM on October 31, 2023 [45 favorites]

these pathetic "fun-size" acid hits

Gotta hit the affluent neighborhoods! last year on North Capitol Hill in Seattle they were giving out full sheets.
posted by Sauce Trough at 1:20 PM on October 31, 2023 [12 favorites]

CostcoCultist: My parents through both the myths of tainted candy and chiropractors were bunk.

They were only half right: the candy was clean but chiropractors are a scam.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:21 PM on October 31, 2023 [13 favorites]

I was nine years old living in Houston when that guy tried to kill his kid with Pixy Stix. All the parents were freaked out, so for the next couple years it was block parties instead of trick or treat.
posted by InfidelZombie at 1:27 PM on October 31, 2023

I got an entire (unopened) box of 'nilla wafers one year, because the dude in the house had run out of candy but also forgot to turn off the light and it's uncool to send kids away empty-handed if the porch light is on.

A decade+ ago I was this dude, but sober, because I had never had a single trick-or-treater at my apartment before and was caught unprepared.

Never had another trick-or-treater after, probably because the youth in question took umbrage to the small (sealed) package of Spitz sunflower seeds I gave 'em.
posted by joseph_elmhurst at 1:31 PM on October 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

One nail, one piece of candy, feels more like an accident somehow than anything.

Feels more like a hoax than anything.
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:32 PM on October 31, 2023 [12 favorites]

I always kinda liked the tiny boxes of raisins. You could open both ends and push out a raisin cube. What fun!
posted by slogger at 1:38 PM on October 31, 2023 [18 favorites]

I did give some kids chicken bouillon cubes one year. Long story.

Was it because you forgot to buy candy?
posted by 41swans at 1:38 PM on October 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

these pathetic "fun-size" acid hits

In the old days the kids would retaliate with microhoaxing.
posted by Artw at 1:41 PM on October 31, 2023 [12 favorites]

I always kinda liked the tiny boxes of raisins.

Not detecting any love for the little orange Unicef boxes, and I'm not surprised. There's the original Halloween trauma, when your parents hand you a container for charity coins, telling you no candy this year, but "It's for a good cause!"
posted by Rash at 1:43 PM on October 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

One nail, one piece of candy, feels more like an accident somehow than anything.

My guess is it happened on the factory line. The way the hole the nail made in the candy was formed, very off-center, very close to the edge of the candy, but without much distortion, makes it hard for me to imagine it was placed there in any way other than the candy being formed around it.

I think it's pretty funny that there's no indication that anybody involved even considered this possibility.
posted by WaylandSmith at 1:49 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I got a haircut today, at a chain whose name rhymes with Crate Grips , so I never have the same stylist/barber twice, the middle-aged woman cutting my hair was shocked that there were kids in my neighborhood who actually went DOOR TO DOOR trick-or-treating. "They still do that??" she said, acting like this is some obscene event which had been disbanded long ago.

Apologizing to the neighborhood kids in advance: I bought two large bags of mixed variety candies, which says it includes gummi bears (or rather some variety called "Goldbears"), but mysteriously there are none in the bowl for you to pick from. Nobody knows, or admits to knowing, what happened to them. Instead you get an overabundance of Reeses Pieces, which have been voted upon by everyone in my household as the least edible of the candies in these variety packs. The rest -- Twizzlers, Kit Kats, and Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups -- might make it into kids' little plastic pumpkins but since I will be home alone I cannot guarantee anything.

Just be glad I'm not the evil house who bought the big bags of Smarties -- and not the good Smarties, the ones the size of the buttons on your Sunday dress shirt that taste like pain and chalk and hate.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:53 PM on October 31, 2023 [11 favorites]

Send me all the reeses pieces. I will nom them.
posted by jacquilynne at 1:55 PM on October 31, 2023 [11 favorites]

gummi bears (or rather some variety called "Goldbears")

Those are the original gummi bears!
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:55 PM on October 31, 2023 [10 favorites]

Do you know how hard it is to push razor blades into apples? I'd tell you how many fingers I lost but I cant because I use them to count.
posted by srboisvert at 1:57 PM on October 31, 2023 [24 favorites]

pictures of ecstasy tablets captioned "Attention Parents: This is not Candy"

My favorite is the "Z3d" scare (r/memes)
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:58 PM on October 31, 2023 [8 favorites]

These pearls ain’t gonna clutch themselves.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:00 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

With the Unicef boxes, I never did it, but I always have thought it was obnoxious and counterproductive that the kids were not supposed to also get candy. I didn't even like candy as a kid—I thought 90% of it was gross texturally and didn't really like most of the flavors—but it still reeked of some kind of prim Goofus and Gallant adult smugness.

Like, the houses you visit already have candy and would happily give it to you on top of the donation!
posted by smelendez at 2:01 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Somewhere back in 1970s America, we got some tiny amount of pennies each from the penny jar of a hairy barefooted dude who I imagine had just been sitting on his couch and picking his toes and wondering where the 1960s went when some little shits rang his doorbell and reminded him it was Halloween. No razor blade fears from that place.
posted by pracowity at 2:01 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

It’s kind of a wonder that no one has bothered to put out Halloween candy made to look like little apples with razor blades sticking out of them. Sort of a variation on candy corn, I’m imagining.

I had unlimited access to candy year around, but I still loved getting all the weird Halloween things. I liked the little boxes of raisins, and besides, they don’t contain any sucrose which makes them much less likely to cause tooth decay, and I think less likely to promote the development of the 2 diabetes. There were also chocolate covred raisins, which had a weird texture that I developed a taste for.
posted by jamjam at 2:02 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

You can still use the candy to stun cops by just telling them it has fentanyl in it as you throw it at them.

They'll just claim you ate all the PCP pops already and shoot you 85 times.
posted by FatherDagon at 2:06 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I did give some kids chicken bouillon cubes one year. Long story.

My goal is to give out chili. Sit out front with a big ol' pot of chili on a hotplate and when kids show up adopt a sort of highlander unplaceable accent and be all CHILDREN!!! hold out your bags for C H I L I !!!! and then just pour hot steamin' chili all over their candy. OPEN WIDE KIDS! and just ladle it onto their faces. Kids love chili.

For reals, last year as things were winding down I told a teenager "Just grab a handful" and he like did the littlest, wussiest grab and I had to look at him over my glasses and say "No, son. Reach in there like you mean it." They're too polite these days.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:07 PM on October 31, 2023 [30 favorites]

Just be glad I'm not the evil house who bought the big bags of Smarties -- and not the good Smarties, the ones the size of the buttons on your Sunday dress shirt that taste like pain and chalk and hate.

I LOVE Smarties (the pure sugar buttons, not Canadian chocolates) and sad to say, they are much worse for my blood sugar than the occasional bit of chocolate. I think they're made of the exact same thing as the emergency glucose tablets I carry in my purse because they have pretty much the same effect on me.
posted by Daily Alice at 2:08 PM on October 31, 2023 [14 favorites]

There was an older lady who would bake cookies for trick or treaters, and I think some parents had to tell her that the schools were telling kids not to bake at anything homemade

I know where the gummi bears went
posted by chavenet at 2:09 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I always kinda liked the tiny boxes of raisins. You could open both ends and push out a raisin cube. What fun!
posted by slogger at 4:38 PM on October 31

Mods we found the mole. You know what to do.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:10 PM on October 31, 2023 [12 favorites]

Check my kids candy for sure. Check it right into MY MOUTH.

In my house we call it the parent tax.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 2:13 PM on October 31, 2023 [11 favorites]

let me tell you of ultimate Halloween goodness: a house that gave out full size kitkats for the kids AND tall coffee cups full of mulled wine for their adults.

North Capitol Hill, you guys do Halloween right. (applause emoji)
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:16 PM on October 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

I bought candy because I always hated the houses who didn't give out candy when I was a kid. Despite never having a single trick or treater in 20 years I want to be prepared. That candy is now gone and I bought some more just in case. Which if the pattern holds I'll be eating all of.
posted by downtohisturtles at 2:22 PM on October 31, 2023 [12 favorites]

I'm just eating the fancy adult dark chocolate we keep in the house, so the Halloween candy is safe (so far...) but I'm not sure we'll get many tricky treaters, which means between tonight and when I can get my husband to take the leftovers to work tomorrow, well. there are peanut butter cups, and kitkats...I might even eat an M&M.
posted by supermedusa at 2:28 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I bought several boxes of the 18 count full-size Hershey, Kit-Kat, and Reese’s bars. I don’t expect I’ll get any trick or treaters at my place as it’s a secured facility but I’m not complaining.
posted by JakeEXTREME at 2:35 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

My goal is to give out chili.

I was taking my kid around the neighborhood two years ago and there was a house where they were giving out chili. They had a table set up in the front yard and were ladling it into Dixie cups--not all over your candy.
posted by polecat at 2:36 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I've been on Joel Best and the razorblade in the apple myth since the late 20th century. Former KIRO News anchor Aaron Brown ran a news story in the late 1990s about local Seattle hospitals offering to x-ray Halloween candy and candied apples that he delivered with a heavy sigh as "another sign of these times..." I had read Joel Best by then at the U of W law library, called up KIRO, asked for Brown, got him [!] and proceeded to quote page by numbered page number to him. He ran a retraction the next night and no one never ran another story about x-raying Halloween treats again. On KIRO, that is. KOMO, our local if-it's-spurting-jets-of-arterial-blood-it-leads TV news station is to this day another story entirely.

As for worst Halloween treats, my winners are first, this crotchety hostile old couple in my hometown in Idaho who made every kid sign their name on a sheet of lined paper on a clipboard before they could get... a stale popcorn ball. All that angry drama for one measly miserly craptacular popcorn ball.

Another was a visit to the paintless by then gray clapboard ancestral Victorian manse of Heber Moss, the crazy uncle of one of the town's founding families. He wore one outfit only -- a hunters cap with flaps down always, a red and black flannel coat, dirty black plants and the sort of unsnapped snap buckled black plastic boots that every kid wore on a rainy day back then.

Heber was famous for yelling "GET OFF MY LAWN!!!" at and chasing kids cutting corners on the yellowed dry grass of his "backyard." I went there one Halloween night with a friend in the late 1950s and we were let in through his back door to the kitchen. Which was solely illuminated by a flashlight stood up on its base on the kitchen table around which Heber and a similarly dressed scruffy old man silently sat. Where we were each given a pointed finger choice between one orange or one black Halloween jelly bean from one of two color coded bowls. It was uber creepy... and my first introduction to performance art fifty years before the genre was invented.
posted by y2karl at 2:38 PM on October 31, 2023 [17 favorites]

I might even eat an M&M.

Ya wild hedonist!
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:46 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm glad the piece mentioned the Tylenol murders, even if poisoned candy myths pre-date the attacks. I was born in the late 80s and never heard of the Tylenol murders until this year. I feel like cultural memory of that -- which, again, no child my age actually heard of -- influenced the experiences of 90s-to-aughts kids a lot.

I try to get a mix of things (that I won't gorge myself on) to hand out. For some reason, kids these days are kind of meh on the chocolates but really excited about the sour candies? Very strange. If kids are not at least a bit happy to get Reese cups, I can only assume not enough people are giving out "bad" candies...
posted by grandiloquiet at 2:47 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've probably told this story before, but when I was in the 7th grade, the 'satanic panic' thing was going really crazy, and we played a football game on Oct 31, and there were 'credible' reports that satanists were going to interfere with students at the game, and so we had a full-on police escort from our town to the one where we were playing, and the entire police force of each town was at the game protecting us with shotguns around the field.

Emphasis on 'town' - the one I grew up in had 1400 people, and the town we were playing had less than 1000 people. So you literally knew almost everyone in town, and so you'd probably know if they were a satanist playing on devil sacrificing some kids at a public event.

Of course, I continued to live there and did anything satanic ever happen? No, it did not. I think that was among the days that I figured adults collectively had no idea what was really going on either, and they were just as prone to silly rumors and irrational panic as we kids were.

As silly as that sounds, according to my older neighbors in the major city I live in now, they didn't celebrate Halloween at the school my kids go to in the '80s and early '90s due to the satanic connotations - they had a vague fall party, but no costumes, pumpkins, etc. My kids go there now - they do now though the one at school is still kinda weak. My school at least did have a Charlie Brown 'normal' Halloween celebration. Since my neighborhood is near the elementary school, we'll probably get a few hundred trick or treaters and some of my neighbors go all-out with decorations and those giant skeletons and werewolves. That's pretty cool.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:52 PM on October 31, 2023 [4 favorites]

I need to know the bouillon cube story now.

Anyway, after a few years of having our lights off and pretending we're not home, last year we set out a bowl of candy and that worked pretty well. This year we're doing the same, though I was a little more selective in what candy was bought. Hoping for a few leftover packets of Goldbears and Reese's Pieces.

I never went trick or treating as a kid. Halloweens were spent at a local Methodist church's parties or some similar function. Don't feel like I missed much, to be honest.
posted by May Kasahara at 2:53 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

This year, like every year for the last 13 years, I will trudge over to the grocery store and grab a bag of candy. Yet despite living here in a corner of Pasadena with condos and apartment buildings and a ton of kids around in these 13 years, I've had 5(?) trick or treaters.

So, one bag of candy - a little for the wife and me and the rest for my wife's classroom.

<old man grumble> Too many dang kids doing trunk and treats and "let's go hit up the rich people's neighborhoods"</old man grumble>
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:56 PM on October 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

. "They still do that??" she said, acting like this is some obscene event which had been disbanded long ago.

Look, I haven't seen a single trick or treater since 2019, across three houses and two states! It's honestly sort of heartbreaking.
posted by sciatrix at 2:58 PM on October 31, 2023 [9 favorites]

The Liberal Elite Are Hiding Critical Race Theory In Your Children's Candy

Y'know those fake dollar bills with "God's Blessings" on the back, that people use instead of an actual tip?

How 'bout handing out ones with "The Tenets Of Critical Race Theory" or "How To Be Woke"? There's a real Conservative Halloween horror.
posted by B3taCatScan at 3:00 PM on October 31, 2023 [9 favorites]

FWIW, I can't help but be optimistic about human nature when it comes to the fact that, despite at least half a century of whispers about poisoned Halloween candy on an earth that has 8 billion people on it, many of whom do stupid stuff specifically because they've been told it's a bad thing to do, there is not a single substantiated case of anyone hearing such stories and deciding to be that particular villain. Apparently people, even terrible people, are better than we give them credit for!
posted by jackbishop at 3:02 PM on October 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

Ever since I moved to Sweden 25 years ago we'd get the occasional random trick-or-treater just generally around the last week of October/ first week of November, most usually on Saturday. But somehow the message got out that this can only reasonably be done on the 31st and we got a healthy swarm of kids this year. I wasn't prepared and ran out of the Chupa-chups I found in a cupboard and had to run out for some Daim and Riesen.
posted by St. Oops at 3:02 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

chili ... ladling it into Dixie cups--not all over your candy.

Nobody puts the chili on the candy, that's just wrong -- everyone knows it's the other way 'round!

The Peeps go in the chili pot, so you can mix it all up.
posted by aramaic at 3:04 PM on October 31, 2023 [26 favorites]

Too many dang kids doing... "let's go hit up the rich people's neighborhoods"

This technique is apparently well known in my town. Can't imagine it, myself -- we left the parents at home as soon as they'd permit it, and who else is going to drive you 'cross town to the ritzy neighborhood?

Unfortunately Halloween has changed since "w" signed the legislation moving the end of Daylight Savings to after Halloween - now, it doesn't get dark early enough.
posted by Rash at 3:13 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Rockets were practically poison.
posted by mazola at 3:14 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

there is not a single substantiated case of anyone hearing such stories and deciding to be that particular villain

There actually is, and spoiler alert, it's a parent using the cover of that myth to poison their own child for insurance money.
posted by FatherDagon at 3:25 PM on October 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

With regard to the O'Bryan murder case, yeah, that was a specific use of the myth for personal gain, but apparently nobody ever decided that arbitrary malice is something they want to do.
posted by jackbishop at 3:34 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Our neighborhood does "Tipsy Treat" where a red solo cup on the porch decorations means you can ask the adult host for a drink (be it a shot, a cocktail, or something else on offer). I'm surprised it's survived as many years as it has without someone losing their mind about it, especially as this is a Salt Lake City suburb. We also have a Barbie Neighborhood that's made national news so I expect the Halloween traffic to be heavy.
posted by msbutah at 3:35 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

"Why Halloween’s ‘Poison Candy’ Myth Endures" -- I suppose one way is to purposely mis-caption a photo that clearly shows a relationship-related poisoning.
posted by user92371 at 3:44 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I won't light my porchlight and will offer any trickrtreater that dares darken my dark door a highly polished rock.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 3:48 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Which was solely illuminated by a flashlight stood up on its base on the kitchen table around which Heber and a similarly dressed scruffy old man silently sat. Where we were each given a pointed finger choice between one orange or one black Halloween jelly bean from one of two color coded bowls. It was uber creepy... and my first introduction to performance art fifty years before the genre was invented.

This sounds like a Cormac McCarthy novel.
posted by slogger at 3:51 PM on October 31, 2023 [12 favorites]

Look, I haven't seen a single trick or treater since 2019, across three houses and two states! It's honestly sort of heartbreaking.

Where I live, the city has a trick or treat night on the last Saturday of October. Individual neighborhoods can do it that night, or a night of their own picking. It seems only two or three streets in each neighborhood really participate. My street has great trick or treating. One block to the west it's about the same, but one block to the east there is nothing.
posted by slogger at 3:58 PM on October 31, 2023

Husband just went to go pick up the kids from school! Let the games begin

IM SO EXITE YALL
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:02 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

We normally get 50-60 kids, but this year it has snowed, over 2”, and it’s below freezing and windy.
Any kid who comes to our door is getting a double handful!
posted by librosegretti at 4:13 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

trickrtreater that dares darken my dark door a highly polished rock

If this happened to me I would consider the rock to be a Chekov's Gun that will fulfill a very important function when the time comes, and keep it forever in a place where I can find it when needed.
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:22 PM on October 31, 2023 [10 favorites]

Pre-pandemic we’d give kids a choice between candy, a mini bottle of bubbles, or stickers. We’d run out of bubbles and stickers before candy, and so many kids would be jazzed to get them.

Last year we were sick and this year we’re just tired, so it’s the cop-out of a box of candy on a table on the porch labeled “Take one piece. Happy Halloween!” I’ve been keeping an eye on the doorbell camera so we can refill in case anyone tips the whole thing into their bag and so far all the kids have been grabbing one piece. One even yelled “Trick or treat, house!” as he left.
posted by telophase at 4:44 PM on October 31, 2023 [17 favorites]

If this happened to me I would consider the rock to be a Chekov's Gun that will fulfill a very important function when the time comes, and keep it forever in a place where I can find it when needed.

Chekov's Blunt Instrument, so to speak.

that's what she said
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:55 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

The consolation prize of the box of raisins was if you open the top and eat the raisins, you can then blow into the box and it makes a hooting noise that is very annoying to adults.

I hope it still works, though. I admit I have not tried it in some time.
posted by BrashTech at 4:59 PM on October 31, 2023 [15 favorites]

this actually happened in my neighborhood except it wasn't candy it was a toothbrush, and it wasn't poison it was a shiv painstakingly crafted out of the toothbrush over the next year, and it wasn't the child who was in for a nasty surprise oh no sirree
posted by logicpunk at 5:00 PM on October 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

We’ve now moved onto the “trick” portion of the thread….
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:05 PM on October 31, 2023

I don't do anything for Halloween but I will be adding poisons to some treacle toffee in the traditional way for bonfire night: a pound of sugar, half a pound of treacle and most of a pound of butter.
posted by biffa at 5:09 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

With the Unicef boxes, I never did it, but I always have thought it was obnoxious and counterproductive that the kids were not supposed to also get candy.

Wow, I had no idea. We all got both and people had a bowl of candy on one side and a bowl of pennies on the other.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:15 PM on October 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

an older woman on my block gave out wheat ear pennies

one year a guy in the neighborhood gave out pomegranates but I wouldn't take one because of the razor blade in fruit urban legend

the characters in Judy Blume's books trick or treated with unicef boxes ( they got treats too) but I never saw one irl( in a hallmark store) until the w administration.
posted by brujita at 5:16 PM on October 31, 2023

there was a house where they were giving out chili

nowordsshouldhavesentapoet.gif
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:41 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

We had another 300+ tonight. It's a bit crazy. We're not the richest neighborhood, but we are the densest neighborhood in a sea of farm, forest, and low density developments. When two of the big bags from Costco plus glow sticks and a few other assorted things gets you shut down at 7:15 after 300+ trick or treaters, you know it's a bit out of control.
posted by mollweide at 5:41 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

My dad wouldn’t let me take my UNICEF box out for Halloween bc “That’s just communism!” but my parents would put enough pocket change in it to take back to school so I wouldn’t get in trouble. This was the ‘70s and my dad was a Korea conflict vet; all his older sisters were navy nurses in ww2 so they were super into denouncing communism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by toodleydoodley at 5:47 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Last year in Winnipeg presumably-baked knobs accidentally gave out some edibles because they had Nerds-themed packaging and people lost their fucking minds refusing to even countenance that such a thing could happen, even accidentally. Plus there was that time my cousin's priest's sister's baby found Robert Oppenheimer's chalkboard in a Coffee Crisp.

I bet those knobs, who have not yet been sentenced, got SO MANY kids this year.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 5:47 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hm, I was lazy and just put a bowl out on the front step and it is still nearly full two hours later.

When I am at the door, I usually give a small handful, four or five of the tiny candy bits. I think my neighborhood kids are worried about looking greedy and just grabbing one piece, or maybe the cold has shortened the amount of time they're spending out and about.
posted by AzraelBrown at 5:48 PM on October 31, 2023

We've had about 30 kids tonight. I think our neighborhood has aged out of trick-or-treating mostly, we used to get a lot more. Oh well, lots of leftover candy for us!
posted by Daily Alice at 5:52 PM on October 31, 2023

I’ve been keeping an eye on the doorbell camera so we can refill in case anyone tips the whole thing into their bag and so far all the kids have been grabbing one piece.

There are definitely candy tippers in our neighborhood. Last year they didn't show up until pretty late, but this year, the bowl was empty by 7:30.

My spouse said he'd like to try being a living statue on the porch one year. That'd be one good way to give the candy tippers a Halloween-appropriate fright...
posted by May Kasahara at 5:53 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

and he like did the littlest, wussiest grab and I had to look at him over my glasses and say "No, son. Reach in there like you mean it." They're too polite these days.

Are they? A few years ago, I had a kid aggressively shove into my space in the doorway and try to take more candy out of the bowl, then pushed his way into the house as I took a startled step backward. Another kid literally did come into the house before I could even get my hand in the bowl. And I give out multiple pieces of candy, I’m not stingy. Fortunately, a parent out on the sidewalk was there so I imagine he got an earful, but as a single woman doing this by myself, I can say that having older kids shoulder their way into your space is creepy. I took many years off doing Halloween (which, honestly, I’ve never been all that into anyway). And one year when I wasn’t giving out candy, a kid tried to open my door and kicked it hard when he couldn’t get in.

I didn’t like not giving out candy, because there’s a lot of people complaining in my area about the kids who arrive from the nearby notorious low income housing project. It makes me so angry when people bitch about it that I want to give out more goodies just to spite them.

In the ‘70s, there was a weird guy in our neighborhood who did in fact give out apples. Of course the parents threw them out, I don’t know if anyone was allowed to eat them, but I always wondered if he’d done it as some kind of social commentary or maybe a test or just for jollies. I remember one parent wanting to call the cops, but my dad tried to talk them down. Every kid was convinced there had to be razor blades in them and we were so excited about the possibility, but of course, no one found anything. They were just apples.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 5:54 PM on October 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

No joke, my daughter received a full pack of candy cigarettes tonight.

They taste exactly like they did 40 years ago.
posted by rlk at 6:08 PM on October 31, 2023 [18 favorites]

Tonite we have way more candy left over than we had takers; Last year we barely scraped by!

Also: listening to college radio, Halloween Music is, as always, way more cool than Xmas Music, of course. Lots of fun rockabilly/surf freak-outs with added random screaming and wind noises.
posted by ovvl at 6:09 PM on October 31, 2023

Just now I learned that apparently some people in our neighborhood consider Halloween a fireworks occasion. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, this is Florida after all, but ugh.
posted by Daily Alice at 6:12 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Incidentally, "The Candy Tippers" is the name of my new punk band. "Empty the Bowl" is our first single.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:16 PM on October 31, 2023 [5 favorites]

Although I forgot to say that my favorite bit of impoliteness came a couple years ago when a boy, maybe four or five, went “Oh, I don’t want that” in the most indignant, disgusted, battle-fatigued voice I’ve ever heard when I dumped a handful of candy in his plastic pumpkin. His slightly older brother in a Miles Morales costume instantly said “Here, I’ll trade” and gave him the more acceptable pieces. That one is gonna go far, I think.

I’m taking tonight off because I’m just too sick from chemo. But we had a visit at like 5 pm which startled me—most people aren’t home from work or are walking their dogs at 5 in my neighborhood, and wouldn’t be expecting trick or treaters till dusk.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 6:18 PM on October 31, 2023 [6 favorites]

After the 70-80 kids had been and gone (our most in a dozen years!), I taught my high school sophomore about Chekov's Gun to help her with an English paper, analyzing a novel.

It's the first book in a YA series of four, so literally every noun that appears in the first book will be a plot point in the future.

After that, I changed and hung up my smoky clothes in the garage (love a good, smoky fire outside!), and settled down to warm up.

Man, I love Halloween.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:21 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, our second load of treats was a bunch of snack size bags of Doritos and Cheetos, which were very popular with the kids. Everyone was polite so I was happy to switch for the few kids who had a preference.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:25 PM on October 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

There was a giant pink dinosaur, followed by a person in a Michael Meyers costume who didn't come up the driveway but carried a really loud boombox playing the "Halloween [movie]" theme.

I like to imagine it was actually the dinosaur's theme music.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:25 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

My spouse said he'd like to try being a living statue on the porch one year.

Has he ever seen the guy doing that get punched?
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:29 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

Some Halloween I want to dress up as Santa and hand out candy wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper just to confuse the kids.
posted by Dirk at 6:31 PM on October 31, 2023 [10 favorites]

Has he ever seen the guy doing that get punched?

...maybe not, then.
posted by May Kasahara at 6:46 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

My street has great trick or treating. One block to the west it's about the same, but one block to the east there is nothing.

Yeah, there is like no one else on our street with lights on and very slim pickings -- I see why we got only 5-6 kids or so tonight. It's hard to compete with the next street over, which has a few houses with giant fiberglass T. rexes or sharks in them festooned with decorations.

We're gonna have to get us a giant fiberglass critter just to keep up, obviously. Fuck, I love living in a place without HOAs. Might try and get one of those 12ft skeletons for next year...
posted by sciatrix at 7:08 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

We're gonna have to get us a giant fiberglass critter just to keep up, obviously.

No kidding. I've seen armies go past, on the other side of the street (the rich HOA side), while I've gotten a total of six junior high kids, and my neighbor has had zero (I at least have a laser, she doesn't).

Absolutely none of the little kids that everyone hopes for. I did better during Covid, and I'm handing out literal bags of quality stuff! None of this one-piece BS.

...maaaannn, now I'm gonna have to worry about my sugar intake for like the next three months, aren't I? It's, um, kinda wierdly sad tbh. I feel particularly bad for my neighbor, perhaps oddly.
posted by aramaic at 7:43 PM on October 31, 2023 [2 favorites]

I've gotten a total of six junior high kids, and my neighbor has had zero (I at least have a laser, she doesn't).

I don't know what's going on there, but it sounds concerning.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:55 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

A friend of mine mentioned pot gummies turning up somewhere in Alameda...
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:02 PM on October 31, 2023

As a kid in the mid 70s there was a significant turning point before which half our haul was homemade (cookies, fudge, caramel popcorn balls (which I really liked) etc.) And then suddenly one year where only a few items were homemade (all of which had paper slips identifying the giver). And then the next everything was commercial. All related to some fear that someone would poison kids with homemade goodies. Looking back I'm sure there were a bunch of babushkas that were sad they could no longer handout homemade stuff.

Some police departments and hospitals lend further credibility to the myth by issuing “warning” press releases or offering to inspect candy.

Sounds like copaganda.
posted by Mitheral at 9:21 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

Unfortunately Halloween has changed since "w" signed the legislation moving the end of Daylight Savings to after Halloween - now, it doesn't get dark early enough.

Let me tell you how WEIRD it was to see small little bands of kids and parents going around in daylight when I was driving home from work yesterday at 7pm-ish. I mean, the whole point of trick-or-treating is that it happens after dark when things are spooky and ill-lit and any slightly dodgy DIY costumes look better. It may also be that Australians aren't yet very practiced with Halloween - there are very few houses that are decorated to show that treats are available, though the number does grow every year.

But I think most holidays that have seasonal roots are a bit odd in the southern hemisphere; Easter (based on ideas of renewal and rebirth) is similarly odd in the autumn. Winter in Australia may not feature much in the way of snow, but when I first came here 30 years ago, I remarked that it was like Narnia under the rule of the White Witch - always winter and never Christmas.
posted by Athanassiel at 9:29 PM on October 31, 2023 [7 favorites]

I just barely remember my mother making caramel popcorn balls to give away for Halloween. In big twists of wax paper, very handsome and tasty. And cheap — the fundamental explanation for a lot of the 1970s is “we were broke”.

Just as x-Ray checkable as commercial candy, too.
posted by clew at 10:21 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I believe the fundies has a bit to do with moving DST switch, on purpose trying to mess with Halloween.

We moved back to NZ 20 years ago with tween aged kids (now in their 30s) they missed the all out Halloween - here it's a relatively small thing, starts with the sun still shining (it's DST here too, summer's coming), the first trick or treaters showed up at 4:50 yesterday, they were done by 7 (and I ran out of candy). We've always carved pumpkins, they're hard to find and out of season here - most kids have never seen a real carved pumpkin - I give carving classes at the local Makerspace.

I'd love to see some genuine movement to move Halloween in NZ (and the southern hemisphere) to April 30th - it would be spooky dark, and pumpkins would be in season
posted by mbo at 10:29 PM on October 31, 2023 [3 favorites]

‘OK, we don’t have to worry about this for another 364 days.’”

about that

edit: okay, i see now this was covered way up thread
posted by pwnguin at 11:02 PM on October 31, 2023

Just now I learned that apparently some people in our neighborhood consider Halloween a fireworks occasion.

When I lived in Miami, every holiday was a fireworks occasion. Maybe not Valentine's Day, but certainly the rest of them and just randomly throughout the year. Pretty much just whenever the thumping bass and gunfire wasn't enough to keep people from getting bored the mortars came out.
posted by wierdo at 2:34 AM on November 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: makes a hooting noise that is very annoying to adults.

And now that I've got that out of my system:

We don't get many trick or treaters here in London (at least not in my neighbourhood), but I did get a couple of young callers on Halloween about 20 years ago. I had no candy, so I gave each of them a shiny pound coin just to get rid of the little brats. Word must have got around, because I got quite a flurry of visits over the next half hour. When my losses reached a tenner, I stopped answering the door.

There were no consequences following this, which makes me wonder if the "trick" side of this tradition is ever followed through on. Does anyone these days actually have pranks pulled on them in retaliation for inadequate treats? If so, what kind of thing are we talking about?
posted by Paul Slade at 3:10 AM on November 1, 2023

My parents' neighborhood got shut down by the cops last night at 6:30 and was only admitting residents. Evidently there was so much traffic bringing kids in from other neighborhoods that there were several fender benders at the entrance. My parents bought 400 mini candy bars, limited the kids to one each, and still ran out.

Meanwhile, 1000 miles away where I live, it was literally freezing and intermittently snowing and I still got about 90 trick or treaters. I heard from the kids/parents that there were only 25-30 houses in my area actually doing the treating which is a real bummer, so I'm glad I showed up big.

I'm sad for the decline of Halloween ground work where you guys live and hope there's a resurgence. It's just such a good time.
posted by phunniemee at 4:46 AM on November 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

I used to live in a neighborhood where we gave out one piece of candy per kid and would run out of 1000 pieces. There was a literal line of kids going up the steps of our stoop and we had to do traffic control so one side of the steps was up and the other was down so as to not create a jam. It was fun.

My current neighborhood isn't like that, it's much more dependent on day of the week and weather. We've had good years but this year being a Tuesday and snowing and 30 degrees, it was quiet.

I have a cold and was not up for sitting outside in this weather, and the dogs get too riled up by people constantly knocking or ringing the doorbell, so we put out a bowl. Unfortunately, a group of teens around 6:45 not only dumped all the candy in the bowl but stole the bowl itself. We didn't notice when it happened, so anyone who braved the weather after that time didn't get anything. We only know the time because a neighbor saw them on her doorbell camera with our bowl on one kid's head; then they stole her bowl too. It's really disappointing and dispiriting, even though I keep trying to tell myself they are just kids and it's not personal.
posted by misskaz at 5:21 AM on November 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

counterproductive that the kids were not supposed to also get candy

Wait what? I've never heard of that as a thing. When I was a kid doing that everybody was collecting coins and collecting candy. Also until I started hanging out with people who grew up in different Protestant denominations I had no idea that some people didn't do Halloween but had church parties (why would anybody want to go to church on any other day than Sunday was also weird).

My kid at 14 didn't want to do Halloween this year as it was too "embarassing" to go out as a "practically grown human." To be fair they are almost 6 feet tall but still it broke my heart a little... I guess I'll have to go and buy discounted Kerr's kisses at Shoppers today.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:33 AM on November 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Absolutely none of the little kids that everyone hopes for. I did better during Covid, and I'm handing out literal bags of quality stuff! None of this one-piece BS.

I'm willing to play the long game: the kids we DID get got full size candy bars. I figure that if we keep at it eventually word will get around, and in the mean time I have plenty of snacks.
posted by sciatrix at 6:25 AM on November 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Absolutely none of the little kids that everyone hopes for.

Little kids are fine, but I prefer the teens. A girl maybe ~13 came up last night, her older brother late teens maybe 20 was waiting patiently down by the gate. Until she nearly screamed "YOU HAVE POKEMON!!! RICO COME SEE!" The brother dutifully walked up, his eyes got huge, I told him he was welcome to trick or treat, and he got so excited. Then he said "can I take a picture of the table? I want to show discord!"
posted by phunniemee at 6:41 AM on November 1, 2023 [18 favorites]

Sorry, to bring this thread back on track: yes, the Pokemon toys were coated in fentanyl.
posted by phunniemee at 6:43 AM on November 1, 2023 [24 favorites]

No joke, my daughter received a full pack of candy cigarettes tonight.

They taste exactly like they did 40 years ago.

Are you sure they weren't in fact 40 years old?
posted by rhymedirective at 6:43 AM on November 1, 2023 [13 favorites]

Anyway why would you worry about ppl putting razor blades in apples when apples start to oxidize, dry, and shrink away from cuts literally within minutes? That would be a really hot operation: answering the door, stepping out of sight long enough to put on a gauntlet and shove a razor blade into an apple, step back, hand it over, and then watch…the kid drop it into a pillowcase and walk away. By the time they get home, the cut apple has seeped sugar juice all over their other candy and has an obvious wound with brown, shrunken edges. Unless a bunch of houses give out apples, it’s gonna be a really short investigation.
posted by toodleydoodley at 8:02 AM on November 1, 2023 [11 favorites]

Between the boullion, yams, raisins, baked goods and mulled wine what I'm hearing is we need to start an adult holiday where everyone makes a favorite thing and you go door to door and you get bites and tastes of things, a shot of booze or adult beverage and maybe a pre-roll or edible.

These pearls ain’t gonna clutch themselves.

Well they would if we just left them in the oysters.
posted by loquacious at 8:18 AM on November 1, 2023 [13 favorites]

When I lived in Miami, every holiday was a fireworks occasion. Maybe not Valentine's Day, but certainly the rest of them and just randomly throughout the year. Pretty much just whenever the thumping bass and gunfire wasn't enough to keep people from getting bored the mortars came out.

You sure those fireworks weren't actually gunshots? I once hung out with friends in Hialeah on New Year's Eve back when shooting guns into the air to ring in the New Year was a regular phenomenon (and maybe it still is, I don't know). We was outside, and thankfully, none of our group was that dumb, but in retrospect, it still felt low-key dangerous to even be there.
posted by May Kasahara at 8:22 AM on November 1, 2023

One of the surest signs that I had moved to a radically different city (other than the fact that my mail was now sent to "Los Angeles CA") was driving around before the New Years seeing billboards from various police departments and health departments reminding residents "what goes up, must come down" so please don't shoot your guns in the air.

And can confirm, no trick or treaters - walked over to the brewery and had a pint of beer with the bartender who was dressed as "Heather S Thompson". She was so pleased that I guessed who she was riffing on. Her excitement was a better serotonin boost than the beer.

Also can confirm - Tootsie Rolls - still no clue how someone jammed vaguely chocolate flavor into an alloy of bees wax and rubber cement.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:15 AM on November 1, 2023

why would you worry about ppl putting razor blades in apples when apples start to oxidize, dry, and shrink away from cuts literally within minutes?

Yes the lack of real-world apple experience those with these fears have is discouraging.
posted by Rash at 9:46 AM on November 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

I got an entire (unopened) box of 'nilla wafers one year, because the dude in the house had run out of candy but also forgot to turn off the light and it's uncool to send kids away empty-handed if the porch light is on.

I got a tick-tack (a single tick-tack) from the purse of this beautiful woman exiting our neighbor's** house, who hadn't realized it was Halloween. In retrospect she was definitely an escort.

**Same neighbor who avoided paying taxes for three years. He'd leave his house at five in the morning, hide from the sheriff all day, and sneak back in after midnight to avoid getting serviced notice.
posted by subdee at 9:56 AM on November 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

Yes the lack of real-world apple experience those with these fears have is discouraging.

On the other hand, statistically, this person and their child unknowingly eat up to 8 razor blades every year.
posted by phunniemee at 10:12 AM on November 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

There were no consequences following this, which makes me wonder if the "trick" side of this tradition is ever followed through on. Does anyone these days actually have pranks pulled on them in retaliation for inadequate treats? If so, what kind of thing are we talking about?

When I was a kid (Gen-X, you can do the math) that kind of thing happened the night *before* Halloween, aka "Devil's Night" and was mostly restricted to fairly harmless stuff like toilet-papering people's trees or the occasional soaping of someone's windows. Maybe egging if the devils doing the tricks were more on the delinquent side (you do not want to try and clean up raw eggs after they have been left to dry, I've read.) The newspapers would have you believe that it was all cars on fire and such but I think that was way overblown.
posted by 41swans at 10:19 AM on November 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

41swans: What happened on Halloween night itself? Dif you call back at the same houses to blithely demand candy? Did they give you some regardless, or take the opportunity to punish you for the mischief you'd already done?
posted by Paul Slade at 10:32 AM on November 1, 2023

We live in an area that has been known for years as a good spot for trick-or-treating. But, we are one block off of the main drag, up a double dead end street. We had a pretty solid turnout this year, but still ended up with a lot of drugs left over. Our street has had a recent resurgence in homeowners with young kids, and that is always fun.

We certainly "tricked" in our teen years. Or, well, random egging and TPing and such. Actually, more targeted than random. But, being allowed to be out at night without parents, roaming the streets, free candy, those were the days...

I was at the Greenwood Fred Meyer looking for one last bag of candy yesterday. Am heading out and am the intersection where there are several encampments. Don't think they were handing out drugs... Guy is on a motorcycle in the island intersection. Not moving. I am waiting patiently. He doesn't move. Well, he starts moving, kind of rocking back and forth in an unsteady fashion. I roll down my window and yell out that he should move. Nope. Rocking settles down. Wait a bit more. Give a brief honk. Several seconds later, he completely goes down off his bike.

Two of the encampment residents ran over, started checking his breathing, one started looking for Narcan. We were able to pull his bike off him after a few tries, dude lost a side mirror on his Triumph, and he was not rousable. Then a parking lot guy came over, asked if an ambulance was needed, encampment residents were not too keen on that, and they kept looking for anyone who had Narcan. I hope the guy just fainted, because I can't imagine smoking a big line of Fentanyl and hopping on your motorcycle.

And pins in the apples was the big thing when I was a kid. Everyone would notice a razor blade.
posted by Windopaene at 10:41 AM on November 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Our bell rang just once. Girl (and her adult posse) got a lot of chocolate.
posted by pracowity at 11:53 AM on November 1, 2023

Also until I started hanging out with people who grew up in different Protestant denominations I had no idea that some people didn't do Halloween

The neighborhood I grew up in was unsuitable for small children to be wandering around in the dark at any time of year, so my parents used to take us out to my grandparents' suburban neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Which was fine.

Except the one year my grandmother decided that Halloween was a "pagan holiday" and not to be participated in. And she was Catholic!

The fundies are going to haunt me from cradle to grave, I swear.
posted by praemunire at 12:16 PM on November 1, 2023

the consolation prize of the box of raisins was if you open the top and eat the raisins, you can then blow into the box and it makes a hooting noise that is very annoying to adults.

posted by BrashTech at 4:59 PM on October 31

eponysterical!
posted by chavenet at 12:25 PM on November 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

No joke, my daughter received a full pack of candy cigarettes tonight.

Are you sure they weren't in fact 40 years old?

You can buy them new -- we sell them at the antique mall -- the packaging looks like full-on cigarette livery, but the word "cigarette" does not appear on the package anywhere for obvious legal reasons.

But, literally every adult who notices them asks "are these antiques too?" and chuckles like they were the first to think of that joke.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:45 PM on November 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

What happened on Halloween night itself? Did you call back at the same houses to blithely demand candy? Did they give you some regardless, or take the opportunity to punish you for the mischief you'd already done?

I was a relatively reasonable kid who did not commit criminal mischief so I don't know what all those kids did (we always imagined it was "delinquents" but it was probably just other random kids and teens) but I assume that the kids who tp'd and soaped up houses did indeed call back to houses for candy, unless they were too old for trick or treating and just went off and I don't know...did exotic older kid stuff.
posted by 41swans at 12:54 PM on November 1, 2023

Back in 2018, there actually was a scare in Australia due to strawberries with needles in them . It was NOT Halloween and of course lasted longer than a day and "inspired" both copycats and people making false claims of having gotten contaminated strawberries. It seemed to stop as randomly as it started and it looks like the only person ever charged was released before trial due to the prosecution saying they didn't have a reasonable chance of conviction.
posted by Athanassiel at 1:06 PM on November 1, 2023

lol 'bowl tippers'

the one time I ever left out the bowl someone took the bowl!
posted by supermedusa at 1:09 PM on November 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

The box of candy on the porch results: it took an hour for the box to be almost empty; when I refilled it, there was a handful of Tootsie Pops left in the bottom. 30 minutes later my partner went to refill it, and it was again almost empty. Another 30 minutes and we checked again to find an empty box that someone had placed upside-down on its small table, presumably to signal to others that it wasn't worth making the trek up our steep drive.
posted by telophase at 1:21 PM on November 1, 2023

literally every adult who notices them asks "are these antiques too?" and chuckles like they were the first to think of that joke.

I hate that I would absolutely be one of those people.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:32 PM on November 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

Ha - supermedusa, when we were cleaning out my mom's house earlier this year, we found this sign that was a poem about "don't take too much candy, and don't take the bowl" that I guess she'd leave out on Halloween, and damn if I were a kid that saw that sign I would totally steal the bowl even if I hadn't intended to beforehand.
posted by queensissy at 1:58 PM on November 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

This year I again joined my friends who do extremely detailed data collection on halloween costumes in the neighborhood. There were well over 900 kids surveilled by us by the time we called it a night. I contributed 3 Costco-sized bags of candy and tracked "modern v retro" costume categories. 1900 is the dividing line between modern and retro. FYI - Star Wars is considered "retro" because it takes place a long time ago, but Left Shark is modern, even though sharks are ancient, because it's a modern reference.
posted by gingerbeer at 1:59 PM on November 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Plastic pumpkin bucket with a sign: "Only one pierogi per child." One is underlined for emphasis.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:02 PM on November 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Still at it
posted by chavenet at 4:46 AM on November 3, 2023

Left Shark is modern, even though sharks are ancient, because it's a modern reference.

Damnit, there is only enough room at the top of my brain for a limited number of things, and having dusted off the memory "Left Shark was a sufficiently big thing that it became a popular Halloween costume in 2015", something else has had to go into cold storage.

So, y'know, when it takes me upwards of 30 seconds to remember my wife's name, it's going to be all your fault.
posted by jackbishop at 5:03 AM on November 4, 2023

Some Halloween I want to dress up as Santa and hand out candy wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper just to confuse the kids.

Excellent thought, Santa, but it would be easier to hand out Cadbury Eggs and would increase the cognitive dissonance. I don’t know if you can get them around Halloween, though. I suppose sparklers would be good, too…
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 4:56 PM on November 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

Kinder eggs are available year round.
posted by Mitheral at 6:20 PM on November 5, 2023