HALLOWEEN SNACKS! The Scary Edition

Now it's time for witches and cats, spiders and bats. Wolfman, Dracula, and his son. These are the treats that succumbed to the allure of occult power and traded out pretty leaves for severed limbs. These are the kindsa snacks I remember from when I was a child, back when "spooky season" didn't begin in July and it leaned more on mummies than it did on coffee. In short, this is the kid stuff, which is exactly goddamn where this holiday belongs. Mash good!

- Paul

Fanta Chucky's Punch

Fanta has fast become the new official soda of Halloween and I'm entirely delighted with this; with its array of flavors and colors it so easily fits into the mold of "monster parade". This year's lineup pulls from Halloween, Five Nights at Freddy's, M3GAN, The Black Phone, and Child's Play (which, by my calculations, are all Blumhouse properties) making for a widely eclectic (and mostly modern) selection. I went with Chucky because 1) my son is a fan of the franchise, 2) it's apparently the only new flavor of the group (which is a really fun carbonated fruit punch), and 3) the stripes on the can that are meant to mimic Chucky's outfit are really rad and incidentally make it reminiscent of various diet cola cans from the 80s. 

Dum Dums Flavor Fusion

Dum Dums lollipops are never not fun; their spectrum of flavors leaves nothing out and the accompanying illustrations on their respective wrappers are Louvre-worthy artworks. But these are, in many ways, a different animal; classic disc-shaped pops instead of their usual spherical appearance, combining two flavors into each lolli. Actual palatable taste aside, I grabbed these for three more listable reasons: 1) the thicc witch on the front with the cauldron full of bubbling rainbow goodness, 2) the Dum Dum Drum Man's fabulous vampiric glow up, and 3) the playfully "scary" flavor titles that read like short little poems - Petrified Pineapple Orange, Boo Berry Lemonade, Spooky Strawberry Kiwi, and Creepy Caramel Apple. Scientifically, they all taste better because of their whimsically foreboding modifiers. 

Reese's Peanut Butter Skeletons

I've mentioned these before on this site in passing, but I don't care. These consist of just the regular ol' Reese's recipe of chocolate and peanut butter, but I don't care about that either. Why these are important and I why I get them every year is because of their killer artwork! These shiny foil wrappers with the friendly skeletons create a nostalgic aura of comfort and joy that's evocative of all Halloween stuff from 30-50 years ago; candy, stickers, decorations, advertising, even clothing (I swear I had a sweatshirt with a very similar skeleton on it). It's fun and kinda funny how the generic stuff ends up becoming the name brand of our unconscious. Also, if you hold one just right you can pretend it's one of Jame Gumb's death's-head moths. 

Amos Gummy Eyeballs

There's a lot to unpack here. No really, these eyeballs are individually wrapped which makes "snacking" on them feel like a tedious arts & crafts project. But I get it, these were meant to be handed out to trick-or-treaters or placed in goody bags (as opposed to mindlessly consumed by a 40-something on his couch watching Ghost Hunters reruns on a Tuesday night). I bought them because I love eyeballs and eyeball-related things, but my expectations re. the quality of these seemingly nonspecific gummies were purposefully low. So, it was with blissful surprise that I found them to be really good! They're noticeably soft with a flavor that isn't just "sugar" -- in fact, it's tough to determine, but each different colored pupil may actually carry its own flavor. I'm determined to figure that out by the end of the bag. 

Doritos Collisions Stranger Pizza x Cool Ranch

It's been my understanding that Doritos Collisions were two flavors of chips mixed into one bag, but everything in this bag tastes the same - and I shit you not, they taste like pizza. Frozen pizza specifically, which feels like an even stronger flex. I've had my share of pizza-flavored things throughout the decades and I shrugged them off as the cute attempts that they were, so these had an element of surprise. They also have a phone number printed on the front - a hotline you can call as part of the Stranger Things Season 5 promotion. Introvert that I am I can't even bring myself to order a pizza over the phone, so without thinking about it for too long I dialed the number which connected me to a recording telling me about the "Hawkins Tip Hotline" and a telethon to rescue the town that's been ravaged by The Upside Down. After that little spiel they connected me to Paula Abdul, which was most likely also a recording, but when she asked for my name I got nervous and hung up. (And then I quietly but shamefully quoted the "Straight Up" lyrics to myself: "A-b-b-bye-bye, b-b-b-bye-bye".)