Sweet Memories

Having a tough time deciding which Halloween Candy you’ll be giving out to Trick-or-Treaters this year? There are tons of tasty options out there, and it’s actually pretty hard to make a bad decision! But for as much as Halloween is a holiday that is, as they say, ‘for the children’, we encourage you to make it about yourself as well. Leave it to the Johnsons down the street to fill the kids’ treat bags with Fun Size Snickers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Let the Coopers give the princesses, witches and zombies plastic Spider Rings. Let the little ones get their Tootsie Pop fix from the Fredericks. You have candy your inner child can relate to in your treat bags!

My Halloween memories are just as vivid, if not more so, as my memories of childhood Christmases. I remember the costumes I wore, the costumes my friends wore, the Halloween parades at school, trying to fall asleep Halloween night with sugar pumping through my kid veins – I remember it all. I remember collapsing on the living room floor after a long night of trick-or-treating and dumping my candy in front of me with tired, yet wide-eyed appreciation for all the wonderful ways sugar has been imagined into magic. I remember the Sugar Daddys, I remember the Air Heads, I remember the Atomic Fireballs, Wonka Bottle Caps, Razzles and Root Beer Barrels. And every time I enjoy one of these candies, I get to remember again. And remembering is even sweeter than the candy itself.

Treat yourself to some nostalgia this Halloween. Think of the candy you loved hauling home when you were a trick-or-treater, and share a little piece (or two!) of your past. Not only will the neighbor kids be introduced to some of the best candy ever created – candy that has stood the test of time and still has fans coming back for more – but you’ll also get to really enjoy all the candy leftovers if November 1st finds you with a few extra treat bags. We also have a feeling that after all those kids fall asleep and their parents take a peek inside their plastic pumpkins for a sampling of their loot, their adult eyes will light up like they haven’t in years upon spying a Bit O Honey or familiar red box of Boston Baked Beans!

A turkey sandwich with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper, on white bread. A small bag of barbeque chips. A can of Pepsi. Every day. Without fail. For years. This is what my lunch contained. How I didn’t have a full-blown meltdown in the lunch room, throwing my turkey sandwich dramatically into the air while the world went all slow-motion-y I’ll never know. The lunchbox was not designed for these sorts of Groundhog Day events to occur. It’s practically a present! Every day for 180 days a year, millions of children across the country sit down at a table and slowly open their lunchbox or lunch bag, hoping that something amazing is inside. Fingers cross quietly as their lunch loot for the day is revealed. And while they may each have their own ideas about lunch bliss, there’s a common trait they all share. Each of them is hoping there’s not a soggy turkey sandwich inside.

In my mother’s defense, I never complained about my lunch. I’m not sure it occurred to me I could ask for something different. I accepted the turkey sandwich as my destiny. And to be fair, it did keep me full through the school day, and was fairly nutritious, two important things to consider when packing a lunch for your kids. But it did not make me smile. I did not regard it as a welcome treat after a long morning of advanced math classes and an overly environmentally-conscious science teacher who showered just once a week, rather noticeably mind you! My eyes did not light up the way they might have were there Gummy Butterflies flitting about my lunchbox when I opened it (use your imagination, people!).

As with everything, enjoying candy as part of a balanced diet is about just that – balance. In our recent Candy vs. Cola post we highlighted how much less sugar is in one serving of several popular candies compared to one serving of a handful of soda favorites. We aren’t suggesting that you replace a real slice of pizza with Gummy Pizza for lunch, rather that a small and sweet something waiting in the bottom of the bag can be a bright spot.

Not sure which candies to include? We’ve put together a list of delicious ideas that will also help you to keep it cheap!

• Nik-L-Nip Wax Bottles – This classic candy comes with the best directions for enjoyment right on the bag – Bite ‘em, Drink ‘em, Chew ‘em! Some schools don’t allow gum on school grounds, so this can be something flavorful for your kids to chew for a few minutes following lunch without risking detention! And with an 18 pack bag, with 5 wax bottles in each pack, costing just $14.40, you can give them 2 Nik-L-Nips a day for just about a quarter.

• Tootsie Pop Drops – Never had the patience to count the licks to the center? Forego the game altogether with Tootsie Pop Drops! While the name alone is cool enough – reminds me of some dance the kids might’ve been doing in the 50s – the candy is even better. Tiny tootsies going sans stick are tucked inside a pouch ready to be savored. At 80 cents a pack these may not make their way into every lunch, but as a once-or-twice-a-week treat will give your kid something tasty to enjoy while having enough to share with a friend. (By the way…we did have the patience to take the Tootsie Pop Challenge!)

• Marshmallow Ice Cream Cones – Including ice cream with your kids lunch can be, shall we say, a tricky task. It has a bad habit of melting rather quickly. But Marpo Marshmallow Ice Cream Cones won’t create a mess of their lockers, and they’re only about a quarter a cone!

• Laffy Taffy Ropes – Add an element of mystery to their mid-day meal by choosing the white mystery flavor of Laffy Taffy! I always adored the ‘mystery flavors’ of candy and gum as a kid, and still find them super fun now. The only time I won’t choose the mystery flavor when offered a Dum Dum Pop is when I see a butterscotch pop in the mix. They’re just too tasty! Laffy Taffy Ropes are a quarter apiece, and Dum Dum Pops are less than a nickel apiece! Looks like choosing yum yum Dum Dums is Smart Smart for your wallet.

While adults filed into their own categories when I was growing up, whether it was Republican or Democrat, or permed and not permed (it was the 80s, bear with me!), us kids were creating important definitive groups of our own. On a warm summer day, the groups of ‘can play baseball well’ and ‘can’t hit a ball to save his life’ became important. There were also more general groups, to include ‘will always follow through on a “Truth or Dare” dare’, and ‘will always run home crying if they don’t like their dare’. Me? I loved a good dare. And I was pretty good at baseball, too. But throwing a snowball was never a specialty, so I spent much of the winter hiding behind cars and getting hit anyway. It’s OK – I got them back with really good dares! A creative mind never comes so in handy as it does when deciding someone’s dared fate.

But for all the ways we broke into one of 2 groups as it applied to games, it was at the candy store that we saw our great consumer divide into the ‘Sours’ and the ‘Sweets’. I was one of the ‘Sweets’ through and through without fail until the day a certain crescent-shaped treat landed in a glass dish in that enormous case of candy. I still requested my bag be filled with its usual helping of Satellite Wafers and Sixlets, but I saved a few cents for that new candy that would forever seal my fate as one who lives on the border of ‘Sours’ and ‘Sweets’. And that candy was…Sour Patch Watermelons.

I should start by saying I didn’t really expect to like them. But they were candy, and new at the store, and I felt it my duty as a child and regular patron of the candy store to give them a fair shot. I accepted the first one as a fluke. Surely they couldn’t all taste that good?! I had tried Sour Patch Kids more than a few times before this, and they never tasted that good. These appeared to be from the same Sour Patch family, but one was so much better than they other! I reasoned that the Sour Patch parents must be so proud of their wonderful watermelons – fabulous sugar-coated candies that far surpassed their ‘kids’ in amazingness. I stared into my little brown bag and struggled to not eat them all up at once. (‘Sours’ – don’t get mad at me for not thinking Sour Patch Kids are the best thing to ever happen to the candy world! Remember…I’m one of the ‘Sweets’. My affinity for Sour Patch Watermelons goes against my candy nature.)

To this day, I’m one of the ‘Sweets’. When a new sour candy hits the market, I’m usually one of the last to try it. I will always try it, though.  Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t, but it never becomes a candy staple like Sour Patch Watermelons. Even though it’s been 20-ish years since that first fabulous treat crossed my lips and worked its way past my taste buds and into my heart, I still hold onto the hope that it will happen again. I can’t help it – I’m a candy romantic!

Sure, in recent years many new sweet treats have earned themselves heavy rotation in my candy cupboard. But the first and last of the sours was the watermelon. Perhaps it will always be that way, and if so, that’s OK! But I’ll keep tasting and trying so I don’t miss out on what might be the second most important sour discovery of my life.