Saturday, October 29, 2016

A Message from your friendly Halloween Mafia



Yeah, I can totally remember back in the late-70s when I was Trick or Treating and my gang came across the odd house that wasn't offering snack-sized Butterfingers.  We were a lot tougher than this cartoon ghost suggests we should have been- we didn't stop at TP'ing those Butterfinger-less houses.  We'd generally set them on fire, but only after smashing a few windows and hanging a dead cat or two from the mailboxes for a few nights in a row afterwards, subjecting the inhabitants to our own special brand of psychological terror.  At least that's how I remember it- though I might just be thinking of the plot of almost every second-feature horror movie I watched at the Drive-In as a teen....

Because Butterfingers are really that awesome.  Right up there with Clark bars and candy corn* and popcorn balls** or raisins.***    Awesome enough to wreak horrible vengeance on any family that dares offer Milky Ways, Snickers, Peanut Butter Cups, Take 5s**** or any of the other 200 or so candy options available at sales prices in oversized bags this time of year.  Uh huh.

*Anyone still handing this stuff out deserves to have their house TP'd.  All the candy corn ever manufactured was produced in 1955 and jammed into a huge silo in Kansas which is emptied every October and then refilled with the 99% left unsold in November.  Yes, it's 60-year old candy- and it was gross when it was fresh.  You wouldn't eat it.  Stop asking kids to.

**I can't believe these are still on store shelves either.  Come on.  Who wants to eat stale popcorn held together by cheap carmel (that is carmel, right?)

***None of the completely illegal and creepy actions I described above suffice to punish anyone who hands out raisins on Halloween.  October 31 is not the day to preach Healthy Eating.  Offering raisins on Halloween is like eating a salad on Mardi Gras.  No.

****My students love these things.  Why are they so damned hard to find in the month leading up to Halloween and virtually impossible every other time of the year?

3 comments:

  1. The reason for the absence of Take 5s is a little thing called artificial scarcity. They could make them year round but they don't want to.

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    1. A few years ago I read an article criticizing the company for not marketing Take5s correctly, pointing out that the name is stupid and the packaging is lame. Well, they've changed the packaging, but it's no more attractive and in fact the new dark packaging is much harder to spot than the original bright red. Weird.

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    2. What's stupid is the fact that they never used the classic Dave Brubeck/Paul Desmond instrumental hit as background music for any of their commercials.

      Same with the soft drink Mello Yello. They could have used the Donovan hit MELLOW YELLOW for that one as well.

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