Which Halloween candy is unpopular with kids? This article evaluates the yucky holiday treats trick-or-treaters most dislike. Quoting one wisely titled article, these are "Halloween candies that will get your house TP'd."
It is necessary to add the caveat that there have sadly been no official polls conducted to identify the least popular Halloween candy. This article is unavoidably biased. It is necessary for the reader to critically evaluate the data supplied.
Least Popular Halloween Candies
I think we can all reminisce about our own trick-or-treating days to recall that Dum Dum suckers are a huge fail when it comes to Halloween candy. After all, these cheapo penny lollipops are handed out free at the bank and doctor's office. Think also for a moment about how the white stick of the sucker turns gooey and starts to disintegrate after a few minutes. Enough said.
After Dum Dums, the worst Halloween treats get a little more difficult to pinpoint. In fact, some bloggers have included some of the supposedly most popular candies on their least popular treat list! The Café Mom Blog and the Houston Press Blog list candy corn as a horrible Halloween treat, and the Houston Press Blog also lists tootsie rolls as undesirable, but these two candies are very popular according to some polls. See the article Most Popular Halloween Candies to do a best-and-worst Halloween candy comparison.
Other sweets that are often blackballed include hard candy, saltwater taffy, licorice, and wax candy. The Houston Press Blog comments that hard butterscotch candy “[doesn’t] taste like scotch, but they sure do taste like butt (get it?). Butterscotch candies are relics from a bygone Dust Bowl era when a food was considered candy if it wasn't made of sawdust and old newspaper.” The Café Mom blog pontificates, “Wax should not ever be edible, even if it's the form of lips or bottles.”
Healthy Halloween treats are also frequently poopooed. Don’t go handing out apples or raisins or anything else that’s “good” for kids (think pencils and toothbrushes, too). Halloween is not a teaching moment. Regarding raisins, SeriousEats.com notes, “Little boxes of stuck-together shriveled globs are not what little kids schlep around the neighborhood for all night. When they say trick-or-treat, they want candy that will rot their teeth, not wrinkled grapes.”
Making Good Candy Choices for Halloween
If you don’t want to be labeled the “bad house” on Halloween, you need to be careful about your holiday candy selection. When mulling over a particular Halloween treat choice, do this simple litmus test: Ask yourself, “Would 87-year-old Aunt Mildred approve of this choice?” If the answer is affirmative – that she would indeed give a nod of approval to the hard candies, taffy, raisins, or Dots you have in your white-knuckled grip – it’s time to reconsider your choice.
Better bets for the Halloween treat pail this year include mini candy bars, funky sugary candies like Nerds or Sour Patch Kids, or oldies but goodies like M&Ms or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Sources:
TheStir.CafeMom.com. "10 Halloween Candies That Will Get Your House TP’d" (retrieved October 21, 2010).
Blogs.HoustonPress.com. "Top 5 Worst Halloween Candies" (retrieved October 21, 2010).
SeriousEats.com. "Top Ten Worst Halloween Candies” (retrieved October 21, 2010).
Aimee Larsen Stoddard - Aimee is a professional writer/editor. She has a BA in English and is currently completing an MS in Theology.
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