With Halloween coming up, now is as good of a time as any to discuss the worst five "treats" that ended up in our Halloween buckets as kids. Most adults can tell you that Halloween was a fun time. People were dressed up as everything you could think of, you got to go ring doorbells and get a bucketful of candy for it. If you were considered old enough, you even got out of the parental supervision part of it and spent the night with your friends. So you go home happy to have all of your sugar filled treats. Then you end up with:
1) Plastic Spider Rings
I mean seriously? These things don't fit on anyone's fingers and are often accompanied by other cheap plastic toys that break the moment you look at them crossed eyed. Where's the fun in a bouncy ball shaped like an eyeball that breaks in half after one bounce? I'm not sure what the exact purpose of these are supposed to be but if it's to disappoint, they hit the nail on the head.
2) Pretzels
They have Take 5 bars for a reason. In all seriousness, we get that you're trying to add something healthy into the bucketful of cavities that kids get from parading around the neighborhood. However, most kids just really want the candy. No matter how much the pretzels fit with the theme, a kid who finds a bag of pretzels in their bucket is going to be super disappointed. The whole point of Halloween for kids is to go trick or treating to get mounds of candy that they can brag about to their friends. Remember comparing candy piles or the amount of candy in the buckets? Yeah, nobody is doing that for pretzels.
3) Loose Change
This one has to be a joke, right? Unfortunately it isn't. This one seems to be more aimed towards those who forget that it's Halloween and give out what they have. You know the house, the one with the light on with absolutely no decorations. When you knock or ring the doorbell a confused elderly person answers the door. You yell trick or treat and a bewildered look hits their face. Minutes later they come back with loose change or whatever other object they could grab quickly. The disappointment comes quickly in those cases since it's clear they aren't giving out candy.
4) Fruit
Again, seriously? We get the health kick but who seriously wishes they'd get an apple in their candy bucket? Also, when it comes time to check the candy, chances are the fruit is going to be thrown out anyways. It isn't wrapped, it isn't packaged, and there's no real way to discern if something was done to it before hand. I know in the case of many of the parents I grew up around, that apple would have been in the trash before I could even attempt to eat it.
5) Cookies
Yes, cookies especially the prepackaged ones are full of sugar. They're a favorite snack of kids. However, kids want the candy. Compared to candy, cookies seem like a boring treat. In the case of homemade cookies, even if wrapped, their still going to end up in the trash. Parents can't see what ingredients you used and again they don't know if anything happened to them.
Overall you're better off just getting the candy and making a little kid (or older kid) have a sugar induced, Happy Halloween.
