Halloween Candy and Creepy Culinary Oddities

Chances are you won't encounter some of these confections outside specialty sites online. Yet, it seems Halloween now includes an element of loathing and fear in the candy realm--a sweet complement to the ghouls and barriers between worlds momentarily breaking down. Forget caramel apples, Butterfingers, and marshmellow-filled dark chocolate concoctions. The internet has again opened an instant pathway to the deranged, this time from candy makers, as best proven by these oddities:

• Uncle Oinker's Savory Bacon Mints: The scariest thing about them is that they're targeted for general use, rather than just as a seasonal flavor. Taking its cue from chocolate covered bacon, bacon-apple pies, and perhaps Wendy's Baconator, according to the reviewer here the result can be described as anything but savory. Still not enough bacon for you? Don't worry, the same company manufactures bacon toothpicks.
• I-Mockery's Ultimate Guide to the Halloween Candies of 2007: One of the best little guides packed with notable winners and losers for this year. However, even with their relatively positive reviews, I can't say I would be caught dead trying half of what's there. Humorously enough, the guide illustrates the newest experiments aren't necessarily the worst. Indeed, the reviewer blasts the plastic-like Gummi Ghouls, while giving high marks to the marshmellow-jelly Oozing Eyeballs.
• Sour Flush Candy: Halloween has long included elements of the grotesque. This increasingly extends to candy every year, with recent origins in the old party games of spaghetti guts and grape eyes. Sour Flush Candy is one of the nastier examples of this. What appears to be a cheap knock off of Pop Rocks is worsened by dipping the sucker into the grains, held by a little plastic toilet. Yuck. As an aside, these intentionally gross flavors show no sign of going anywhere, much like the splatter flicks and "torture porn" currently haunting horror in film.
• Candy Addict's Top 10 Grossest Candies: Just to underscore the above, candyaddict.com keeps a list of the top ten grossest anti-treats that's hard to dispute. I'm pleased to see Sour Flush Candy made the list at #8.
• Candy Cigarettes: One of the most rare and controversial candies continues to be candy cigarettes. Despite the blog's comments, I haven't seen any easily available for many years, and only vaguely remember them. I recall them having a sugary, slightly minty taste. In any case, giving some of these out to trick or treaters, should a person somehow hold a stockpile, is likely to remain the number one No No for Halloween. Or, at least, the strongest magnet to bring down the wrath of angry parents upon you.
• Groovy Candies: Should you actually want to buy almost any of the above, Groovy Candies appears certain to carry it (except maybe the candy cigarettes). This vendor offers large quantities of goods, ranging from the mundane Warheads and Jawbreakers, to the wretched Fear Factor gross bites and insect pops seen on Candy Addict's Top 10. A worthy supplier.
• Top Ten Creepiest Fast Food Mascots: As a closing reminder that the bizarre shadow over food doesn't just come and go with Halloween, the Legendary Ads Blog contains this well thought list of eerie Fast Food figureheads. While I admit to a slight affection for a few like the King, who seems particularly good at adding a jolt of wicked, unsettling surprise into everyday life, I'm glad some of the other freaks are gone. And, unlike the King, haven't been resurrected by their respective employers...yet.

-Grim Blogger