I wish I could get into Halloween more, I really do. It’s my second-favourite holiay and my first-favourite season, so why don’t I go more crazy over it? Money, mostly. It’s hard to buy up all the mummy-themed candy and pumpkin-shaped decorations when you’re living paycheque to paycheque. But I can still justify spending a few bucks here and there on some cool stuff.
To that end, when the Halloween season begins, I like to make trips down to the square and check out the Shopper’s Drug Mart to see what they’ve got. It’s a bit of a gamble, as the popular stuff it usually marked up like crazy at Shopper’s, but if you’re shopping outside the box you’re fairly likely to find something cool for a decent price.
Like this bag of Ninja Turtles candy, for example. Two dollas for this bag. That is not only decent, but a pretty great price in my book. Plus I bought it mostly because I wanted to take pictures of it, so that’s one more box checked off on the “candy for trick-or-treaters” list*.
The price made me happy, but what made me sad is that this is the only Ninja Turtles candy I’ve seen so far this season. Granted, I haven’t been watching like a hawk, but this is the kind of thing that should stand out to me. I was expecting a little more TMNT love on Halloween, as Nick’s Ninja Turtles have their faces plastered on damn near everything, so why put on the brakes for Halloween candy?
The bag unsurprisingly contained exactly what it claimed: suckers and candy lumps. “Soft center pops” is kind of a weird way to put it, don’t you think? Truthfully, I don’t, but I was trying to come up with something more interesting for this paragraph than complaining about how blurry that picture came out.
The “candy chews” are about as boring as you’d expect. They’re just that regual old block of coloured sugar with a tiny tire track down the middle. But this time, wrapped in Ninja Turtles! Yes, that’s enough to get me excited about these candies. What can I say? I’m easy.
It’s notable that despite their cheaply-mass-producedness, these sugar lumps are not bad. They aren’t a candy I’d actively seek out, but they’re edible. So when I find one in a surprise bag a dozen years down the line, and when it crumbles to dust as soon as I open the wrapper, I will know that at one point, these candies were pretty decent. And that will be my light in the darkness. Or something.
The suckers are less good, but then again, I have a tendency to hold suckers to a higher standard. The truth of the matter is that I’m poor because my wife and I spend an exorbitant amount of money on gourmet lollipops. That’s also the reason that I have a hard time getting behind cheap little suckers like this, even though they really aren’t bad.
I do really like that picture though. It looks like the suckers are all wearing little capes.
I guess If I have to have any sort of final thought, it’s that I’m pretty disappointed in the candy chews. But of the candy types in the bag come in three different wrappers, but there are only two colours of chew to the three colours of suckers. Also the suckers are all different flavours and both chews taste the same. Tsk tsk.
*Yes, I ate all the candy I opened and fondled. The rest is for trick-or-treaters.