The worst Halloween candy

To put my blog styling through its paces, I’m reproducing an old article I wrote years ago this time of year during the height of my boredom during the COVID pandemic. At that time I thought I’d try my hand at being a prolific Substack writer. I eventually decided I’d much rather torture myself by running marathons instead of being pithy on the internet. At least with the former I’d get some fresh air.

Welcome to Power Rankings! This is a semi-regular newsletter wherein I establish a definitive, unbiased, completely factual ranking of a certain topic and then we all argue incessantly about it in the comments. Onward!

For our maiden voyage of Power Rankings, I wanted to Rank something relatable. We’ll have plenty of time to get into the various niche subjects and arcane disciplines that my audience will eventually suggest. What we all really need right now is an aperitif: something to warm up the appetite for the far more incendiary and important Rankings on the horizon.

It’s fortuitous, then, that our first opportunity to Rank comes at a significant moment in the calendar year: Halloween. What better way to win over a new audience than with candy?

We know that all Halloween candy is not created equal. This year, I’ve decided that I’ll let you keep the good stuff for yourself. For your reading pleasure, today I’ll be ranking the worst of the worst Halloween candy. Reese’s Cups, Sour Patch Kids, and Nestle Crunch need not apply—prepare yourself for a catastrophe of confectionery.

A brief history of Halloween and candy

While the word itself is Christian in origin and dates back to the 18th century, today’s Halloween customs are thought to have been influenced by Celtic and pagan festivities. Many historians trace the origins of Halloween to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, which was, in effect, the Celtic new year.

The festival coincided with the middle of the dark half of the year between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. The Celts believed that, during this time of year, the world of the gods became closer with the world of the living. As you are undoubtedly aware, any time the gods start getting involved, what follows is supernatural phenomena all over the place. Concordantly, Samhain was wild. To appease deities during this time, sacrifices of crops and animals were burned in bonfires. (I wish you all the best of luck in your attempts to appease the gods in your cul-de-sac this year.)

During Samhain, animal costumes were donned to potentially ward off malevolent, otherworldly beings. On the lighter side, small tricks and pranks played during the festival were blamed on minor spirits instead of hormonal teenagers. Meanwhile, the Christian traditions of guising, souling, and mumming—invariably going door-to-door in costume and exchanging small scenes or plays for food, drink, or prayer—were customary throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. When Christianity arrived in Celtic lands in the ninth century, pagan festivals such as Samhain were reframed in this new context.

Anyway—who are we kidding? All of the spooky, scary kerfuffle is an obvious front. Let’s get down to brass tacks and talk about what we’re here to talk about: candy. The National Retail Federation projects that America will spend just north of $8 billion in 2020 alone on Halloween candy. The average Halloween candy haul is between 3,500 and 7,000 calories, which takes about two days’ worth of solid exercise to work off.

If you’re going to damage your health that much, you should at least enjoy yourself while you do it by avoiding the low-quality stuff. Our first edition of Power Rankings is here to help. Without any further ado, let’s start the show, shall we?

➎ Pixy Stix

Menlo Smith’s Lik-M-Aid would also join forces with the Lik-A-Stix, Voltron-style, to eventually become Fun Dip. This is a name with which they would have saved a great deal of time and marketing spend the first time around.
The original concept for Pixy Stix was the brainchild of Menlo Smith. In 1952, Smith noticed that children enjoyed eating his father’s Fruzola powdered drink mix straight out of the container, much in the same way that I myself enjoy eating brown sugar straight out of the container. Smith modified the Fruzola formula and incomprehensibly dubbed his new creation Lik-M-Aid. The product took off in a United States that was finally free of wartime sugar rations. Over time, Lik-M-Aid became known as Pixy Stix. Ownership of the brand changed hands on a few occasions and was most recently sold to Ferrero Rocher by Nestle for the paltry sum of $2.8 billion.

Let’s start with the good. Pixy Stix are undeniably delicious. They land solidly in a tried-and-true flavor category: sweet and sour. Powder-based candies are rare enough that they have a decent novelty quotient when you finally find one in your Halloween candy pillowcase. They have a catchy name and big-time corporate backing. Where, then, did Pixy Stix go so terribly, terribly wrong?

The problem with Pixy Stix is that Pixy Stix do everything in their power to make it impossible to consume Pixy Stix. Why, after two millennia, do we as a society persevere on the foolish errand of using the thinnest cylinder of paper possible that reseals itself the second it comes into contact with the moisture on your tongue? Few things in life are more frustrating than being agonizingly close to craving your sweet tooth but being unable to do so because of your own bodily functions.

Concerned about the long-term health effects this Pixy Stix-snorting episode from my childhood may have had, I Googled “Is snorting Pixy Stix powder dangerous” and came up with this gem. I weep for the future.
While we’re on the subject, a package of sugared drink powder—one that looks astonishingly similar to various illegal Schedule I drugs—that matches the exact shape and dimensions of the inside of your nose is downright dangerous. It’s like they want it to go up people’s noses. Have you ever snorted Pixy Stix powder? I have, and the same powder still comes out of my ears sometimes during strenuous activity two decades later.

For the record, I didn’t snort the Pixy Stix powder on purpose. At the time, I was contorting my neck and limbs in exactly the right angles in an attempt to obey the basic laws of physics required to coax the Pixy out of its Stix and into my mouth. Instead of a receiving a satisfying dash of powder on my tongue, I was violently assaulted via my nasal passages. There’s no reason for things to be this way!

And —_and!_— even if you manage to utilize flawless Pixy-Sticking technique, there’s still all of the physics involved in making sure you don’t end up with a powder-coated uvula in the back of your throat. Pour too fast and the entire contents of your Pixy Stix will completely miss your taste buds. At that point, you may as well be eating sawdust.

➍ Candy Corn

The original name for candy corn, “Chicken Feed,” just managed to beat out “Dog Kibble,” “Traffic Cones,” and “Tiny Striped Birthday Hats.”
If you’re looking for someone to blame for candy corn, blame George Renninger, an employee at the Wunderlee Candy Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company began churning out candy corn in 1888 under its original name: Chicken Feed.

Attention, United States: stop worrying about breaking up Google and address the blatant candy corn monopoly we have in our midst! And how!
Today, Ferrara is the largest producer of candy corn under the Brach’s brand name—they produce over seven billion pieces of candy corn per year and capture 85% of the candy corn market.

Candy corn is a shoo-in for this list because it sows the seeds of enmity and discord. 49% of Americans will attest on record to their enjoyment of the stuff—a statistic from which we can only conclude that 49% of Americans are pathologically dishonest. Candy corn teaches us a hard-earned lesson: love thy neighbor, but don’t trust thy neighbor. They’re probably stealing from your mailbox.

We can’t even agree on how to eat candy corn properly, for Chrissakes.

Still, candy corn does have some redeeming qualities, which is why it doesn’t Rank higher than fourth despite its polarizing nature. For instance, an unopened package of candy corn will last about nine months before spoiling. Based on personal experience, though, we can safely push this estimate out another sixty-eight years. Of all the entries on this list, candy corn is your best bet in the event of a zombie apocalypse, so at least it has that going for it.

Candy corn has some degree of discernible sugar-butterscotch flavor. It’s not bad. There’s just nothing interesting or spectacular about it. Candy corn is the embodiment of Brad Pitt’s advice to Matt Damon on being a con man in Ocean’s 11: “He’s got to like you, and then forget about you the moment you’ve left his sight.”

Candy corn also has the sheer audacity to have its own national day—on October 30. What a sham.

➌ Swedish Fish

Swedish Fish are objectively awful. Nothing more needs to be said here.

➋ Necco Wafers

You attended grade school, right? Remember chalk? Remember that one kid in class, that one time, who thought it might be a good idea to discover the taste of chalk?

What the Oliver Chase biography fails to mention is that this first Necco wafer was forged in the land of Mordor and used to subjugate Men, Elves, and Dwarves for the better part of an Age.
That young man grew up to be Oliver Chase. In 1847, Chase invented a lozenge-cutting machine that he used to produce the first Necco wafer. (5) During the Civil War, Neccos were known to Union soldiers as hub wafers, undoubtedly due to their taste resembling that of the hubcaps on their horse-drawn artillery. In 1901, Chase’s company became the New England Confectionary Company after a three-way merger.

In 2009, Necco grew tired of wannabe Internet newsletter authors criticizing the dry, unappetizing fruits of their labor. The company decided to change their formula and removed artificial flavorings and colorings from their wafers.

While they unfortunately missed the cut for the Food Pyramid, Necco wafers remain a staple on the Ziggurat of Questionable Life Choices.
This was allegedly done in a bid to win the business of mothers concerned about the diets of their children. Most mothers I know aren’t in the business of slowly winnowing away their children’s health and happiness by force-feeding them Necco wafers in the first place, so this was a bad strategy. Necco wafers are not part of the Food Pyramid.

It was during this time that Necco also discontinued the lime-flavored Necco wafer, which is a sure-as-shit way to get on my bad side. If you’re in the culinary business, two pieces of advice: first, never change your French fry recipe. Second, there is no such thing as too much lime.
The ownership stake in Necco changed hands several times before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018. Round Hill Investments purchased the company for $17M before abruptly ending operations at Necco two months later due to— gulp —“sanitation issues.” I think the Health Department must have noticed that someone was leaving Necco wafers all over the place.

The Necco brand was then sold off to the Spangler Candy Company of Bryan, Ohio. Shortly thereafter, Spangler announced plans to bring the Necco wafer back to market—and in 2020, they succeeded. This explains everything one needs to know about the year 2020.

Necco wafers also Rank highly here because they’re not Halloween candy at all. Necco wafers belong in one place: as shingles on the roofs of gingerbread houses at Christmastime. Nobody wants to eat shingles, Necco or otherwise. Necco wafers should be nowhere near Halloween, and if your mail-stealing neighbors are giving them out to trick-or-treaters, you should probably throw in the towel and consider moving. Mortgage rates are at historic lows.

➊ Smarties

Smarties are perhaps the most vile scheme ever concocted by Satan himself, and I will prove it.

But, first: the backstory. The Smarties Candy Company was founded as Ce De Candy in Bloomfield, New Jersey in 1949. The founder, Edward Dee, was a British expatriate who had the bright idea to manufacture candy with a repurposed pellet-making machine. Dee was educated at Cambridge and named his product Smarties to encourage people to get an education of their own.

Yes, that Mr. T.
Now, everything about this sounds delightful—and it rhymes! Eddie Dee of the Ce De Candy Company. The assonance makes that title roll right off the tongue. What’s more, in 1991—and this is absolutely true—Smarties teamed up with Mr. T to promote children’s literacy and an anti-drug agenda. (8)

If something is too good to be true, it usually is. Like everything else about Smarties, all of this was a deliberate ruse in order to stir up feelings of positive sentiment toward the company.

Let the record reflect that in addition to Edward Dee, Oliver Chase was also, in fact, British. This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
Similar to a CIA operative, Smarties are masters of disguise. For example: American Smarties are often mistaken for their British counterparts of the same name, which are chocolate-based and manufactured by Nestlé. The fact that all of these Smarties-adjacent products originate from Great Britain is highly suspicious and makes me question who actually won the Revolutionary War after all. (9)

The cardinal sin of Smarties, however, is that Smarties are relentlessly putting on an elaborate masquerade in the place of mini Sweet Tarts.

All Sweet Tarts are spectacular. In their miniature form factor, though, Sweet Tarts turn on the jets and become second only to Sour Patch Kids as an efficient delivery vehicle for sour flavor. Without question, they are a first-ballot Candy Hall-of-Famer. Therefore, I want to be as clear as I can be when I say the following:

Smarties are not mini Sweet Tarts. (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tdX2!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8d552fe2-818b-4d93-a6b1-0af75949afa9_1600x570.png)

Smarties aren’t even in the same galaxy as mini Sweet Tarts. Each year, October 31st causes me to question the very nature of reality itself, all because of Smarties. They lure you in with false promises of a finely-balanced pas de deux of sweet and sour flavor before ruthlessly stamping out your excitement when you finally gaze upon the label. God forbid you unwrap a package of Smarties and put one in your mouth before you realize the truth. It is a truly terrible fate.

Smarties are a master class in lies, half-truths, and deception. Everything about the history of this company and the product they so cruelly produce is clearly intended to mislead and confuse. Everyone has a costume on Halloween, and Smarties have the most deceptive one of all. It’s for that reason that they rank Number One in this inaugural edition of Power Rankings. Thanks for joining us.

It is herein written that society can collectively consider the Worst Halloween Candy to be officially Ranked.