As I watched horror movies, getting up to hand out candy to munchkins on Halloween this year I was inspired to come up with some tricky treats to torment trick-or-treaters. Of course I had a ground rule for myself: they had to be fodder for a fun adventure.
Super Sticky Bubble Gum: This colorful treat comes in the form of large bright spheres of gum wrapped up in crinkled cellophane. When used to blow bubbles, they are satisfyingly large and pop with a loud snap. But they are also incredibly sticky, so blowing bubbles results in gum stuck all over your face. Trying to remove it with your hands simply results in gum stuck to them too, stretching in gooey ropes from fingers to face. With some patience and solvent it can be removed, but simple struggling will create a bigger and bigger mess until you’re gummed up beyond all hope in a giant wad of gum. That’s when footsteps can be heard nearby, and a costumed figure dripping with powered sugar arrives to cut you free from the floor, walls, and furniture, dust the gum wad with sugar, and roll you off to his lair. Hopefully you can free yourself and escape, or someone will follow the trail of powered sugar and rescue you…
Spider Egg Cotton Candy: This ghoulishly fun treat is a cotton candy husk wrapped around a core of candy “spider eggs” and a few gummy spiders. What a fun treat! Fun at least until the eggs hatch in your stomach while you sleep, crawl out of your mouth and swarm through your house, covering everything in sticky cotton candy spider webs and cocooning everyone they encounter. The spiders quickly grow to hand sized monsters or even larger, and a single treat can cover a whole house. Larger infestations might cover an entire neighborhood, led by a spider queen of massive size. Someone call the exterminators!
Candy Maize: This is by far the worst treat on our list. It looks like normal candy corn and when you put it in your mouth you quickly discover its horrible secret: It tastes like normal candy corn too! (unless you like the taste of candy corn, in which case I guess it tastes like something even more disgusting, if there is such a thing.) When you discard it, a candy corn maze springs up around it with you at the center. Though glimpses and elements of the real world can be seen, dimensions and paths are twisted and changed, and only the rustling of the corn haunts the silence. As you try to find your way out of the maze, you are stalked by a scarecrow-like being. Pushing through the walls will summon the coblins, tiny corn cob critters with nasty bites. Solving the maze will return you to a spot near where you were when the maze appeared. Good luck.
These sound like they’d be great in a game of No Thank You Evil or for a sleuth style urban adventure. Ferreting out who is giving out the magical candy.
Yech!
Some ideas:
Bite sized Mars Bars that turn out to be nuggets of red rock rich in hypochlorates (powdered bleach). Where did the kids get them? Why at the house in which “Baaak bak bak” sounds can be heard in various voices.
Butterfinger treats that cause the eater to become hamfisted for the next hour or so. Anything handled either breaks or gets dropped (and then breaks).
Red hot Red Hots. That nice man who has a problem with flies drops them in your grab-bag, all your candy ends up getting melted into one unspeakably vile meteor as you continue your trick-or-treating. He will apologise if you go back and complain, and offer to buy back your … candy … for a fair price.
Pop Rocks. Pop them in your mouth, your head disappears in a massive explosion. Demonstrate of a couple of extras first.
English candy. Crunchie bars, Aero bars, Caramello bars. Delicious, very more-ish. Eat and enjoy. Tomorrow you have “British Teeth” (per The Simpsons).
One of these things can actually kill me if I have it in reach in large enough amounts, since I can’t not eat it if it is there. My body stores the fat in my blood, clogging the capillaries in my pancreas. Even better: The main reason doctors see the condition is Alcoholism. Alcoholics lie about their drinking, so not only am I in (self-inflicted) agony, doctors usually don’t believe why. Cool genetic joke by the universe, eh?
Gobstoppers. Nuff said.