Copyright outkick
It’s the Tuesday before Halloween, which means that it’s time for a very special Halloween edition of The Gripe Report! And we’re going to focus this Halloween edition on one specific aspect of Halloween: the candy. I’m not going to lie, I’m a candy guy. The only way for me not to consume it is to simply not buy it. Because if it's in the house, you’d better believe I’m grazing on it until it's gone. Have a gripe? Send it in!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com Maybe it's because I grew up close enough to Hershey, Pennsylvania, that I could smell the chocolate billowing out of the old Hershey's plant from my house when the wind was blowing right. Perhaps I just lack self-control. Whatever the case, I have a lot of opinions on candy, and seeing as Halloween is the Super Bowl of candy, now is as good a time as any to get into it. I want to start with some bad candies because that whole concept fascinates me. Candy has one primary objective: taste good. The fact that some candies fail this simple main objective is shocking to me, and here are a few that are guilty of this cardinal candy sin. Circus Peanuts We're going to come out hot with what is, for my money, the worst candy of all-time. I don’t know when Circus Peanuts came about, but it had to be one of those things that came about during the Great Depression. Maybe peanuts were too expensive, so someone was like, "Hey, I could make peanuts out of s--tty marshmallow," and voila, a garbage candy is born. True story: when I was a kid — probably 13 or 14 — my parents bought a bag of these and made my brother and I try them so we could see for ourselves how bad they are. Do you understand how bad candy has to be for eating one to be a quasi-Jackass stunt? Wax Lips For a good portion of my life, I have been asking people how the hell wax lips ever fell under the candy category, and I have yet to get a satisfactory answer. It makes no sense to me at all. I mean, if you want to chew on a candle, knock yourself out, but we had generations of kids gnawing on wax and then eating it. How has there not been a case where some kid goes on a wax lips binge and winds up in the hospital with a big wad of wax obstructing his (and it would be a young fella who would do this) bowels? It’s beyond me. They don’t even taste good. How could it? It’s wax! At least those little bottles full of weird juice that you bite the tops off of function as a vessel for the treat, and aren’t the treat itself. Peeps I'm not going to waste much time on these. We all hate these things, right? Red Vines I’m a licorice guy. Black, red, other non-traditional licorices, I’m all about it. I like the licorice they have at Trader Joe’s (the strawberry and black are great, but the trio of twists with mango, green apple, and raspberry is one of our nation’s great candies), but I’m also a Twizzlers guy. But Red Vines? Straight trash. Now, I have heard that this is potentially a geographic thing, and maybe my Hershey homerism is coming out, but I remember one time I went to a movie and all they had were Red Vines. I don’t know any better and bought them, and I was so disappointed. What they lack in flavor, they make up for in waxiness. Something tells me the Venn diagram of people who like Red Vines and wax lips overlaps quite a bit. Twizzlers, on the other hand, I could probably eat a whole bag of. Preferably strawberry, but those cherry pull-apart ones are good too. Jelly Bellies In Flavors That Are Ridiculous For The Sake Of Ridiculousness I love a good jellybean, and Jelly Belly has some of those… but they also have a lot that are more useful winging at the back of nerds’ heads in algebra class. I like pretty standard flavors, but Jelly Belly likes to go way too far. I mean, maybe it’s me, but they lose me at anything beyond and including buttered popcorn. So, you can probably guess that I’m not a fan of those Harry Potter jelly beans in all the gross flavors like vomit, grass, and cow fart (I think I made that last one up… I hope I did). I get the gimmick, but this breaks my first rule of candy: tasting good. Why would you want a jelly bean that tastes like boogers? It’s been like 25 years of this, and I’m still trying to understand. Also, how did they develop jelly beans that taste like dirt or boogers? They had to know what they were shooting for, so did they… do research? Elite Candy Now that we've talked about the crap, my Halloween gift to you is a rundown of what is, without question, the best and brightest the candy world has to offer. In no particular order: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup - For my money, this is the greatest Trick-Or-Treat candy. It’s just perfect. The only thing that bugs me about them is all the people who mispronounce it because they can’t read. It’s not "Ree-sees," it’s "Rees-is." There’s an apostrophe, so they’re peanut butter cups from someone with the last name Reese. This isn’t hard. Mike & Ike - I'm not sure what Mike and Ike's relationship is. Are they brothers? Business partners. Life partners? I don't care; all I know is they bring it. Mike & Ikes bring it. I'm all about the original flavors, but some of the other varieties are solid too. Pro tip: if you see Mike & Ike jelly beans next Easter, buy them. Take 5 - I remember when the Take 5 debuted many years ago, and while it's far from the new kid on the candy block, it is still somehow underrated. Chocolate, peanut butter, pretzel, peanuts, caramel. Are you not entertained?! At some point, it joined the Reese’s stable, and what a welcome addition that was. Cups, Pieces, the criminally overlooked Fast Break, and now Take 5? That’s a peanut-buttery murderer’s row. Peanut M&M’s - The last time I was on a flight, I bought a bag of these (For like $4; budget airline, that’s how it goes) and man, did those things hit the spot. The peanut butter ones are great too, and I used to prefer those, but I think as my palette has matured, I prefer the peanut. Wouldn’t turn down either, though. I would turn down the brownie or birthday cake ones. We don’t need to stuff desserts into candies. Bottle Caps - One of my all-time favorites. I went through a period of time where I had like a dozen boxes of these in my pantry, and that was the only candy in the house at the time. They're a classic candy with some unique flavors. Just fantastic, in my opinion. Lemonheads - Lemonheads are a little on the old-timey side, but there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re dynamite. You get some intense lemon flavor, and then they mellow out all nice like. It takes you on a flavor journey, man. They come in other flavors, too, but don’t waste your time on those. Stick with the tried and true lemon classic. Warheads - Clearly, I like a sour candy. In the ‘90s, candy got weirdly aggressive. Every commercial had kids' heads blowing up after taking a bite, which is a weird way to sell candy, but apparently it worked. Warheads went this route. The brand is into all kinds of nonsense, where they have like sour gels and liquids and suppositories or whatever. Those stink. But the original ones that come in those individual wrappers are phenomenal if you can handle a little sourness. … Well, that's it for another edition of The Gripe Report! I hope you have a great Halloween, no matter how you choose to celebrate it — or not — and we'll reconvene back here in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, be sure to send in those gripes!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com
