Get candy. Get candy. Get candy. Get candy.

A good time was had by all on Halloween - - the most important being the kid, of course. The good news is that there doesn't seem to be the Local Health Nut anymore; you know, he's the guy who used to give out apples for Halloween. The bad news is that it's pretty much all the same now: the same Hershey's Miniatures, the same Dum-Dums, the same Tootsie-Pops, et cetera. The cool thing about Halloween used to be the amazing variety of candy one would end up with; we seem to have lost our "candy diversity". That's kind of sad, because let's face it, when half the bag is full of Kit-Kats, Tootsie Rolls, Smarties and Dum-Dums, it all looks the same.

There were some interesting things, though. The bag's weight nearly doubled after we hit the two houses that were giving out juice-boxes. I see they still make candy cigarettes these days, but they obviously can't market them as such, so they're just "candy sticks". The sameness of two-dozen rolls of Smarties was broken up by the discovery of "Extreme Sour Smarties", which I discovered unawares when I put three of 'em in my mouth. Yeesh. And the kid's first-ever encounter with a Jawbreaker was pretty entertaining. (She ended up spitting it out after sucking it for about five minutes.) At least she didn't get any Milk Duds.

Oh, and not related to Halloween, but since I'm babbling about candy I might as well gripe about this here: What is Hershey thinking, abandoning the foil-wrapper in a paper sleeve for its chocolate bars? Now they just look the same as every other Mars Bar or Nestle product out there. No distinctiveness. I've therefore decided that whenever I want a chocolate fix, I'm going to go for some of the underappreciated bars out there. I love Butterfingers, but when I want one of those I'll get a Clark bar instead. Skor, instead of Heath. I'll get a 100 Grand bar once in a while. Something I've sought, and not found, for the last two years is a peanut butter cup in a brand I don't recall. Not Reese's, but some small brand that was wonderful because it had no chocolate at all. It was a peanut-butter cup of just peanut butter. Now, Reese's has something out right now called "Inside Out", which has a peanut-butter shell with a chocolate center, but what I'm looking for is the peanut-butter shell all the way through.

And for the love of God, bring back the Dark Chocolate Kit Kats and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups! And do more with White Chocolate, which I love. In fact, I'd be perfectly happy if milk chocolate went away entirely, leaving behind only Dark and White Chocolate.

And here's a site about candy bars. And here's a quiz where you identify candy bars by the cross section. And here's one of many sites where you can get "retro" candy. And here's a hilarious Wil Wheaton post that the writers of Scream probably read. And...and...and....

(This post is what happens when a blogger ingests too much sugar.)