Candy-corn ‘franken-weenie’ a monstrous creation

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This article was published 25/10/2021 (1704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What with there being only six sleeps left until Halloween, I strongly suggest you drop everything — unless it’s a baby or a hot cup of coffee — and head to the store to stock up on candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters, assuming you get any this year.

As soon as I finish writing these words, I personally will be driving to the grocery store to purchase several hundred miniature chocolate bars, despite the fact that last year, the first Halloween of the coronavirus pandemic, we didn’t have a single ghost or goblin or pint-sized Donald Trump darkening our doorway and demanding sugary goodness.

The rule in our house — one that I made up and strictly enforce — is that any leftover Halloween candy can be consumed by the resident newspaper columnist without being forced to endure unwarranted abuse or taunting from any member of his family, including the dogs.

I’m hoping this year we will get some physically distanced kids so my wife will once again experience the joy of doling out treats with kitchen tongs, or possibly a hockey stick, as recommended last Halloween by Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief pubic health officer.

Assuming we do have a few hundred leftover mini candy bars, my wife will stash them in the kitchen pantry, and I will try to ignore their siren song as I sit a few metres away at the home computer attempting to bang out another entertaining and educational column.

“Eat us, Doug!” the tiny chocolate bars will sing like a sugar-fuelled choir. “We may be small, but we are delicious. And we don’t have any calories, because that is the magic of Halloween!”

So, yes, I may gobble down a handful or two of these chocolatey little devils, but, on the other hand, I will not be eating any of what I believe to be the worst Halloween treat in history.

For the record, I am referring here to candy corn, those fluorescent yellow-and-orange candies that are shaped like oversized kernels of corn and contain enough sugar to cause an entire kindergarten class to ricochet off their classroom walls like pint-sized cannonballs for an entire week.

Even I, an oversized newspaper columnist with a legendary sweet tooth, am able to resist the allure of candy corn, which has been declared the worst Halloween treat of them all by a number of candy-related websites.

The website candystore.com surveyed about 20,000 customers and discovered that candy corn had more haters than any other treat typically handed out on All Hallow’s Eve.

“Candy corn slid up into the No. 1 spot two years ago when it knocked circus peanuts off the throne. Which is really saying something. Man. Hang in there, candy corn. Lot of haters out there,” candystore.com’s Ben George wrote last month.

Out of journalistic fairness, I will point out George admitted he is a big fan of these classic candies. “Look, if you don’t like candy corn, you can just give it to me. Yes, it’s pretty much just sugar. Isn’t that the point? Candy corn is nothing special. There are absolutely better candies out there. But if you can’t enjoy stuffing handfuls of candy corn into your pie hole, well, I don’t even know what to tell you. But clearly, I’m in the minority,” he wrote.

The top-rated treat? That was (no surprise) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups — “Still No. 1 (Always will be?)” — in what the candy man called “the perennial blowout of the century.”

Before you ask, the answer is, yes, I will be buying enough peanut butter cups to sink a battleship, but that’s not the point. The point is I have just stumbled on a way that you, the discriminating candy consumer, can enjoy candy corn without causing your gastrointestinal system to go into reverse thruster mode.

According to CNN, which almost never lies when it comes to candy-related news, a new Halloween-themed sausage from a Wisconsin meat market is getting a lot of attention this year.

That’s because the so-called “spook-toberfest brat” has just three ingredients: pork, beer and (wait for it) candy corn. Seriously, these bratwursts sell for US$4.99 a pound at the Jenifer Street Market in Madison, Wis., and are stuffed with ground pork and (Gasp!) candy corn.

“Somebody said this should be a felony offence. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong though,” Justin Strassman, creator of the candy corn brat, told CNN. The candy corn sausage is, by all accounts, more popular than the one they made by adding root beer to the mix.

Local TV anchor Tim Elliott was a big fan of what he called a “franken-weenie.” Gushed Elliott: “I mean, it was good. It was salty and sweet. The candy corn actually melt when they heat it up, so it kind of disperses the sweetness throughout. I ate the whole brat, the whole thing. I wanted another one.”

Even I have to admit it sounds tastier than some of the other food items I’ve written columns about this year, including Pumpkin-Spice Spam, Pink Candy Kraft Dinner, and Fruit Loops pizza.

So I may just give it a try this year, although I will be careful not to eat too much … because I don’t want to get a case of that terrible Halloween illness known as “Gummy Worms.”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca