Can you believe it? Halloween is only a few days away! The stage is finally set for the biggest night for witches, black cats and drunk adults lumbering around in the darkness, concealed inside ill-fitting costumes. It doesn’t matter if you’re young, young at heart, or a complete and total hot mess living in your parent’s basement. Halloween is the greatest of all the holidays, and does not discriminate.
If you are not trick-or-treating yourself with your little ones, hopefully you have decorated your house and driveway to the extreme and are counting down the minutes until you can legally scare the shit out of some little kids. I especially love the folks that put that extra bit of effort into helping materialize the Halloween spirit by turning the ends of their driveways into adorable little murder scenes and cuddly little virus outbreak containment units.
But enough of me talking about how great I think Halloween is. What really defines both your Halloween spirit and what kind of human you are is determined by the type of candy you hand out to the waves of ghosts, goblins and Kardashians that will be undoubtedly be ringing your doorbell on October 31. These days you have two choices. You can chose to be normal person and hand out the common kinds of candy like Snickers, Nestle’s Crunches or Kit Kats….
…or you can be an absolute bag of dicks and hand out terrible stuff like….
Cow Tails
Cow tails are bizarre little flour-coated dust rolls of dry taffy with an equally dusty/chalky/unappealing vanilla center. I doubt that anyone has ever desired a candy that actually embodies the flavor of the desert, but it turns out Cow Tails really nailed down that shit. You can always spot the kid who has accidentally ingested a Cow Tail by the giant scowl that crosses their face after the first few initial chews, followed by their eyes quickly darting around, seeking out the nearest trash can to spit it out in. Any kind of candy that is manufactured by a company named “Goatse” cannot be good.
WHO WOULD WANT THESE?
The largest demographic for Cow Tail consumption is recently released prisoners who forgot what candy is supposed to taste like, and have permanent nerve damage from years of drinking jailhouse wine. The bar for this candy is set extremely low for sales when your sales pitch is “Cow Tails: I Shaved My Balls For This?”
Smarties
Smarties are another in the long line of candies that previous generations only liked because there wasn’t a whole lot of choice during The Great Depression. I’m guessing that paying a single penny for a roll of multiple “candies” in the same package made it feel that FDR’s New Deal was going to work for America. Smarties come in several different flavors: chalk, pink chalk, yellowish chalk, and many more daring flavors.
WHO WOULD ACTUALLY WANT THESE?
These chalky little pills of pure poison are likely able to sustain their shape and flavor over the course of a long nuclear fallout, so well-meaning doomsday preppers are keeping the tasteless tubes on shelves for decades longer than they deserve. Also, Smarties never actually go bad so any senior citizens that might not remember to go Halloween shopping will always have something on hand to offer all the unfortunate children that live in their neighborhood.
Lemonhead
Ah, who can deny that Lemonhead is the only candy that gives the bitter taste of a lemon without any of the sweet refreshment from adding sugar? A quick look at the packaging confirms what the true issue is with this sourball of hate…these little Pledge-flavored testicles are manufactured by the Ferrara Pan candy company. If you’ve ever eaten candy made by this company as a child, make sure you put that on your resume or college application essay…because you know that THE STRUGGLE is real. Even though they were eventually bought by Nestle, it still feels like Ferrara Pan is an umbrella company is only around to skim profits off of children’s tears.
WHO WOULD LIKE THIS?
It’s like this candy was made specifically for people that hate themselves. True story: I actually keep Lemonhead(s) in a big plastic fishbowl on my desk at work to keep me motivated and constantly in a state of bitterness to get my tasks done. Pro Tip: keep a bag of the bigger, individually wrapped ones around for Halloween this year for especially problematic trick-or-treaters. Maybe you will get a large group of 16 year old douchebags all dressed as “Too Much Mascara” trying to score some free candy. Give them a handful of this lemony life lesson and watch the problem fix itself right before your very eyes.
Necco Wafers
The oldest candy on this list by at least seventy decades, Necco wafers were formulated in the Civil War solely to be used for plugging up bullet holes in Confederate soldiers. It wasn’t until years later that these were discovered to have a mild sweetness to them and could instead be one of the saddest confectioneries to ever be sold as “candy”. During their actual use in battle, Necco wafers managed to save a grand total of 0 Confederate soldiers, which is the only positive thing that Necco Wafers have ever contributed to society.
WHO WOULD LIKE THESE?
There are a few holdouts that prize the taste and dusty flavor of Necco wafers, but every single one of them died fifty years ago. You aren’t gonna be able to hand these out even in an ironic way this year. The factory that has manufactured these for the last 150 years finally decided to close up shop and began manufacturing profitable clown makeup instead.
Ten Pennies Taped Together
Who fucking still does this in this day and age? Ten cents won’t even get you one of those tiny gumballs out of a grocery store machine anymore. Fuckers that hand these out need to get with the times and offer trick or treaters an e-currency option, and have kids wave a debit card in front of the reader and get credited ten cents to their checking (or Google Play) account. Put that fucking scotch tape down and join the rest of us in the Information Age, people!
Who Would Ever Want This?
Insane people, librarians, that weird dude down the street that got his dick stuck in a CoinStar machine.
Strawberry Bon Bons
You probably didn’t know this candy by its name, but you sure as shit will recognize it from the packaging. While we’re all familiar with it, this isn’t a candy that’s actually “made” in the traditional sense. There’s no factory that produces them, and no store that actually sells them. In our physical mortal plane, they don’t exist in a manner that we could possibly ever hope to understand. Strawberry Bon Bons just kinda…materialize wherever they want to. While I personally think they taste bad, I don’t feel bad about it because it’s not like they were created for human consumption in the first place.
WHO WOULD ACTUALLY WANT THESE?
If the 8th dimensional liquid syrup beasts from a neighboring galaxy that produce these bon-bons accidentally happen to teleport a bag or two of these into your panty, take it as a dimensional compliment. Strawberry Syrup candies are probably their greatest gift, and it would probably be best that you just hold on to them, and never give them out on Halloween to honor the sacrifices of the liquid syrup beasts from other worlds.
Chick Tracts
Chick Tracts are clever-looking little comics that have been shrunk down in size to look like they might be a sweet prize (like the ones that were packed with all those Masters of the Universe figures), but instead of being something cool, they hide something far more sinister. These are tiny comics that have clearly been drawn by an insane cartoonist who has spent his entire life looking down on everyone he has ever come across. These shitty comics are intended to create fear of going to hell for kiddies of all ages for the crime of participating in eternal damnation-worthy activities such as Halloween or (gasp!) Dungeons and Dragons.
WHO WOULD ACTUALLY WANT THESE?
Nobody. The moment that these shitty comics are printed onto paper, the value of the paper instantly gains a value of negative ten dollars. I don’t think too highly of anybody who tries to drum up tax-exempt business for their local church through spreading terror by telling kids they are going to be damned forever for doing normal shit that normal people do. If you happen to get any of these tracts in your bag, throw them right back at the house that gave them to you, but only after you have set them on fire. If these cause their homes catch fire and burn down, you shouldn’t feel too bad about it, because just like hurricanes and tornadoes, that devastation was obviously what Jesus wanted anyways. (The fun proper youth-group church acronym is for this activity is FTAWJWYTSTHOF,R?) (looks like shit on a T-shirt, tho).
All of the candies on this list are all very much the worst of the worst. You can still heroically be the polar opposite of these all these fucknuts by instead offering children…
Reese’s Stuffed with Pieces!!
THIS. This is the candy that’s here to save all of us in 2018. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are already a historically great candy with mass appeal, but now something even better has been blessed upon our society. These beautiful bastards are a Reese’s Cup stuffed with Reese’s Pieces, making this the Baconator of candy in regard to concept. I’m not conflating this like its an engineering miracle, but it’s something so beautifully simple that took us far too long to finally realize the incredible potential held within.
WHO WOULD LIKE THIS?
Everyone. Anyone who enjoys happiness. Anyone who’s been looking at life as their glass “half empty.” Reese’s with Pieces is for the kid who could never find anything to believe in, or for the jaded adult who might be learning to love again. Reese’s with Pieces will help us find world peace, and teach us to live in harmony. The pitch for these should be “Save yourself, save the world. Reese’s with Pieces™”.
Happy Halloween from all of us here at tehben.com! Be sure to bring a flashlight, wear highly visible costumes, and be sure to conceal carry a handgun with you in case you come across people dressed as scary clowns, you mouth-breathing, pants-wetting pussy.
Matt has a Twitter, an entertaining Twitch channel and looks positively dapper in one of those tuxedo T-shirts.
Teh Ben has both a dog and a blog, which was the basis for a hit Disney Channel TV show. To this day, Teh Ben has not gotten a dime from that no-good mouse.
TEHBEN.COM 
I have to disagree on the Reese’s Stuffed With Pieces. That is a modern day version of Shakespeare’s “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet”. A Reese’s cup is already a thing of beauty and majesty.