Halloween Candy Survey!
Think back to your trick-or-treating days, and answer these three questions:
1) When going door to door, what was your #1 favorite candy to get?
2) What was the weirdest thing you ever received while trick-or-treating?
3) What frequently-distributed Halloween candy did you just outright hate?
My answers:
My favorite candy was really a tie between individually-wrapped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and those fun-sized Snickers bars, but if pressed, I think I’d have to give it to the cups. Mmmm.
Weirdest thing? Our next door neighbor used to give out loose change (nickels or pennies), but she’d wrap each coin in an almost obscene amount of scotch tape. To this day, I have no idea why she did that. Other neighbors sometimes used tape to string several coins into one manageable unit, but this woman was literally wrapping them individually. It was bizarre.
And as for a common candy that I just plain hated, duh, Mary Janes. If you want a harder answer, I’ll admit that I’ve never liked black Twizzlers, and still can’t eat them to this day. (Seriously, I’ve been on this planet for decades, and I’ve still never eaten one whole black Twizzler.)
Your turn!
PS: If you missed it on the main site, there’s a new episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast! (And we’re also selling a special bonus episode, because we like money.)
Attack of the Giant Leeches.
It’s a holiday weekend and I’m not expecting much action here tonight, so let’s keep it simple and just watch some dumb movie.
Here’s Attack of the Giant Leeches, from 1959. The title says it all, I think.
Public domain horror movies are a tough sell when they’re absent the silhouette of Tom Servo, but I still love ’em in their natural state. I must’ve seen 75+ of them by now, yet I can only remember the particulars from a modest handful. I kinda treat them more as decorations than actual films.
We did that survey about “background noise movies” a short while ago. I can’t believe I forgot to mention all of the public domain horror stuff! They’re perfect to go to sleep to on nights like this. Quiet, creepy, and dim enough to act as nightlights. Try it sometime. (Maybe tonight?)
The Little Things.
Happy Saturday night!
I’m sitting here with my pumpkin candle and a cup of what could only generously be called day-old coffee, blasting spooky tunes in-between rounds of podcast editing.
It’s the little things.
In fact, that’s our survey for tonight!
In the comments, name some of the “little things” that make your Halloween season great.
Midnight walks? Oriental Trading catalogs? Pumpkin Spice Lattes? Everyone has a few!
To me, the little things aren’t so little. Together they become the soul of the season. Halloween is a constant excuse to make something out of nothing, and we should all try to do that as often as we can.
Hell, at this time of year, even a crappy microwave pizza mixed with the right DVD feels like an event:
So let’s hear about your favorite “minor” Halloween traditions. Maybe you’ll inspire other readers to broaden their own horizons! If not, well, at least you have a place to gush about reading those old Fear Street books for the hundredth time.
Garfield’s Halloween Adventure
First, thanks for making the first week of Dino Drac’s 2016 Halloween Countdown a smash success. Well actually I have no idea if it was a smash success. But it felt okay.
And thanks for being a part of Dino Drac’s After Dark’s first week, too! The survey responses have been tremendous. They’re now my favorite things to read on my phone when I’m hiding under blankets in total darkness. Sometimes you manage to spook me.
I’m very excited about next week’s run of goodies, which should/will include a new video, the next podcast and maybe one of those heavy hitter topics that I’m realllllly trying to portion out slowly. Stay tuned. You have to.
Get ready to watch Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, which is suddenly available on YouTube on many different accounts. (Not sure what that’s about. Maybe Jim Davis worked out a profit sharing agreement. Or maybe these uploads aren’t long for the world.)
One thing I’ve learned about Garfield’s Halloween Adventure? It’s a super hard sell for people who didn’t grow up watching it. I can’t deny that nostalgia plays a part. Halloween certainly had more than two animated TV specials, but the two that people my age remember most are Charlie Brown’s and Garfield’s. Nothing else comes close.
It debuted in 1985 and returned annually for years, though admittedly for nowhere near as many years as It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which still gets played today. I was six years old when the special began its run, and would grow to consider no Halloween season complete until I’d heard Garfield sing the “Scaredy Cat” song.
It’s ironic that I get so much mileage out of the Halloween season as an adult, because I definitely didn’t as a kid. Back then, it was like five scattered days of fun, tops. There was the day you got your costume. The day you carved your pumpkin. Mischief Night, if you were old and stupid enough. And finally Halloween itself.
Somewhere in the middle of them was the day (night, actually) that you got to watch Halloween specials on television. Cartoons, in prime time! It was one of the season’s biggest events, and the season didn’t have many of them.
So thanks, Garfield. You gave weight to my Halloween seasons back when I needed the assists. In return, I will never stop watching your silly special. Or telling other people to watch it. Demanding, really.
In the comments, talk about your favorite Halloween specials, Halloween sitcom episodes, and/or Halloween made-for-television movies. Which did you love? Which became parts of your annual traditions? Which do you wish you’d gotten to see more than just once?
