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Published: October 17 2012

Buzz Fleischman - Columnist Page. You just about finish dinner, when Dracula arrives at your door.

Does he want your life giving blood? No, sweets are what he desires. It’s Halloween!

I’ve seen hundreds of pounds of candy prominently displayed on the end of the aisle in the giant drug stores for over a month now, sitting there tempting and taunting me with chocolate caloric excess, child friendly packaging and bite size allure.

The best and the worst part of Halloween is the candy.

Everyone knows that when you go out to buy it for the trick or treaters, you are really buying it for yourself. They get what they want, and you’ve got a convenient excuse to load up on the candy you crave in the ‘snack’ or ‘fun size’ because ‘snack size’ equates to ‘no guilt’. You can eat as many as you want because you rationalize “It’s only a snack”.

The candy makers know you just can’t eat one bite of a regular size candy bar and put it down. I’m sure there are some who can do this, but why? Instant fulfilling satisfaction makes the difference. Fun size means never having to put it down. Of course when you eat too many fun sized bars, that’s when it stops being fun.

A staple of Halloween is the Nestles Assortment.

The chocolate protocol of eating these fun sized treats is very predictable in our household. The dark semi sweet chocolates are eaten first, then the Nestles Crunch, the peanut and then the bastard child of the litter; the regular old milk chocolate. Sometimes those last until March because they’re eaten less often and ultimately take on a swirl of discoloration.  This doesn’t mean they’re bad, it only means that when you’re desperate for chocolate you’ll seek that little space in the fridge where you’ve ‘hidden’ them and truly, no matter how old they are, it’s a treat.

When all was said and done we had bought $48 worth of candy for the trick or treaters (wink wink). I had a crazy thought while we were in the candy aisle, that for a change, we’d buy some beef jerky sticks and pork rinds; then I wouldn’t have to worry about going into sugar shock each time I passed the candy stash on our counter. I dismissed that thought because I’d feel so sorry for the kids and wind up buying twice as much candy next year. The feds call it bracket creep!

Last year we slipped up and bought a 4 pound bag of ‘Smarties’. We still have three pounds. That wasn’t smart, but it was the value bag. $5.99 for 64 ounces or 1810 grams of Smarties. Who knew we’d get sick of them after only a week. We should have taken the cue from the savvy trick or treaters who would dig past the Smarties in that super large Tupperware bowl and go right for the heavy duty chocolate.  That was the clue; also they were made in Canada. Canada? Do they make good candy up there? I looked at the ingredients on the bag and found that they ‘May contain corn syrup solids and/or Maltodextrin.’ What do they mean ‘May contain’? Didn’t they know what they put into it when they made it? Did someone accidentally turn on the ‘Maltodextrin pipe and not tell the factory until later? At least it wasn’t coated with Carnauba wax. You may not know that Carnauba wax is used as a surface finishing agent in chewing gum, confections, frostings and soft candy. Think Wax lips. What troubles me is that it’s also used in auto, Floor and Shoe Polishes. Brings new meaning to the term ‘Candy Apple Red Corvette’