by: -RoG-

...CONTINUED

Freak Street Marshmallow Skull

You thought the gummy brain on the previous page was huge? This Marshmallow Skull from Freak Street is even larger (notice the quarter included to show the scale of this beast), so I guess skull wins the prize for largest candy of the 2010 Halloween season. It's a huge, sugar-coated skull that would put a smile on even the most die hard Dia de los Muertos fans. Speaking of the sugar-coating, those little sugar crystals get everywhere. As soon as you remove the skull from the package, you'll find a thousand sugar crystals all over the place, so I suggest putting down some newspapers before opening up this sucker. That said, the marshmallow is soft 'n fresh, and if you're a big fan of Peeps, then think of this skull as your new god.

(Many thanks to Nova Greensocks for snagging each of these Freak Street monstrosities for me before they sold out!)

out of 5 haunted houses

Caramel Apple Sugar Babies

I don't see regular Sugar Babies candies around much these days, so it was a nice surprise to discover this new Caramel Apple Sugar Babies variety for Halloween. Just like the originals, when you open the box, almost all of them are stuck together, but nobody ever ate Sugar Babies without expecting to get their fingers at least a little bit messy. Each of the caramels have a green apple candy coating, and it creates a really nice blend of flavors that balance each other out. Plus, for anybody who loves pretending they're eating cartoonishly large boogers, these are the next best thing to a Box of Boogers. If you're looking for a new candy that stands outside of the normal variety of flavors this Halloween, I'd definitely recommend trying out Caramel Apple Sugar Babies. They shouldn't be too hard to miss, as they're the ones that come in the blindingly neon green box.

out of 5 Counts (ah-ah-ah!)

Milk Chocolate & Dark Chocolate Covered
Marshmallow Pumpkin Peeps

I'd much rather see Marshmallow Peeps take on some new spooky shapes each year instead of them being covered in milk chocolate or dark chocolate. These aren't bad, but they just don't compare to the Whitman's Candy Corn Marshmallow. They're also really messy for some reason. I hadn't exposed them to the sun or any source of heat, but the backs of the marshmallow pumpkins were slimy as can be. As for which of the two tastes better, that really just boils down to what kind of chocolate you're more a fan of. If you ask me, the best way to handle these is to stick 'em in between some graham crackers, heat 'em over an open flame and enjoy some Peeps-style S'mores.

out of 5 maggots

Horror Mallows

Picked up these Horror Mallows at World Market and instantly fell in love with 'em. The packaging would like you to think that you've just purchased some evil, horrifying ghosts, but nothing could be further from the truth. They look like a gang of ghost rejects, with torn sheets and eyes that seem to look right at you and say, "Why do we exist?" Well, you can look right back in their eyes and inform them that they exist to serve your stomach, because these suckers are as soft and fresh as marshmallows can possibly get. With the expressions on their faces, it's clear that the Horror Mallows lead a tortured existence, so it's your Halloween duty to put them out of their ectoplasmic misery.

out of 5 Mothras

Fun Sweets Cotton Candy

Now this is what I'm talkin' about... classic flavored cotton candy. While I appreciate the Fluffy Stuff Spider Web Cotton Candy from last year, they ruined it by making it sour apple flavor. That's not the case with Fun Sweets Cotton Candy. They understand that there's no need to mess with the flavor of a good thing, so they added in some orange food coloring to make it fit in with the Halloween season and put it in a smiling jack-o-lantern bucket container. I should mention that I just had to force myself to stop eating this stuff since I still have a lot o' candies left to test out. Yeah, keep smiling there, Mister Bucket... I'll be emptying your cotton candy contents soon enough and then we'll see who's smiling.

out of 5 Mummies

Freak Street Creatures In Jars

If there's one set of Halloween candies I instantly fell in love with this year purely based on their aesthetic value, it would have to be the Creatures in Jars from Freak Street. In this hefty pack, you get not one, but TEN jars of gummy creatures in liquid candy, and while you can certainly eat them, I think they're best used for decoration. If you want to set up a mad scientist laboratory for Halloween, having 10 jars of colorful specimens preserved in liquid candy is a damned good place to start. The various fruit flavors of the gummies and liquid candies are all standard fare, and nothing really stands out, but they could certainly be packaged a little tighter. As you can see on the package, several of these things had leaked all over the inside of the box. Still, I'm looking forward to leaving a few of these out for trick-or-treaters this year to see if they'll actually take them or assume they're just decorations.

out of 5 Creatures from the Black Lagoon

Extreme Creations Candy Blood Bag

Wow, this Candy Blood Bag actually contains some seriously delicious... blood. We're talking about just the right amount of sweetness here with no bad aftertaste, which isn't something I've come to expect with most liquid candies. The closest thing I can compare the flavor to would be the Wonka Squeeze Blood (which I sadly haven't been able to find lately, but it is still in production). The Wonka Blood tasted slightly better and had a more paste-like consistency, but this blood bag will still make your taste buds happy. The red cherry liquid blood flows down slowly and comes with a clip for the drip tube, so you don't really have to worry about it suddenly spilling all over the place and can hang it up as a decoration when it's not in use. Guess I'm gonna have to inform Doc Mock that he may want to swap out Miss Diagnosis' blood bag with this one. It's delicious diabetes in a bag!

out of 5 puzzle boxes

Freaky Fingers Lollipops

Now here's a really awesome idea - lollipops that, when finished, become wearable Halloween decorations on your hand. Freaky Fingers come in two flavor varieties - chocolate and strawberry, both of which are fine, but let's be honest here... the real reason anybody is gonna buy these is for the novelty fingers. There are five different collectible fingers: a tentacle, a Frankenstein's monster finger (with bolts in it, no less), a spiders & cobwebs finger, a red finger with beetles and meal worms crawling on it, and my favorite of the bunch, the evil green eye with red tentacles finger. Only problem here is they don't come in adult sizes, and I have huge hands as it is, so it's impossible to get these past my knuckles. Still, if you can't afford a good Freddy Krueger glove, wearing Freaky Fingers is a perfectly acceptable substitute.

out of 5 black widow spiders

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