Halloween Nostalgia: Candy & Costumes

When I was a kid, Halloween was a ‘holiday’ we looked forward to almost as much as Christmas and certainly more than Thanksgiving. Our parents would take us out to as many neighborhoods as we could hit before it got too late - we would collect so much candy poundage, I’m surprised (and fortunate) I don’t have diabetes. Seriously. I remember dividing up my candy haul into separate item stacks. Mini Snickers bars were my favorite, but I also liked Hershey’s chocolate bars, for when I felt like a purist. But I remember scoring a few dozen each of the popular brands. Heck, once in a while, some generous house gave out full size candy bars. Of course there were cheapo’s who gave Dum Dum suckers.

But there was no fear of people in the late 70’s when I was a professional 11 year old trick-or-treater. Seems that in the mid 80’s, going house-to-house trick-or-treating became dangerous. Seriously, how many actual news stories did you read of people randomly poisoning Halloween candy? I read none. But Halloween, as a cottage industry for kids collecting candy, dried up by and large by the second Reagan Administration.

Now, I can count on one hand how many trick-or-treaters come to our house every Halloween. For comparison, Halloween 1983, I was sent back to the grocery store by my mother in order to replenish our candy supply from all the kids who came by. By 2000, I entertained the idea of skipping the candy buying altogether. Not many Halloweens ago, I don’t think one kid rang our doorbell for free candy. Preposterous.

Oh well. But dressing up in costumes is still fun. For 2007, looks like Harry Potter-themed costumes will be all the rage, perhaps costumes from Shrek the Third and Transformers. The Simpsons might be big this Halloween, too, but be a little different, be Krusty the Klown. Star Wars characters are still hot, too. For adult couples, it’s always fun to go as a themed pair. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky have come and gone, of course, but there’s still the popular Pimp and Ho, criminal and cop, Alice and White Rabbit. Some sexy / adult costumes are sometimes just… weird, as evidenced by the construction girl costume and her traffic cone brassiere.