As Spooky Season nears, the shelves of supermarkets fill up with sweets. Chocolates, lollipops, candy bars, mints, and other varieties of cavity-inducing treats fill shopping carts nationwide. Soon enough, these goodies will make their way into the bags and baskets of trick-or-treaters. Now imagine an excited child after a night of candy collection. He or she reaches into their bag of loot and pulls out a packet of candy corn; dismayed, they toss it into the trash.
It is no secret that candy corn remains one of the most controversial confectioneries of Halloween. But why? Is it the unappealing way it looks more like a traffic cone than a corn kernel? Is it how your fingers imbue their weight in Red 40 before you can even pop it in your mouth? Is it the waxy and hard texture that makes you wonder whether you ate a candle or swallowed your own tooth? I think the answer is more fundamental than that, and to find an answer to our saccharine snag, we must look at what makes a quality candy.
Common favorites such as Milky Way, Twix, Reese’s Cups, and Sour Patch Kids all have one thing in common – a combination of flavors and textures. For instance, Milky Way bars have nougat and caramel encased by a layer of chocolate, while Sour Patch Kids feature a sweet chewy gummy and a pleasant burst of sourness from its citric acid dusting on the outside. What I am getting at is that these candies are involved and complex – unlike candy corn.
Do yourself a favor and grab some Twix from LaCava. Perhaps a York Peppermint Pattie at Academic Services or a peppermint from the Student Employment Office. If none of these suit your liking, simply get five pumps of caramel in a butter pecan swirl at the Student Center’s Dunkin; that drink will give you a sugar high stronger than anything available in the candy aisle will. For all of the ways you can enrage your dentist, why candy corn?
Putting all of this together, there are multiple reasons why candy corn should be off the menu come late October. Put one in your mouth and all you get is sweet, sickeningly so, with nothing else to follow. Without the option of alternate flavors and colors, candy corn is either a hit or a miss with consumers (though in my opinion, definitely a miss). All in all, let’s agree to leave candy corn on the cob and not the bags of trick-or-treaters.
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