Last night, Michele and I got into a heated debate over the merits of candy corn. I proclaimed it one of the lowest forms of candy. Michele didn’t really disagree but defended it by insisting it can be mixed with peanuts and M&Ms to form a distant cousin of trail mix that tastes like a Salted Nut Roll. If you want something that tastes like a Salted Nut Roll, why not just buy a Salted Nut Roll? Candy corn be damned. 

Anyway, this got me thinking about the worst common Halloween giveaways from my youth. People who have ever given away any of the following “treats” on Halloween should be banished to hell forever.

• Candy corn: See above. 
• Pennies: If you’re one of those assholes who cleaned out his change jar every October by giving the neighborhood kids five pennies each, you’re a cheap motherfucker who deserved to have his house plastered with eggs. 
• Fruit: Your good intentions of supporting healthy habits were wasted, hippie. I guarantee none of your tasty apples ever made it home before being discarded. Even though they’re packaged, raisins fall under this category. Nature’s candy, my ass.
• Anything homemade: Handing out something you took the time and effort to prepare may have been a quaint practice in the 1960s, but by the early ’80s even bad parents recognized the harm in letting their kids eat your potentially tainted cookies.
• Peanut Butter Chews: If you think no candy can taste worse than candy corn, put one of these chewy shit nuggets in your mouth. You’ll never want to trick-or-treat again.