Candy Corn M&Ms

A bit late to the game, O'Leary?

Actually, I tried Candy Corn M&Ms last year (meh) and thus was lazy about giving them a second go this Halloween.  In 2012, I liked the vibrant colors but overall considered these candies swollen and sickeningly sweet.  And this year?

Not so much different.  With their very light candy corn flavor, these M&Ms make me simultaneously crave real candy corn and miss real (meaning, NOT WHITE) chocolate.

My prediction is that this year may be the last for candy corn M&Ms because their novelty can't trump their lackluster taste forever.

Reese's Pumpkin

An oldie but goodie seasonal sweet I hope never goes away, the Reese's Pumpkin is larger than your standard Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, and, from my observations, employs richer peanut butter cream.

This to not to say, however, that you should restrict yourself to just one. Pumpkins are most fun in pairs, I think, so why not honor the consumption tradition of the peanut butter cup and eat two at once? Reese's, btw, should offer two in a package to facilitate this practice. Hope they get on that.

Cadbury Screme Eggs

I feel like at some point Cadbury got tired of dominating Easter and set its sights on Halloween.  And while the presence of Hershey and Mars will probably prevent them from ever dominating this holiday, I do give Cadbury props for successfully parlaying its most iconic Easter treat, the creme egg, into a Halloween confection.  How?

Simply by changing "c" to "s" and yellow to green.  A Cadbury Screme Egg,  as I discovered within moments of my taste test, is identical in taste to a  Cadbury Creme Egg. The only two elements differentiating the two candies is the name and the color of the interior "yolk."

I suppose that Cadbury chose green as their Halloween hue because the shift from yellow to orange would be insufficiently dramatic.  That's fine and good, I guess, but now they've completely foreclosed the possibility of using green for a mint-flavored St. Patrick's Day version of the Creme Egg.

Sigh.

Autumnal Peanut Butter M&M's

Ever since the disastrous introduction of the blue M&M, I have especially welcomed the release of M&M's in fall colors, which, thank God, do not include blue. The dark maroon hue also reminds me of my departed friend, the tan M&M, whose resurrection I pray for daily.  

I picked up a bag of autumnal peanut butter M&Ms at CVS.  For baking purposes, I would have preferred plain milk chocolate, but there were none to be found. Also, I find the package illustration of the coy female M&M sipping a latte endearing:

Actually I have no idea if it's a latte. It could be a hot cocoa. But I don't like to think of a chocolate candy sipping on a chocolate beverage.  It's akin to me drinking my own blood. But perhaps brown lady M&M is a vampire, which is not totally inappropriate, given the Halloween release.

Anyway, buy some and use them to make chocolate chocolate chip peanut butter M&M cookies. 

Snickers Pumpkin

Not to be confused with Peanut Butter Snickers Pumpkin.  Let's be precise, people.  I had moderate expectations for the Snickers Pumpkin based on my experiences with Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins (to be re-reviewed later).  I assumed the themed black wrapper would hold a plain flat nugget of Snickers candy shaped vaguely like a squash. I was wrong.

Yikes, that's a scary grin.  It matches the picture on the wrapper but certainly not the label, for that, my friends, is a jack-o-lantern, not a pumpkin.  Also, Jack's smile is sort of desperate.  Seems like he's trying a bit too hard to jocular and repressing some deep internal melancholia. And speaking of insides:

Things are a bit sticky. And nutty. Crazy delicious, indeed.

Halloween Season

And so it begins.  It's October, my self-imposed moratorium on premature discussion of Halloween foodstuff has been lifted (by, um, me) and now it's time to, as Jerry Seinfeld might say to "Get. Candy."  There is no rhyme and reason to the order in which I will review all the potentially amazing limited edition/seasonal Halloween foods on this blog.  There is a commitment, however, to trying and critiquing as many treats as possible. Stay tuned.