When the trick is the treat

Remember returning home from trick or treating, dumping out your haul and just as you’re getting ready to dig in and enjoy one of your hard-earned treats, your parents interrupt with, “let me check your candy to make sure it’s safe”?

Everyone has had their Halloween candy checked over by their parents, but in actuality — according to myth-busting website Snopes.com — there has never been a single recorded case of candy being purposely poisoned, other than in 1974 by a father who murdered his own son by poisoning his Halloween candy in Houston, Texas.

Poisoned Halloween candy is more of an urban legend that parents use to instil a bit of fear in their children and give the opportunity to swipe their own favourite treat.

Snopes.com states: “To qualify as a Halloween poisoning, poisoned candy must be handed out on a random basis to children as part of the trick-or-treating ritual inherent to Halloween. The act cannot be targeted to any one specific child.”

Nonetheless, candy stashes everywhere will continue to be scanned to ensure it hasn’t been tampered with, but what should parents be really looking for? Razorblades and dirty needles? Rat poison?

How about some of those less fun “treats” people give out each year? I’m sure most kids would be happy to see those vanish from the mountains of sugary loot.

Here are the top three things kids would rather not see in their Halloween candy collection:

1. Toothbrushes, dental floss and anything else of the sort. It’s Halloween, not a trip to the dentist. That will come soon enough.

2. Pencils, erasers or pens. It’s not back to school time.

3. Pennies. You don’t want them, and neither do the kids.

(Honourable mention: Sun Maid raisins.)

So if you are checking over candy this year to make sure it’s safe, why not sort out some of these lame Halloween treats, and hold off on the temptation to swipe that mini Mars bar.

Photos: James Wilt