Historically, here in Scotland, it was widely believed that the fruit from hazel trees provided knowledge and wisdom, so a Scottish Halloween tradition was for a couple to throw hazelnuts on the fire – if the nuts burned quietly, the union would be a happy one. However, if they hissed and crackled, a turbulent future lay ahead.
So, if you're worried about your relationship, try burning your nuts. (no giggling at the back).
Circus peanuts--haven't seen them for years. They're the consistency of foam insulation and flavored with artificial banana. According to Wikipedia, main ingredients are sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, pectin, soy protein, food coloring, and artificial flavor. Yum.
Circus peanuts are the most disgusting candy ever. They taste the same as a plastic banana from the Dollar Store smells. They stick to your teeth so you taste them until February. Circus peanuts make candy corn taste like ambrosia--you know, the stuff your grandmother made in 1955. Still better than circus peanuts. The good thing, though, is that since they stick to your teeth, you don't need a flashlight until about the middle of January. Just smile and the flourescent color will light your way.
They did smell like bananas! 60 minutes did a show on artificial smells and how they're created. Don't even ask about eau de toilette but AI'll give you a clue--it comes out of the wrong end of a mink. EAU!!!
And if you want to dump somebody, just soak those hazelnuts in a quart of water (no, not gasoline!) and they crack and hiss all night. After which, you turn to your soon to be ex-sweetheart and say "Sorry honey, but I am Scottish and I am offended" as you head out the door.
It’s not worth it, Dave. If your vandalism app makes any money at all, it will only be a few months before all crime in America is committed through Amazon. We’ll be reading reviews like: “The bank robbery we ordered was executed as requested. However, the take, when delivered, had THE WORST PACKAGING EVER! It exploded when we opened it and covered our entire living room with red paint. One Star.”
I have to quibble with the photo of the Druids in long flowing robes. Even in Neolithic times, they dressed as soccer hooligans. Let’s be historically accurate.
> When I was a youth, TPing was a standard Halloween prank, but I think it’s more difficult for modern youngsters to pull off, because when they’re out trick-or-treating they’re always accompanied by platoons of vigilant parents …
Never forget Bidenflation as an explanation:
>> “Remember when toilet paper and eggs were so cheap we used to throw them at people’s houses? Now in 2025, I’m contemplating a payment plan just to make omelets.”
— Trevor Manuel CIO (Chief Inspiration Officer) at Livelovebe [I think I am not making him up.]
It’s horrible though, Emily. I’ve been there — you wake up the next day with an awful hangover and orange drool all over the pillow, and the taste of plastic coating your mouth. Those “peanuts” were actually spray-painted packing peanuts, I swear. They were terrible.
This was revenge on parents for allowing us to roam the streets at night. We left the Circus Circus peanuts in the bottom of the bag so our frugal Scottish rulers would eat them instead.
My grandma use to keep circus peanuts in a candy dish for "guests to enjoy." After two weeks, they hardened into rocks and were perfect for slingshot action.
Yeah, but then you'd have to paint them to match your drapes. Could get serious if paint interacts chemically with orange banana peanuts and everything melts through the floor. It would be like the scene in Alien.
I can't stand adults in Halloween costumes. When I was a kid, we wanted to grow up and do all the grown-up things like smoking and drinking and having sex, preferably all at the same time. But now grown-ups want to be kids. We have "Pajama Days" here at the middle school where I work, and it's disconcerting enough to see 14-year-olds wandering the halls in their pajamas clutching teddy bears and sucking on pacifiers, but the teachers do it, too! My 3rd grade teacher, Miss Vera, fled the Nazis in order to come to Maryland to teach us not to touch our faces because it spreads disease, and not to say "how come?" when we mean "why?" I cannot for a moment imagine Miss Vera coming to school in footie pajamas. She was a real adult. Grown-ups are becoming children. I blame climate change.
Back in the late 1990s the company I worked for had some people that would dress up in Halloween costumes on Halloween. It was stupid because we weren’t customer facing, it was a call center. It was embarrassing because some of the people felt inadequate with their costumes, etc.. After 2001 the company CEO banned wearing Halloween costumes. Yay!
We must have worked at the same place.... I was cured of that by being the ONLY person who dressed up, in my long black Elvira costume, with the exception of a couple of women wearing their business suits and cat ear headbands. Or men in Hawaiian shirts.
If you are triggered by the sight of adults dressed in childish manners, do not, and I repeat, do NOT go to Disneyland. I have to avert my eyes while waiting in line to ride "Alice in Wonderland " .
Oh, Ash, there are now "adult" pacifiers, especially designed for delicate, fragile, easily triggered Gen-Zers.
When the pajamas, blankets, and teddy bears arrived, we should have been able to see the pacifiers coming.
I'm glad we won those two World Wars in the 20th century, because we could never win another one. Frankly, I think Burkina Faso could take us in a fair fight at this point.
The last time I visited my daughter in the grown-up home she shares with two dogs, before she came home in her grown-up car from her grown-up job, I noticed one of these "adult" pacifiers on her dining room table. She's 29 years old. I didn't ask her where she uses it, because there are some things a mother simply doesn't want to know. %-)
I harken back to ancient times when we had to carry a paper bag to trick or treat, and it would rain, and somebody would give you an apple, which would tear through the wet bag and cause the good stuff to fall out. Sigh.
Yes! The rare halloweens where we were shuffling through dry leaves were vastly out-numbered by the halloweens where we were squishing and skidding on Nature's leafy slip-and-slide, either getting our costumes wet in the rain or totally hiding our costumes under raincoats. It was miserable but I miss those days!
Yeah! I actually seem to remember some "costume shoes" which were just like paper or thin cloth "shoes" or "feet" with no soles; you'd simply drape them over your real shoes, which solved the traction problem. Until the fake things stretched out and you started tripping on them.
I can tell that this is a substantive substack that is backed up by REAL data and not just some made up stuff. Just look at the meticulous citations on the charts and pictures. And this is definitely worthy of a large cash prize for journalism. It couldn't have been easy to convince Michelangelo to reveal his picture of Stonehenge being TP'd!
I was gonna say the same thing! The citations are everything. Not every journalist takes the time to track down his sources the way Dave does for us. It’s beautiful, really. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
The captions/credits were the feature that most grabbed me this posting. What a scope of sources, Al Gore to Michelangelo. And the flavor of the Stonehenge TPing, like bible school models gone wild!
“ Today, of course, Halloween… is at least as much about adults as about children. ”
As father to a six year old, I figured out a way to make Halloween much more enjoyable for all other parents involved — I carry several shareable flasks of whiskey. In some houses, as my child collects candy, I get, in return for a whiskey swig, cool things myself — home roasted peanuts, a stick of beef jerky…and other stuff that I can’t remember because by that point of the night I’m pretty tipsy. Happy Halloween!
Before I bought my condo, at my house I'd have hundreds of trick or treaters. I'd sit drinking martinis out on the porch, offering martinis in go cups to parents. Most refused, but looked very longingly at my glass.
I grew up in Wisconsin, and then later I had kids in Wisconsin, and after the kids were done trick-or-treating all of the adults would go around the neighborhood for “trick or drink”. And we were costumes too. Then we started going to a bar with our costumes on. Most uncomfortable one year when I had a cat costume with an actual tail, sitting in the booth was no fun!
First store sightings of Halloween candy get earlier and earlier every year. I saw Halloween candy out on the shelves in August!
I remember the candy we received lasting less than a couple of days. Usually, the last pieces were those hard as a rock peanut butter things in the black or orange wax paper.
We hated those, but ate them anyway. I mean, it was Halloween candy!
That evolution of skeletons bit almost made me fall off my chair laughing; so true!
When I was a kid, neighbors gave out homemade candy apples. Thinking back, it might have been in collusion with the local dentists, because I must've cracked at least two teeth in the process. Then a few gave out pennies -- which was the biggest disappointment. Today, kids would undoubtedly toss them back in disgust (and then burn down the house). Fortunately, the penny is going away, so that's not likely to happen much anymore.
I grew up in a garden apartment complex. When word got out that someone was handing out full-sized candy bars, the rush to that home was like Taylor Swift was in town.
True story: A neighbor of mine had a Koi fish pond and my friend had a boyfriend from Peru. So he went fishing in that pond and caught and ate one of those expensive fish. I'm not sure if he was ever found out; back in the 1970's Los Angeles. My friend's brother also partook of the cooked Koi and he should have known better.
My father-in-law's cheap, but beloved, gold fish fell victim to the local kingfishers after I left the hose running in their pond for too long and the water cleared.. while it was murky they could hide. I never confessed. 😬
Or, have a big sign, in multiple languages (depending on your location) stating: 'expensive pet fish', please do not catch or eat or steal. Or the new standby - cameras.
I have a pond in my backyard and a fish just showed up one time, probably came in with a plant, but I never fed it and it lived for two years but one time we came back from a trip and it was gone. So I figured the raccoons that terrorize my backyard got it. It was too friendly for its own good.
Sadly, I like licorice, circus peanuts and NECCO wafers. I even know that NECCO stands for New England Confectionery COmpany. But even more sadly, I am now diabetic so cannot indulge in these apparently-to-all-other-life-forms disgusting treats. Oh, and Black licorice. My brother likes it, too. We realized that, since everyone else hated it, we never had to share.
But circus peanuts, necco wafers and black licorice aren't even food - they're styrofoam, chalk and strips of old tires. While these are likely deadly by themselves if ingested, I wonder, would they really affect blood sugar? ;)
I love them too, especially licorice and circus peanuts. Thankfully, I can still enjoy circus peanuts, but real licorice is bad for blood pressure. Nothing about those last 2 sentences is funny. I hope Dave doesn't ban me.
I think the pumpkin spice is what is making the skeletons grow bigger.
The timing fits....
Damn. Way to bring the science!
'Circus peanuts'? Never heard that...but...
Historically, here in Scotland, it was widely believed that the fruit from hazel trees provided knowledge and wisdom, so a Scottish Halloween tradition was for a couple to throw hazelnuts on the fire – if the nuts burned quietly, the union would be a happy one. However, if they hissed and crackled, a turbulent future lay ahead.
So, if you're worried about your relationship, try burning your nuts. (no giggling at the back).
Circus Peanuts aren’t food. They’re stale Marshmallow Peeps from the previous Easter, remolded and spray-painted traffic cone orange. They’re awful.
Genius! Somebody finally figured out how Circus Peanuts are made. Now their grossness makes sense.
Circus peanuts--haven't seen them for years. They're the consistency of foam insulation and flavored with artificial banana. According to Wikipedia, main ingredients are sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, pectin, soy protein, food coloring, and artificial flavor. Yum.
I come here to be amused not to engage in anti-pectin bigotry.
Another good name for a rock band: “anti-pectin bigotry”
Just 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I saw them at Tractor Supply. They are still around.
With a sell by date of May 1952…
Or possibly May 2052…
Yeah, I think that candy now a days has a use by date tied to geological epochs. Better living through chemistry and PFAS.
🤣🤣🤣
At Tractor Supply! LOL! ;-)
Orange tractor turds!
Tractor Suppy seems to have taken over from Michael’s as the place to find candy from our Halloween days.
OMG…the first 4 ingredients are sugar! Yuck!
I remember loving circus peanuts as a child. After several decades of not seeing them, I found a package and was very excited. Until I bit into one.
Circus peanuts are the most disgusting candy ever. They taste the same as a plastic banana from the Dollar Store smells. They stick to your teeth so you taste them until February. Circus peanuts make candy corn taste like ambrosia--you know, the stuff your grandmother made in 1955. Still better than circus peanuts. The good thing, though, is that since they stick to your teeth, you don't need a flashlight until about the middle of January. Just smile and the flourescent color will light your way.
They did smell like bananas! 60 minutes did a show on artificial smells and how they're created. Don't even ask about eau de toilette but AI'll give you a clue--it comes out of the wrong end of a mink. EAU!!!
Too late--I giggled anyway!
And if you want to dump somebody, just soak those hazelnuts in a quart of water (no, not gasoline!) and they crack and hiss all night. After which, you turn to your soon to be ex-sweetheart and say "Sorry honey, but I am Scottish and I am offended" as you head out the door.
My Mr. Wonderful tells me that his grandfather loved to snack on circus peanuts dipped in Cheez Whiz. Do I hear gag reflexes?
Yes. Yes you do
Swell. I stifled the giggle and subsequently exploded. Thanks a heap!
Today's most awesome comment.
Thank you, Sir!
I’m offended.
It’s not worth it, Dave. If your vandalism app makes any money at all, it will only be a few months before all crime in America is committed through Amazon. We’ll be reading reviews like: “The bank robbery we ordered was executed as requested. However, the take, when delivered, had THE WORST PACKAGING EVER! It exploded when we opened it and covered our entire living room with red paint. One Star.”
Mark Rober would be so proud.
Had to look it up, but now appreciate the reference. The inventor of glitter bomb for thieves.
Don't get me started on Amazon. I just got four jars of spaghetti sauce in the mail. Skeletons bleeding spaghetti sauce are probably next.
OMG! Dave Barry is using AI artwork and talking with ChatGPT! THE END IS NIGH!!!
I have to quibble with the photo of the Druids in long flowing robes. Even in Neolithic times, they dressed as soccer hooligans. Let’s be historically accurate.
Also, I have to believe that, even in Neolithic times, the vast majority of Druids had eyes.
(“Mislabeled Sidewalk Chalk”: excellent name for a band)
I wonder if you could use Necco wafers as sidewalk chalk? Ya know, in case you want to play a game of hop-scotch?
can't see why not. :) The ants would love it.
Florida fire ants would have hop scotchers hopping much faster.
😅
To avoid all this modern consent nonsense I typically just TP my own house then call it a night.
(laughing)
😂😂
You can afford to do that? Are you a millionaire or something?
I just collect it the next morning. I've been using the same toilet paper for the past ten years.
> When I was a youth, TPing was a standard Halloween prank, but I think it’s more difficult for modern youngsters to pull off, because when they’re out trick-or-treating they’re always accompanied by platoons of vigilant parents …
Never forget Bidenflation as an explanation:
>> “Remember when toilet paper and eggs were so cheap we used to throw them at people’s houses? Now in 2025, I’m contemplating a payment plan just to make omelets.”
— Trevor Manuel CIO (Chief Inspiration Officer) at Livelovebe [I think I am not making him up.]
There is only one way to eat Circus Peanuts and it involves being very drunk, almost comatose, and listening to Louie Louie non stop.
It’s horrible though, Emily. I’ve been there — you wake up the next day with an awful hangover and orange drool all over the pillow, and the taste of plastic coating your mouth. Those “peanuts” were actually spray-painted packing peanuts, I swear. They were terrible.
They still are!
This was revenge on parents for allowing us to roam the streets at night. We left the Circus Circus peanuts in the bottom of the bag so our frugal Scottish rulers would eat them instead.
I thought they were for insulating cracks in walls. 🤔
They serve multiple purposes - just none of them are food-related.
My grandma use to keep circus peanuts in a candy dish for "guests to enjoy." After two weeks, they hardened into rocks and were perfect for slingshot action.
To my reading all the girls were fiendish about these yellow monstrosities!
Yeah, but then you'd have to paint them to match your drapes. Could get serious if paint interacts chemically with orange banana peanuts and everything melts through the floor. It would be like the scene in Alien.
Sounds like somebody had an interesting childhood!
I can't stand adults in Halloween costumes. When I was a kid, we wanted to grow up and do all the grown-up things like smoking and drinking and having sex, preferably all at the same time. But now grown-ups want to be kids. We have "Pajama Days" here at the middle school where I work, and it's disconcerting enough to see 14-year-olds wandering the halls in their pajamas clutching teddy bears and sucking on pacifiers, but the teachers do it, too! My 3rd grade teacher, Miss Vera, fled the Nazis in order to come to Maryland to teach us not to touch our faces because it spreads disease, and not to say "how come?" when we mean "why?" I cannot for a moment imagine Miss Vera coming to school in footie pajamas. She was a real adult. Grown-ups are becoming children. I blame climate change.
Back in the late 1990s the company I worked for had some people that would dress up in Halloween costumes on Halloween. It was stupid because we weren’t customer facing, it was a call center. It was embarrassing because some of the people felt inadequate with their costumes, etc.. After 2001 the company CEO banned wearing Halloween costumes. Yay!
We must have worked at the same place.... I was cured of that by being the ONLY person who dressed up, in my long black Elvira costume, with the exception of a couple of women wearing their business suits and cat ear headbands. Or men in Hawaiian shirts.
If you are triggered by the sight of adults dressed in childish manners, do not, and I repeat, do NOT go to Disneyland. I have to avert my eyes while waiting in line to ride "Alice in Wonderland " .
When I was a kid I had Footy pajamas, which my mom died brown and attached a tail too and I was a monkey!
Which school has 14 year olds sucking on pacifiers?!
Oh, Ash, there are now "adult" pacifiers, especially designed for delicate, fragile, easily triggered Gen-Zers.
When the pajamas, blankets, and teddy bears arrived, we should have been able to see the pacifiers coming.
I'm glad we won those two World Wars in the 20th century, because we could never win another one. Frankly, I think Burkina Faso could take us in a fair fight at this point.
Har!!
In school!?
The last time I visited my daughter in the grown-up home she shares with two dogs, before she came home in her grown-up car from her grown-up job, I noticed one of these "adult" pacifiers on her dining room table. She's 29 years old. I didn't ask her where she uses it, because there are some things a mother simply doesn't want to know. %-)
In school!?
I harken back to ancient times when we had to carry a paper bag to trick or treat, and it would rain, and somebody would give you an apple, which would tear through the wet bag and cause the good stuff to fall out. Sigh.
And it Always. Rained.
And -- at least in the Northeast US -- the rain always glued the fallen leaves together into giant, slippery, sidewalk-spanning Mats of Death.
Another band name?—“sidewalk-spanning Mats of Death”
Band names seem to just spill out so naturally when following Dave Barry! 🤣
Yes! The rare halloweens where we were shuffling through dry leaves were vastly out-numbered by the halloweens where we were squishing and skidding on Nature's leafy slip-and-slide, either getting our costumes wet in the rain or totally hiding our costumes under raincoats. It was miserable but I miss those days!
For all of the costumed feet that weren’t donning everyday shoes with gripper soles!
Yeah! I actually seem to remember some "costume shoes" which were just like paper or thin cloth "shoes" or "feet" with no soles; you'd simply drape them over your real shoes, which solved the traction problem. Until the fake things stretched out and you started tripping on them.
(Cue "All Soles Eve" jokes.)
We used old pillow cases and still hoped that we didn't get any apples, or rain.
That's what pillowcases were for! Jeesh!
Only for the rich kids!
I can tell that this is a substantive substack that is backed up by REAL data and not just some made up stuff. Just look at the meticulous citations on the charts and pictures. And this is definitely worthy of a large cash prize for journalism. It couldn't have been easy to convince Michelangelo to reveal his picture of Stonehenge being TP'd!
I was gonna say the same thing! The citations are everything. Not every journalist takes the time to track down his sources the way Dave does for us. It’s beautiful, really. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
The captions/credits were the feature that most grabbed me this posting. What a scope of sources, Al Gore to Michelangelo. And the flavor of the Stonehenge TPing, like bible school models gone wild!
Bible school models hone wild!!! That’s brilliant!!! 🤣👏🏻🤣👏🏻🤣
Those captions were terrific, weren't they? 🤣
Forget bobbing for apples, just don't bob for french fries, at least until they're out of the fryer
Or chicken wings.
“ Today, of course, Halloween… is at least as much about adults as about children. ”
As father to a six year old, I figured out a way to make Halloween much more enjoyable for all other parents involved — I carry several shareable flasks of whiskey. In some houses, as my child collects candy, I get, in return for a whiskey swig, cool things myself — home roasted peanuts, a stick of beef jerky…and other stuff that I can’t remember because by that point of the night I’m pretty tipsy. Happy Halloween!
Before I bought my condo, at my house I'd have hundreds of trick or treaters. I'd sit drinking martinis out on the porch, offering martinis in go cups to parents. Most refused, but looked very longingly at my glass.
When we lived in Wisconsin, we handed our hot chocolate and coffee for the grown ups. Especially if it was snowing or raining.
I grew up in Wisconsin, and then later I had kids in Wisconsin, and after the kids were done trick-or-treating all of the adults would go around the neighborhood for “trick or drink”. And we were costumes too. Then we started going to a bar with our costumes on. Most uncomfortable one year when I had a cat costume with an actual tail, sitting in the booth was no fun!
So that's what those little 'airline' bottles are for; the one ounce variety.
First store sightings of Halloween candy get earlier and earlier every year. I saw Halloween candy out on the shelves in August!
I remember the candy we received lasting less than a couple of days. Usually, the last pieces were those hard as a rock peanut butter things in the black or orange wax paper.
We hated those, but ate them anyway. I mean, it was Halloween candy!
That’s what I was going to mention. What WERE those things? Compressed circus peanuts with butterscotch and coconut? They sure made me gag.
I think they were peanut butter flavored shower caulk.
With coconut
No wonder RFKJr wants to ban preservatives.
Halloween candy out on the shelves in August leftover from last year. Best by date unknown.
That evolution of skeletons bit almost made me fall off my chair laughing; so true!
When I was a kid, neighbors gave out homemade candy apples. Thinking back, it might have been in collusion with the local dentists, because I must've cracked at least two teeth in the process. Then a few gave out pennies -- which was the biggest disappointment. Today, kids would undoubtedly toss them back in disgust (and then burn down the house). Fortunately, the penny is going away, so that's not likely to happen much anymore.
https://todaysmuse.substack.com/p/pennies-in-heaven
We had a 'rich' neighbor who gave out actual quarters. That was when actual full sized candy bars only cost a nickel!
I grew up in a garden apartment complex. When word got out that someone was handing out full-sized candy bars, the rush to that home was like Taylor Swift was in town.
Thanks for presenting Penny's poignant story.
Now you've got me thinking of nonconsensual pranks involving pennies. Maybe filling neighbors' backyard ponds with them until they overflow?
[Edit to add: your thoughts on the penny at the link you provided: golden!!!]
True story: A neighbor of mine had a Koi fish pond and my friend had a boyfriend from Peru. So he went fishing in that pond and caught and ate one of those expensive fish. I'm not sure if he was ever found out; back in the 1970's Los Angeles. My friend's brother also partook of the cooked Koi and he should have known better.
My father-in-law's cheap, but beloved, gold fish fell victim to the local kingfishers after I left the hose running in their pond for too long and the water cleared.. while it was murky they could hide. I never confessed. 😬
The moral of the story: don't have expensive fish in your backyard pond. 😉
Or, have a big sign, in multiple languages (depending on your location) stating: 'expensive pet fish', please do not catch or eat or steal. Or the new standby - cameras.
I have a pond in my backyard and a fish just showed up one time, probably came in with a plant, but I never fed it and it lived for two years but one time we came back from a trip and it was gone. So I figured the raccoons that terrorize my backyard got it. It was too friendly for its own good.
Sadly, I like licorice, circus peanuts and NECCO wafers. I even know that NECCO stands for New England Confectionery COmpany. But even more sadly, I am now diabetic so cannot indulge in these apparently-to-all-other-life-forms disgusting treats. Oh, and Black licorice. My brother likes it, too. We realized that, since everyone else hated it, we never had to share.
I blame the circus peanuts. I think you have a court case.
But circus peanuts, necco wafers and black licorice aren't even food - they're styrofoam, chalk and strips of old tires. While these are likely deadly by themselves if ingested, I wonder, would they really affect blood sugar? ;)
I love them too, especially licorice and circus peanuts. Thankfully, I can still enjoy circus peanuts, but real licorice is bad for blood pressure. Nothing about those last 2 sentences is funny. I hope Dave doesn't ban me.