11–20 of 72 posts
Around 1972 or 73 on Halloween, some neighborhood kid found a razor blade in an apple. Turned out he'd inserted it himself as a prank.
A lot of things have much earlier roots than can be found with searches of documents.
My kids are very aware that Halloween candy may be poisoned. Every year, after they finish trick-or-treating they will lay the buckets of candy on the table for inspection[1]. I will then taste several packs to make sure they are safe. If I do not show any side effects we conclude that the candy eaten was good. The kids wait patiently for a couple of weeks as I repeat the process and certify that all the candy they b…
My kids are very aware that Halloween candy may be poisoned. Every year, after they finish trick-or-treating they will lay the buckets of candy on the table for inspection[1]. I will then taste several packs to make sure they are safe. If I do not show any side effects we conclude that the candy eaten was good. The kids wait patiently for a couple of weeks as I repeat the process and certify that all the candy they b…
This actually just sounds like a really elaborate "tax" on your children's stash. If you fear the candy is actually dangerous, then perhaps you'd be better off just buying some from the store and distributing it to your kids, that ways they don't run the risk of loosing their parent.
And then there’s this headline today on my local news website... Candy laced with bath salts poses risk this Halloween http://www.wral.com/candy-laced-with-bath-salts-poses-risk-t...
If anyone knows of a good general technique to persuade a person that their fear of something is overblown, I'd be interested in seeing a link. In my experience, trying to do this results in anger.
It's been going on longer than the article suggests. When I went trick-or-treating in the 1960s, my parents did not allow us to eat anything that was home-made or not in a sealed package, because they were worried about deliberate poisoning. Around 1972 or 73 on Halloween, some neighborhood kid found a razor blade in an apple. Turned out he'd inserted it himself as a prank. A lot of things have much earlier roots tha…
No idea if he did it himself or not, but he never admitted it. It could easily have been some part of a toy that poked into it.
After school we went to his house and cut it to pieces with a knife in his kitchen. It was an exciting adventure, we were eager to see what might be inside. Never found anything, though I'm not sure what we were expecting to find.
We didn't eat it either. But it did freak me out enough as a kid that for awhile after I would check for candy wrapper breaches.
And then there’s this headline today on my local news website... Candy laced with bath salts poses risk this Halloween http://www.wral.com/candy-laced-with-bath-salts-poses-risk-t...
Seems that Wikipedia is a better starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths I would date my understanding of the myth to be from 1980, informed by a friend's mum, so the myth was oral tradition by then, across the pond in the UK. So a handful of years after 1974 the meme had spread. This had morphed into an 'only in America' story for those of us outside the U.S. - we believed this happened on…
As an outsider I never got the impression that this actually happened/happens in America, more that this is some strange fear American's have.
One of the things I like about the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc) is that we're slowly being reminded that it's okay to trust our neighbors, despite the constant attempts by the media to spread fear.