I am embarrassed to admit that I went against everything I believe in as a chocolate-lover and general knower-of-juvenile-things and purchased the cheapest bag of Halloween candy I could find for our trick-or-treaters. I’m sorry, Society, but $16 for the Hershey favorites variety pack that only included 40 pieces seemed insane (and Whoopers in the pack?! No. NOT a favorite and they should be ashamed to have included them. And don’t even get me started on the Almond Joy. In my childhood I could have fed an entire army on the pile of discarded Almond Joys I threw into the bottom corner of my closet. (“But Emily, if you hated them, why did you keep them in your closet?” Um, because when November 15th rolled around and I had polished off my top-ranked goods by including at least 7 pieces of candy in every meal for 2 weeks straight, I’d then enter the “Desperate Times” phase of sugar withdrawal and creep over to the reject stash in the middle of the night, while the rest of the house slumbered. I never claimed to be sane.)).

So, yeah. I went for the $5.00 generic brand, hoping that kids just won’t know the difference.

Because kids don’t notice when a peanut butter “cup” or a chocolate “bar” looks like it was driven over by a car and then stomped on by an angry little elf, right? And parents don’t mind when the wrapper is slightly torn and insides exposed, as if a mouse had already visited this piece of lesser-chocolate, and even the mouse was like, “eh, no thanks…”?*

Just add it to your “Desperate Times” stash, kids. You’ll thank me later. Like at 3:30am on November 16th.

*Still (slightly) better than Eric’s idea to hand out ziplock bags of homemade beef jerky.