Antepenultimate Treat

(I always look for an opportunity to use that word.) (No, not treat; antepenultimate!)

I’ve spent a good portion of this month trying to find a few old-timey Halloween treats that I remember from my misspent youth: syrup-filled wax skeletons, candy bones strung on an elastic bracelet, candy cigarettes, wax lips… I’ve failed in my efforts to locate those bygone treats, but I did find something close. Allow me to tell the tale:

Behold the “Spooky Lip Pop!” It’s not wax lips, exactly, because you could sort of eat the wax lips. I was never entirely clear whether they were intended to be edible, but technically you could bite off a chunk and chew it into a crumbly mass that, if you were lucky, would cohere sort of like chalky gum. Today’s “Spooky Lip Pop,” however, is made of entirely inedible plastic lips, to which is attached a candy bulb in the fashion of a baby’s pacifier. So let’s get down to the review.

1. Packaging. Alert readers know that I give points for clear packaging which allows the potential consumer to see the actual product. This is no exception. You can clearly see the plastic lips and teeth which look like they’re in need of some serious orthodontia. There’s also a drawing of a pair of creepy-looking zombie hands in desperate need of a manicure, as well as random body parts (an eyeball, some phlegm, and who knows what else). It’s definitely not appealing packaging. In fact, it evokes the old Wacky-Packages of my youth, which used disgusting wordplay and double-entendres to gross out young consumers. I’ll give it 2 points.
2. Appearance of the Treat. As noted above, the treat is clearly visible through the packaging. But once you liberate it from the packaging, you encounter a cute (?) cartoon face that’s demonstrating how to use the candy pacifier. As if it isn’t intuitive.

For some reason, I found it to be a clever little prop. True, the artwork is amateurish and the size is out of scale. And why would a zombie, with leaking brains and mismatched eyes, feel a need to use fake teeth to make himself look weirder? But it’s still kind of playful. The plastic lips/teeth themselves are reasonably well rendered. See how Mr. Spookybones models them:

I’ll give this a definite 2 points for appearance.

3. Taste. The business end of this treat is a bulb-shaped hunk of sugar that supposedly tastes like blue raspberry. It got me to wondering if there’s even such a fruit as blue raspberry. And evidently there is! But it’s doubtful that any Rubus leucodermis gave up their lives for this treat. Anyway, it tastes mainly just like sugar, maybe with a hint of a nondescript fake flavor you get in a Slurpee or whatever. But let’s face it: You don’t buy a plastic, lip-shaped pacifier for its culinary verisimilitude. I’m willing to give this 2 points, because I’ve been sucking on it since I started writing this review, and it’s inoffensive. (Special note: As I’ve gotten down there the end of the pop, I’ve discovered a plastic pointy-thing sticking out of the candy. I’m not sure this would be the best thing to be giving to small kids on Halloween.)

4. Value. It cost me a buck at Party City. It’s the closest thing to wax lips I’ve been able to find, so supply and demand must confer some value on this. I’ll give it 2 points.

Steve’s Spooktoberfest Score: 8 out of 12 points, which qualifies as a minor TREAT. Get yours while you can. Or take out a life insurance policy on a toddler and give this to him.