In the spirit of the holiday, we have a special treat for you today. After the daily review (which appears immediately below), we’re going to summarize the top entries in each of my four categories, and then select a winner from each. I can almost hear the cheers from my far-flung readership….
Today’s treat is perhaps the most questionable of all the month’s entries. That’s because it has no added sugar. In fact, it isn’t processed at all. It’s just a naturally-occurring food that’s been stuck in a bag and cynically labeled as a Halloween treat. So yes, I’m obviously talking about Hobgoblin Grapes!
- Packaging. We start off with the usual point for transparent packaging. But then we notice the nods to Halloween:
- They’ve taken black, seedless grapes and re-branded them as “Harvest Hobgoblin Grapes.”
- They include an illustration of what’s purportedly a hobgoblin, but which seems more like one of Santa’s elves gone bad.
- There’s a cauldron of bats flying in front of a harvest moon. That’s always a sure-fire Halloween cliche.
- The PLU (price look-up) code is on a pumpkin.
- There’s (somewhat incongruously) a ghost behind the “Harvest Hobgoblin” title.
- There’s a reference to trick or treat, with the self-congratulatory “no trick, all treat!”
Altogether, it’s a pretty good effort. I’ll give it three points.
2. Appearance of the Treat. Let’s face it. These are grapes. As such, they look like grapes. There’s really nothing especially appealing or Halloween-y about these. I suppose, to be generous, I could give a point for their being black, which is one of the two traditional Halloween colors. And since I’m indeed a generous guy, I will in fact award that one point.
3. Taste. Not only do these look like grapes; they taste like grapes. (I’m suddenly reminded of an old Cheech and Chong routine that all the middle-school kids had memorized in the 1970s.) Given that they have lots of natural sugar, I guess you could consider them a decent treat. But I can’t give more than one point when there’s no chocolate, nougat, sprinkles, icing, or other components of a self-respecting treat.
4. Value. My local grocery store had these for $1.79 per pound, which works out to about 11 cents per ounce. That’s among the least expensive of the treats that we’ve reviewed this month. On the other hand, if value is at all affected by the Treat Satisfaction Index (which is something I just made up), then the value declines. Let’s call it 2 points.
Steve’s Spooktoberfest Score: 7 out of 12 points, making it a minor TREAT. Get some for the neighborhood kid who’s allergic to real treats.
PART II: GREATEST HITS
We now move to the second look at the winners in each of the four categories over the course of the month. We start with packaging. There were 7 treats getting a full 3 points in this category:
PACKAGING WINNERS:
Oct 13: Frankenberry
Oct 16: Pumpkin beer
Oct 17: Monster pop
Oct 20: Cheetos Bag o’ Bones
Oct 24: Kettle corn
Oct 28: Cap’n Crunch’s Halloween Crunch
Oct 31: Hobgoblin grapes
Applying my usual carefully-controlled measurements and objective criteria (which involves a dart board and a blindfold), I have to hold up the Cap’n Crunch as the treat with the most Halloween-y packaging. It seems they didn’t leave any space on the box undecorated. If nothing else, the appearance of the good Cap’n as a tattered, luminescent ghost makes this a worthy packaging effort.
Moving on to APPEARANCE OF THE TREAT:
Oct 9: Mummy cookie
Oct 14: Spider donut
Oct 15: Frankenstein cookie
Oct 17: Monster pop
Oct 19: Caramel apple
Oct 21: Candy corn cookie
Oct 22: Halloween oreos
Oct 28: Cap’n Crunch
Oct 30: Cinnamon roll
This is a tough one. All these treats are a delight to behold. But I have to give the award to the spider donut. The vibrant colors and creative design are whimsical and festive. If there were a Nobel Prize for Halloween Treat design, it would go to the spider donut.
Turning now to the all-important category of TASTE:
Oct 7: Nerd rope
Oct 10: See’s pumpkin
Oct 14: Spider donut
Oct 17: Monster pop
Oct 19: Caramel apple
Oct 22: Halloween oreos
Oct 23: Reese’s white chocolate pumpkin
Oct 24: Kettle corn
Oct 26: Russell Stover candy corn pumpkin
This is another tough choice. To select a winner, I thought about which treat I’d most like to have if I were stuck on a desert island with no other treats for a month. Framed in this way, the answer is obvious: it’s the Russell Stover candy corn pumpkin. You’ll recall that the candy corn part isn’t really the decisive factor here; instead, it’s the white fudge, enveloped in white chocolate. Never let it be said that I’m snobbish about my treats–I mean, Russell Stover?!
Now for the little matter of VALUE:
Oct 2: Russell Stover marshmallow pumpkin
Oct 3: Russell Stover peanut butter pumpkin
Oct 7: Nerd Rope
Oct 8: Popcorn ball
Oct 14: Spider donut
Oct 19: Caramel apple
Oct 26: Russell Stover candy corn pumpkin
Oct 30: Cinnamon roll
To identify a winner, I used a complicated and proprietary formula that combines cost-per-ounce with bliss factor and Halloweeniness. I plugged the data into my computer and the winner was revealed to be the caramel apple. It’s an old-timey Halloween treat that appeals to my nostalgia, plus it’s decorated in fall colors and it has a really nifty ghost ring. If I really wanted to justify this choice, I could note that there’s even some nutritional value to an apple.
OK, now to cut it another way, we can look at the total points earned by each treat. All the month’s treats are listed below, with their total scores. Note that two treats tied for first place.
Oct 1 Frankencup: 7 points
Oct 2: Russell Stover marshmallow pumpkin: 5 points
Oct 3: Russell Stover peanut butter pumpkin: 5 points
Oct 4: Jelly belly pumpkins: 2 points
Oct 5: Kinder egg: 6 points
Oct 6: Reese’s regular pumpkin: 7 points
Oct 7: Nerd rope: 9 points
Oct 8: Popcorn ball: 10 points
Oct 9: Mummy cookie: 6 points
Oct 10: See’s pumpkin: 6 points
Oct 11: Pop tarts: 6 points
Oct 12: Pepperidge farm cookies: 2 points
Oct 13: Frankenberry: 5 points
Oct 14: Spider donut: 10 points
Oct 14: Ghost pepper donut: 3 points
Oct 15: Frankenstein cookie: 5 points
Oct 16: Pumpkin beer: 5 points
Oct 17: Monster pop: 11 points
Oct 18: Jelly Belly Monster Mash: 2 points
Oct 19: Caramel apple: 11 points
Oct 20: Cheeto’s Bag o’ Bones: 7 points
Oct 21: Candy corn cookie: 7 points
Oct 22: Halloween Oreos: 10 points
Oct 23: Reese’s White Chocolate pumpkin: 7 points
Oct 24: Kettle corn: 10 points
Oct 25: Pumpkin chips: 2 points
Oct 26: Russell Stover candy corn pumpkin: 9 points
Oct 27: Kit Kat: 4 points
Oct 28: Cap’n Crunch’s Halloween Crunch: 9 points
Oct 29: Spooky Lips: 2 points
Oct 30: Cinnamon roll: 9 points
Oct 31: Hobgoblin grapes: 7 points
Finally, like a graduate student showing off statistical operations toward no real meaningful purpose, I’d like to point out that there were three treats that each earned perfect scores of 3 points in three categories. They are:
Oct 14; Spider donut
Oct 17: Monster pop
Oct 19: Caramel apple
So there you have it. I hope you appreciate my eating 31 different Halloween treats (actually, it was 32, since I sampled two different donuts on October 14) on your behalf. I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween, and stay tuned for next October when I review classic scary movies. In the meantime, this blog will return to chronicling my travel adventures around California and beyond.
And now, in the spirit of Halloween, I’ll leave you with not just one “Boo!”, but two:
Chasing Phantoms 