Halloween is a strange time of the year. People can get free candy if deemed young enough, and young women have the excuse to dress slutty. We don’t excuse it; they just have an excuse and society continues to go along with it as an innocent children’s holiday continues to be sexualized. HAPPY HALLOWEEN. But that’s not what we’re talking about today; we’re discussing the much more important part of the holiday: the candy.
I was a very picky child, which can probably relate back to me having a false-positive peanut allergy for about 10 years. So, many candy bars have no appeal to me. I also don’t have much of a sweet tooth because a bad meeting between a filling and a fruit-roll-up in kindergarten ended not-so-nicely, so now I dislike the feeling of gummy between my teeth. I’ve self-regulated myself to a pretty limited number of treats, but that doesn’t really matter. Halloween isn’t about quantity, it’s quality baby — or at least that’d how I play it.
I gotta say — I miss my old neighbourhood. It’s a nice, quiet little place in the country: so while I can see most of my neighbours, people can easily park their cars next to each other on the street and have five minute long conversations no problem. Thus, there weren’t many houses to trick-or-treat at, which is probably why people stepped it up back in the day. The best possible treat, IMO, were cans of Crush soda. DAYUM that was good stuff, stuff I hardly had outside of Halloween unless I somehow tricked my parents into buying it.
But begging for candy is in the past now. We’re all adults and can eat whatever crap we choose to. We can buy candy whenever we want to, so Halloween loses its candy charm after age 14.
I’m sorry, I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent. The main point today is that some candy is better than others, and, more importantly, some candy is rarer than others. Over the summer I worked at a convenience store, staring at candy and chocolate bars basically every day. Near the end of August, a new product came in, but since I didn’t work on inventory day I didn’t really notice it for a while. An elusive chocolate bar so difficult to find I can arguably compare it to the Lost Ark.
The elusive, nigh-impossible to find, Vanilla Aero Bar.
Yes I know, the Aero chocolate bar has many flavours — orange, truffle, even a strawberry now — but not vanilla. Because I worked in a convenience store, I am overly familiar with snack products, from the rarely-bought Spider-Man Mr. Big bar to the now discontinued Skittles Riddles. Yet, surprisingly, not many brands manufacture vanilla/white chocolate chocolate bars. Is it just something exclusive to Easter? Maybe it’s too expensive.
I advocate the Vanilla Aero Bar for two reasons: firstly Aero is the best of the pure chocolate chocolate bars — Cadbury can screw off. Secondly, it’s actually pretty good. Like, really good. I very much enjoy it. I feel somewhat bad going into such depth about this fabulous product because it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND.
I’m not joking here. When I returned to Waterloo for school, I looked up and down for this damn bar, from local corner stores to gas stations to even Shoppers. I looked online (though now I know I was mistakenly typing in ‘white chocolate’ and not ‘vanilla’). As the weeks continued, I thought I was going freakin’ insane — had I imagined it this whole time? Was it really a product at my summer job, or did I just dream about it?
When Thanksgiving approached, I took my chance; I accompanied my mother out to town and made her visit my work. I scoured the typical sections; the chocolate bar aisle, the up-sale shelf, it was nowhere to be found. I chewed my thumb angrily. For a brief few minutes I thought I had really gone crazy, that this Lost Ark of the chocolate world, if you will, really was that: lost – no. It wasn’t even real.
But then, out of the corner of my eye — there it was! Left at the bottom of a shelf, hardly seen by costumers, the Vanilla Aero Bar. I was hysterical in excitement, knowing I wasn’t crazy, and it did exist. I bought eight on the spot: I felt like, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to prove it existed.
So there’s my (questionable) lesson of the week: indulge yourself with candy. And maybe buy discounted candy on Nov 1.
