Ah, late October. There's a briskness to the air, the ground is covered with fallen leaves in a myriad of colors, and America is given not one, but TWO holiday fueled excuses to get even fatter. Our favorite, Halloween, gives women an excuse to dress in outrageously slutty outfits and call them "costumes," and the rest of us an excuse to consume massive amounts of candy. In particular, we look to the most perfect form of candy, the candy bar, which combines chocolate with some other things. Sometimes, it's delicious. Sometimes it isn't. But one thing remains constant: it will probably cause you to get type-2 diabetes. Here are the best and worst things to wrap chocolate around in order to send your body into a glorious state of insulin shock.
CARAMEL
Oh, shit yes. Let us enumerate some indisputable reasons as to why caramel is the best thing that ever went with chocolate, ever. 1) It is subtle, yet delicious. 2) It has this awesome, sticky consistency that differentiates it from the chocolate, serving as a contrast rather than a simple echo of the flavor. 3) It's so good that they didn't even have to come up with a creative name for the candy bar that's just caramel and chocolate -- Caramello. That's quite possibly the worst name for a candy bar ever (and an even worse name for an NBA player), but it doesn't even matter. That's how good it is. The only conceivable problem we can think of with caramel doesn't have to do with the stuff itself. It's simply the fact that lots of mouth-breathers pronounce the word "car-mull" instead of the preferable "care-uh-mell." "Car-mull" sounds like a hybrid between a Toyota and a camel.
But no matter how you say it, caramel gets four out of five Richard Nixon masks.
PEANUTS
This is going to come off as kind of strange, because we really don't have anything against peanuts, per se, outside of the candy bar realm. In fact, they're pretty tasty if they're drenched in enough salt and honey roasting oil and other heart-stopping additions. But for some reason, we just can't stand for them to be in our candy bars. "Sacrilege!" you say. To which we respond, "You seem to be really passionate about these candy bars." To which, of course, you say, "If I had had a candy bar that day, my dad would still be alive." Which is just really confusing, so we're just going to let that go. Anyway, the main thing is that peanuts have a tendency to be pointy in spots, and hidden under all that chocolate there's a distinct possibility that one could just jab right into the roof of one's mouth. And that won't fly. If they used peanut butter instead, then there wouldn't be any problem at all. Take heed, Snickers.
The possibility of pain only warrants one Tricky Dick Nixon mask.
NOUGAT
Nougat may just be the strangest substance on the planet. What's it made of? No one knows. Who invented it? Historians now believe that it was not actually invented, but discovered deep within a mine in southern France in 1868. What's it taste like? It's indescribable without using at least four modifications preceding what you're comparing it with -- sort of a milder, fluffier, less sticky, lighter caramel, for instance. Science has been unable to find any occurrence of the substance outside of candy bars in the last 35 years. And its physical state-Solid? Liquid? Some kind of cooled plasma?-remains a mystery. The only thing people seem to be able to agree on is that it tastes pretty good and that "nougat" is a funny word. Seriously, just say the phrase "creamy nougat" out loud in a public place and see if people don't laugh. That's the beauty of the edible mystery known as nougat.
Four and a half Richard Nixon masks (one of them is just a nose).
COCONUT
We really have a genuine question here. One that we have no clue how to answer, so if anybody out there has some idea, please drop us a line and help us out. Why the hell would anyone voluntarily eat coconut? Seriously. Shit is gross. There's basically no flavor and the consistency is like chewing on wet, cold styrofoam. Just because it gets covered in a layer of chocolate does not make it palatable. In fact, it just makes us more suspicious that you've drained all of the color from a handful of syrup covered grass, covered it in chocolate and called it Mounds. By the way, who the hell at the Hershey's company thought that Mounds was an appealing name for any sort of food product? Coconut doesn't even get a Richard Nixon mask. It gets a Jimmy Carter mask.
WHATEVER THE HELL THAT STUFF IS INSIDE BUTTERFINGER BARSHonestly, what the hell is that stuff? Well, according to the catch-all of human knowledge that is Wikipedia, it's some kind of peanut brittle. And given that the only other time we've heard of peanut brittle is on those jars that end up having springy snakes on the inside, we can come to only one conclusion: Butterfinger bars should be filled with springy toy snakes that come flying out when you break the bar in half or take a bite out of it. In fact, from this point forward, we will do everything in our power to make sure that there's some kind of special Halloween edition Butterfinger that has the springy snakes inside.
As for a rating, hell, we don't know...two Nixons.
CRISPY RICE
Hey, now we're talking. Crispy rice is one of two ingredients that can be found in the most heterosexual candy bar ever: the Crunch bar. Don't ask how we know the Crunch bar is the most heterosexual candy bar that exists. Just say the name:
CRUNCH. Sounds more like a WWE wrestler or something Fitty would say before dropping an N bomb. And on top of that, it's just downright tasty. If we were ever forced to fight someone to the death, and the only choices of weapons were candy bars, we'd probably reach for a Crunch bar, or even the far inferior Krackel, which, oddly enough, is bisexual. Five out of five Richard Nixon masks, plus a Darth Vader helmet to boot.
RAZOR BLADES
At first these may seem altogether unappetizing, sure. But let's look closer into the assets of finding a razor blade inside your candy bar. First of all, it's been documented that only family members or people you know would make the effort of putting a razor blade in your candy. So, it's a sign someone cares about you. Also -- and we can't stress this enough — you can never have too many razor blades. Imagine where you would be if you all of a sudden needed to slit someone's wrists and you were fresh out of razor blades. You'd look quite the fool. That is unless you had just eaten a pillow sack of razor blade filled candy bars and could just cough one up on command. In addition, razor blades are altogether better than coconut. Pretty much, there's only one liability here, and that is they will cut the fuck out of your throat.But, hey, that'll make your voice bitchin' cool, so razor blades get three hockey masks and a Freddy sweater.
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Matt Wilson
