Best Halloween candy this
decade!
I haven’t actually enthused
about the Ghostbusters franchise at any length on here yet (it will come) but
needless to say (as I’m devoting a whole post to cheap sweets with their
imagery on) I’m a big, big fan. The movies, the cartoons, the toys and yes the
cheap sweets with their imagery on, if it’s Ghostbusters I am there which is
why these gifts from Samhain made me so happy. Also Ooky’s back to help me,
everyone say Hi Ooky!
 |
| "Get over the Ooky thing already" |
Actually it’s more than
just being Ghostbusters themed: with the internet spoiling every surprise ever
nowadays it is very hard for us pre-internet people to experience the old
thrill of walking into a shop and finding something new and exciting we didn’t
know was coming out, the days of being surprised by new sticker albums or a new
wave of toys from your favourite things are long gone. Thank god for cheap shit
in chain stores because here I had no
idea these were a thing, just like days of yore I wandered into a shop, saw
them and marked out then instantly bought some and rushed home to enjoy them,
the only thing that was missing was begging my mum to ensure a purchase. These
cheap shitty sweets with Slimer on them made me feel just like a kid again,
hell they’re even tied into something that I was into when I was a kid, and
that was enough to turn another grey, depressing day of growing older into A
Good Day, it’s the little things people.
Anyway they’re brand new
for this Halloween season and are from someone called World of Sweets (I think
I recognise the name?) who quite rightly decided there wasn’t enough
Ghostbusters in Halloween and we needed some more. And where did I find them?
Fucking Poundland (you may have read my Poundland Does Halloween post and seen
me hyperventilating about them), these little bundles of sugary ectoplasmic
wonderfulness are only a pound, and they’re officially licenced:
So if you’re sitting
comfortably, I’ll begin to excitedly jump
up and down and shout look at them a bit more in-depth.
Popping Candy!
Can’t say that I’m
especially fond of Popping Candy on its own, I like it fine in something but it
just doesn’t have enough chocolate around it when it comes in bags like this,
but this is Ghostbusters popping
candy so it’s already about 168% better before it’s even been opened. Each pack
includes 8 packages of the child’s crystal meth, four with the No-Ghosts Ghost
logo on it and four with Movie Slimer and you know I think that’s the most
amazing bit about these sweets – they’re movie-tie ins, not Real Ghostbusters
tie-ins. For those going “well yeah of course it is, that cartoon hasn’t been
on air for decades”: back during Ghostbusters first flush of fad-dom everything
like this – all the cheap licenced (and unlicensed) crap, the sweets, rack
toys, party goods, it seemed like it was all Real Ghostbusters themed (because
it was aimed at kids), all covered in Real Ghostbusters stock artwork. I’m cool
with that but finding something like this in an ordinary cheap shop (not like,
say, Forbidden Planet) tied into the films has a great novelty about it to us
old-timers, or I guess, us semi-old timers who came in after RGB came out.
Anyway back to the sweets, because World of Sweets takes cheap Ghostbusters
tie-ins as seriously as I do the popping candy in each pack is thematically
tied to the ghost printed on it – Slimer’s is green and ‘apple’ flavoured and
No-Ghost Ghost’s is red and ‘strawberry’ flavoured and while I will say they do
taste different, neither tastes like the advertised fruit, Slimer’s candy
tastes like when you sick up in your mouth after drinking a slush puppy and
No-Ghost Ghost’s stuff tastes like cheap fruit squash before you add water,
it’s very
strong but not horrible, the better of the two easily, it must have
been ok because I ate a whole pack of it. But no one eats popping candy for the
flavour (I least I hope they don’t) they eat it for the popping and fuck me
these are good value for money, I had a wet finger full of strawberry while
taking the ‘open’ photos for this post and it popped the whole time – that’s a
good few minutes of popping. Again these cost £1 for 8 packets, I expected them
to pop once, if at all, but they’re bloody lasting, in fact they’re longer lasting
than the ones that came in the high-end Willy Wonka bars.
Everything about this
packaging makes me delighted, except maybe them using the ‘shiny’ video game
logo (I just prefer the stark white one ok?). I don’t know if Columbia
licencing (or whoever) have some kind of set templates that licensees can use
to ensure brand unity or whatever the buzz-word for everything looking like it
belongs to the same franchise is now, they probably do – a lot of this looks
like the same graphics you can find on things like the recent vinyl money banks
and UFO machine soft toys, but what I like about this is that World of Sweets
went to this much effort for £1 packs of sweets. They could have just had
everything black (or black and green) with the No-Ghosts Ghost logo on it;
I’d’ve still have been happy but they’ve got the yellow and black tape going
on, the official fonts, a New York City skyscape and a huge CGI Slimer which
I’ve never seen before but I’m sure isn’t unique to these, there’s no way £1
sweets are going to have any unique renders on them. The packaging feels like a
proper product and that makes the sweets feel more legitimate and me even
prouder.
Slimer Chocs!
Today these were the
Halloween gift that kept on giving, every stage of them brought a new delight
as I went “they should have done…they did!”. I saw them and thought “they
should have green filling” and they do! I opened the bag and thought “they
should have different Slimers on them” and they have three different pieces of
artwork! I unwrapped one and thought “these should taste nice” and they do! The
label on the bag (and somehow selling them in one of these net bags makes me
far happier than if they came in Haribo style plastic bags – either I’m a
secret eco-warrior or just really easily swayed by nostalgia) calls them ‘Green
Crème Filled Chocolates’, yeah they don’t even bother to assign a flavour to
the crème filling it’s just ‘green’ and I can confirm that they taste green.
The chocolate’s your standard cheap Easter Egg/Christmas tree chocolate, I
really like that type of chocolate (again, easily swayed by nostalgia) but if
you prefer your chocolate sweeter and milkier don’t worry because the ‘green’
crème filling should bring it up to at least Diary Milk level of sweet; as for
the Slimer sludge it’s odd, tasty but odd – it’s not as grainy or
overpoweringly, sickeningly sweet as Crème Egg crème and has a slight tang too
it, it also leaves my mouth feeling very airy, so I’m guessing there’s mint in
there somewhere but honestly it could be made from grass, toothpaste or
hairspray. It’s not how I imagine Slimer to taste (everyone knows Slimer tastes
like Ecto-Cooler) but they are really nice.
Now just to enthuse about
the packaging – the sweets are wrapped in one of three different Slimer poses:
Keep Away From Me Slimer, Aww You Bought Me A Cake Slimer and the one from the
Popping Candy packaging. Some of these I’ve seen used before, the happy Slimer
(with different arm positions) was used to advertise the 30th
Anniversary Kristy Kreme donuts last year and has turned up on a few other bits
and pieces so I’m leaning towards these being stock artwork that Columbia
Pictures just gives out (albeit slightly modified for better fitting onto
small, roughly Slimer-shaped chocolates) but even if they’re not original (and
I didn’t really think they would be, again these cost £1 for about 12) it’s
certainly another cause to praise World of Sweets of their production value,
they could have easily have just used one image, but instead they used three,
good for them.
Just to wrap up, I scanned
the Popping Candy packaging, the back has a bigger, grayscale version of the
Slimer render (as well as the list of ‘ingredients’), thanks for reading about
me cooing over cheap shitty candy that ties into a film over 30 years old,
enjoy the scans my imaginary chums:
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