Throw the White Pumpkin at The Earth! • Day 31

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!

Our final treat in the Gothtober Line-Up this year is from the Family Waller in Los Angeles, California. There are three Waller kids, and each one in this film has a dream after having too much candy. Footage from these miraculous dreams involves sweets, dolls, space travel, dirt, and a white pumpkin. The Waller family came together to make this film to let you know that if YOU eat too much candy, you might also experience vivid, sugar-laden visions, so be careful how many Junior Mints you eat before going to sleep! It’s kind of a cosmic cowboy PSA for the times we live in, feel free to sing along at the end!

We’d like to thank all of you out there who followed us until the very last day of October, and we’d like to pat on the back every skeleton, ghost, monster, and all of the other crawly screamy freaky things who made this year a great success. Thank you for being part of our 13th endeavor, dirt and worms for you all!

Head Candy Corn, JP

October 23, 2015October 26, 2015

Confectionary Crazy with Jenny Walsh • Day 23

There is a LOT of candy in today’s Gothtober 23rd cinematic jaunt, so much that you may feel your glycemic index go up just a bit watching today’s animated diversification of candy craziness!

Jenny Walsh, fim maker, commercial animator, teacher, and martial arts mama has recruited her sons, Harry and Liam, to help her make the shapes march and twirl across the candy screen! They could not be learning from a better animator, Jenny Walsh’s locomotion skills are to be envied, she knows analysis and locomotion, squash and stretch, the rhythm and blues of making stuff move. Habitually, Jenny Walsh is always Day 23 on the Gothtober calendar, so for past glimpses of her greatness, visit the Gothtober archives and check out all of the twenty-threes.

It is indeed a conspiracy, a plot to inspire trick-or-treating and rabble-rousing of the best kind.

You’ll dig the 8-bit soundtrack, colors and composition of this animated piece. Jenny’s husband, Dave, did the editing and post, so it really is a family affair!

October 7, 2015October 8, 2015

Peanut Brittle for DAY 7

DAY 7 on Gothtober is all about CANDY.

There are people who give out toothbrushes to trick or treaters, and then there are the people in the world who are ALIVE. Halloween is not about restraint, or making sense, or paying attention to limits, or going on a diet. Halloween is about rotting your teeth. That’s why we believe this recipe for Peanut Brittle isn’t just a recipe, it’s a Public Service Announcement.

Sure, you can buy peanut brittle and stuff your face and lay on the couch and moan and feel regret, but why do that when you can really fall down the rabbit hole and make your own? If you’re going to feel like you ate too much peanut brittle, make sure it was good peanut brittle. And make sure you did the work that it takes to make delicious, crunchy, melty, peanutty peanut brittle, because the work makes it taste better.

Anything you have to stir for more than a half an hour deserves your attention and appreciation. We recommend that you make this recipe with a friend, because it’s fun to take turns stirring.

And hey, it’s true, the dentist isn’t going to be thrilled with your peanut brittle consumption. But it’s Halloween. And it’s real sugar, real butter, real peanuts, and it’s home made. There is a difference, and no dentist can deny it. It’s time for Peanut Brittle.

October 7, 2013

Playin’ Games and Takin’ Names with Dianne Chadwick for Gothtober DAY 7

Work in progress, as Dianne was designing... — Work in progress, as Dianne was designing…

Happy Monday! To start off the week, Dianne Chadwick made you a BOARD GAME!!! OmigoshOmigosh how fun is THAT?!? All you have to do is visit DAY 7 on Gothtober.com and download the game, follow the instructions, and you’re ready to experience the thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat. The game is called “Trick or Treat” and it consists of three pages that you print out, cut and assemble. It’s for players 5 and up, Dianne used her very own 5-year-old as her test subject, and said that

He loved it, but mostly just wanted to eat the candy.

Dianne wanted to make a game that you can pretty much play anywhere, all you really need is access to candy and coffee container lids (to serve as “cauldrons”) Here’s some info from the official “box instructions” of the game

It’s Halloween and mischief is in the air! Collect as much candy as you can and return home before your house is trashed by marauding tricksters!

One of the great things about this game is that if you lose game pieces, no worries. Just head to the snack bar and purchase some more jelly beans. Dianne hasn’t played this game with four people yet, so if you want to give feedback or tell us how you did playing “Trick or Treat” with four or more players, let us know. You should be able to extend game play by acquiring more candy. “Trick or Treat” can be played at the park, at recess, during your lunch hour, on the train, practically anywhere, it’s made for travel. We’ll be playing the game at CraftNight (at Akbar) this week, thanks Dianne for giving us this very clever and beautifully designed diversion for the Halloween holiday!

September 16, 2013

Gothtober Candy Review • M&Ms Pumpkin Spice

Gonna admit something: Pumpkin-flavored things usually make me want to skip in the opposite direction. It’s not because pumpkin isn’t awesome, it’s because all those cheap imitations of pumpkin flavor are usually so disappointing in a myriad of ways!

Pumpkin “flavor” tends to be cloying and overpowering, unlike the personality of most pumpkins. It’s either pumpkin FEVER where you can’t taste anything else, or it’s dusty pumpkin or it’s non-starter pumpkin, where you’re not sure what it is… but it isn’t pumpkin.

Thus, when I brought the product to CraftNight and spilled its contents into a bowl, I was ready for the outrage. But funnily enough, there was no outrage, but there were raised eyebrows. Here are some of the reactions I got:

Layers of flavors!
I feel like I’ve arrived at Fall!
Not bad.
Can I have a few more? Mmmmm!

If you’re looking for “pumpkin in your face” you’re not going to find it here. It’s like they somehow knew that last year’s white chocolate candy corn M&Ms were too far into the stratosphere to really be understood. Somehow we have a candy that shows restraint. When you try it, there are multiple avenues for your mind to visit as they melt in your mouth. There’s pumpkin… but there’s also cinnamon, obscure hints of other spices, and mostly chocolate. And I think it’s a good idea that they are chocolate, and that M&Ms stayed away from the white chocolate for this one. Not every new flavor has to make you do a backflip and a fist pump, some flavors can just be mellow and complex. In the world of artificial flavors, it seems like they never know when to ease up on the throttle, and this time somebody decided to mellow out.

Anyone who grew up eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos will not understand or be able to comprehend the subtleties of Pumpkin Spice M&Ms. They will think that Pumpkin Spice M&Ms are a penultimate experience, because their taste buds are dead. They will shrug their shoulders and walk away. They will feel like the illustration of the bewildered pumpkin M&M on the bag.

People are all up in arms arguing that these things taste more like red hots than pumpkins… and as a person who dislikes red hots pretty vehemently, they don’t taste like red hots. But they don’t overwhelm you with orange squash flavor either. There are three colors in the bag: Dark Brown, Orange and Dark Green, a hilariously awful set of colors, it’s like they’re trying to convince children to stay away from them. Even sports teams don’t go near this trio of colors! I’m sure that ©Mars had 19,000 focus groups before they developed these, I’m thinking it’s a small miracle this product ended up on the shelves.

This pumpkin idea is trying to get distinguished, it wants to be respected and well-received. It’s reaching out to people who like potpourri and crisp air and scented candles. It’s for square metal candy bowls in offices, and houses with a lot of square footage and reflective surfaces. Kids will think they are boring. Eating these and liking them might mean you are over 30. It might even mean that you are retired. If you have just ONE, and wait for it to melt in your mouth for 10 seconds, you might be pleasantly surprised.

September 17, 2012September 17, 2012

Candy Corn Oreos: A Gothtober Review

CANDY CORN OREOS. They are real. Earlier that week, Sebastian and I struck OUT trying to find them at the Eagle Rock Target, which made us wonder if it was all just a joke, but honestly, we were just too early in trying to get them. Erin found them easily just a couple days afterward and said that the store had an entire section packed to the gills with the things, so if you want them now, it should be very easy to procure a bag. All the Halloween stuff is up as well.

Our specialized candy corn OREO testing lab was located at Rosemary’s house. Rosemary is a big fan of Gothtober, and with daughter, Lori, is collaborating on what will be DAY 15 on the Gothtober calendar.

So we had Erin who BOUGHT the Candy Corn Oreos, Rosemary and Jason who supervised us, and Lori and Erin and I were the courageous guinea pigs. Erin was especially brave, because she had a very traumatic candy corn barf story from her youth that involved winning a giant bag of candy corn in a drawing contest and eating the entire bag of tri-color candies… resulting in bright orange projectile uh… fireworks.

Upon opening the bag and taking out the tray, Lori said “Oooh, they’re pretty!”

Now… we could just hate on these, because they are absolutely artificial and outside of the regular OREO realm of decency. But Erin made a good point: What is a candy corn supposed to be?” Corn?!? No, it’s not supposed to be corn. It’s a reminder of corn, especially since it’s three times the size of a regular kernel of corn. Candy corns, invented in the 1880s are naturally predisposed to the artificial flavors that are the hallmark of its candy-ness. Once upon a time when candy corns were hand made, the predominant flavors were honey and vanilla. Those flavors are easy enough to imitate in today’s lightning speed automated factories. Even Brachs candy corn has artificial flavoring, in addition to the real honey of its recipe. So when you open the bag, you get a whiff of “artificial flavor” which didn’t surprise us one bit. We’re not bothered that a cookie with artificial ingredients is attempting to replicate a candy that also possesses artificial ingredients.

We peeled the cookie halves apart, and could see the divided filling which contains one half of yellow, the other half is orange. I was able to separate the filling into two separate units of color for tasting. Can’t be positive, but it seems like the yellow side had more of a candy corn taste. But at that point, I might’ve just been high on sugar. It’s definitely a very sweet cookie, and Lori said “Since I first started eating them I began talking a lot more.” We were all talking a lot more.

I’d have to say that if the customary white, orange and yellow coloring and the triangular shape makes a candy corn, so does the texture. Ultimately, this is how the candy corn OREO fails, because a candy corn just isn’t a cookie, and vice versa. A candy corn’s weird waxlike density combined with the sugary vanilla flavoring is the ultimate juxtaposition of what will convince your mouth that something “tastes” like candy corn. Otherwise, this cookie just tastes like frosting between two sandwich cookie pieces, which crumbles into very non-candy-corn-like disorderly particles.

Out of 10 points, 10 being the best, we gave it a 5. Why a 5? It stands alone as a very sweet cookie, the filling seems like the kind of pre-packaged tubes of frosting that is sold in the cake aisle of the grocery store. The quality of the “cookie” part of the OREO is quite good, very crisp and simple. You’d never in a million years know it was candy corn flavored if you tried one of these in a blind taste test. And you might be sort of turned off by the artificial flavors… but after time goes by, you might feel like eating another one just because its there.

October 10, 2010October 10, 2010

Day 11: Delicious graveyard, yum.

Gothtober edible graveyard Vero Lego’s Hungry Halloween not only gives you recipes for delicious candy ghosts and chocolate spiders — it demonstrates how to create an entirely edible, yummy-sweet action graveyard playset! That’s right, YOU can construct your very own desserty haunted house (is that a load-bearing chocolate wall I just devoured?), make up names for your icing tombstones, put it all together and play ghost-in-the-graveyard in a landscape of macabre, sugary sweetness.*

Get it now!

*Gothtober cannot be held responsible if you choose to consume your scrumptious ghost world in a single sitting, nor are we liable for any ensuing seizures, bouncy spells, comas, crying jags, or annoyance to others.