Every week I tirelessly focus on the Food Pyramid. Fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, blah, blah, blah. But at the very top of the pyramid is one of my favorite groups, sweets. Granted, the recommended guidelines are to “use sparingly” but its Halloween and sparingly will be temporarily removed from my vocabulary. There is something you should know about me. Not only am I a child at heart, but I have a little devil that sits on my shoulder every time chocolate or candy is in sight.

The little imp whispers sweet nothings into my ear and brainwashes my vast nutritional knowledge into the gutters. And that’s when I blindly wander into candy stores and stuff my cheeks full of the enemy.

Every time I watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I delve into this world that is dipped in chocolate. I obsess over this dream. I beg for the wallpaper to be ‘lickable’, for chocolate to pour out of the shower head, for candy to fall out of trees. You may think this is childish, but think about it. How amazing would it be if Cornell magically transformed into the Wonka Factory?! How great to gorge jump into chocolate?! Anyway, Wonka Inc. has continued to take their inventions to the next level and Halloween 2009 has the potential to be epically delicious. Their most recent invention, yet to hit the shelves, is the “Extroodler” and just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen to hit candy stores in quite some time. The idea behind the Extroodler mimics that of soft serve ice-cream machines. The psychedelic, truly Wonka-looking dispenser spits out fifteen foot chocolate noodles. The fettuccine like string comes in your choice of flavors and in endless combinations. Caramel, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, can all be mashed into the soft noodle that has only been described to be outrageously delicious. The “extroodler” is intended to hit movie theaters and the infamous Dylan’s Candy Bar in New York City in the near future.  

What else is new with Wonka these days? A “delickoricious” new chewy licorice rope, filled with a tangy fruit juice center, called “kazoozles” come in cherry punch and pink lemonade flavors and truly “feeds your imagination”. Wonka also is producing a new line of gummies called “puckerooms” and “sluggles”. Puckerooms are sour mushroom shaped gummies that come in cherry, lemon-orange, and grape flavors. Sluggles are gummies shaped as slugs, snails, and other bugs in grape, lemon, cherry, and orange flavors. Traditional Wonka candies, such as the Wonka bar, shockers, gobstoppers, sweet tarts, nerds, and laffy taffy will still be hitting the bags of the sugar-high trick or treaters that will be running around this Halloween.

In homage to the candy businesses  most popular holiday, the big time companies produce some truly creepy candies. Fangs with tongue is a gummy-plastic combo that is 90 seconds of sweet before it dissolves. The severed finger dip stick is a weird play on Fun Dip with a green pointer covered in blood and sugar. Grubs and bugs of all kinds are a popular treat of the year. Rotten mouths, squishy eyeballs, and snotty noses will also be haunting the candy bowl for the holiday. So whether you like the gross or the sweet, let Halloween be your excuse to indulge in the top tier of the Food Pyramid.