Here we are on September 25th (as I write this) and I'll be brutally honest: the 2019 Halloween season has been a bit of a bust here in Canada.
I've been scouring department and grocery stores since probably late-August and there's just been dribs and drabs of Halloween-y goodness here and there, but zero knock-outs. Heck, although Wal-mart started their displays off a few weeks ago it was only over the last week that they got all their stuff out. For a few weeks it was just lying in the middle of the display section in boxes.
I don't ever expect to see as much cool stuff in the Great White North as you see in the US, but since August it seems like it's been a Halloween onslaught down there. I don't know how they're all keeping up.
To list a few of the hot items just off the top of my head (I can't attest to how long these links will exist):
- Mountain Dew VooDew
- Yankee Candle Oh-So-Spooky Halloween
- Michael's Ceramic Halloween Tree
- Zombie Skittles
- General Mills Monster Cereals
- Kool-Aid Ghoul-Aid Popping Candy
- Creepy Cocoa Crisp M&Ms
And this is by no means a comprehensive list!
I can usually rely on the Monster Cereals Count Chocula and Boo Berry to show up in stores around now, as well as Reese Puffs Peanut Butter Bats, but I've seen no sign of them yet! I did find some ghost listings on Walmart.ca the other day for the Monster Cereals, but nothing on the shelves yet.
As a side note: I recently tweeted excitedly about finding the Boo Berry listing, thinking that we haven't had that cereal up here since the 2014 Monster Cereal re-launch, but as it turns out, it's Franken Berry we haven't had up here yet, so I guess if we do get Boo Berry it would be status quo. I'm more of a Count Chocula guy either way.
I was letting it all get me down a bit, but it's time to get out of the funk and start celebrating what we are getting here in Canada and one of the coolest is, without a doubt, Nestlé Scary chocolate bars!
From what I can tell, this is a Canadian exclusive, which rarely happens, but isn't that shocking since Nestlé Canada is a huge presence for the Swiss owned corporation.
So, for the uninitiated, every year Nestlé re-brands its biggest sellers and dresses them up for Halloween. The four bars that get spooky costumes are:
- Aero as "ScAero"
- Smarties as "Scaries"
- Kit Kat which keeps its name, but adds a black cat to the wrapper
- Coffee Crisp as "Coffin Crisp"
(I can't believe I used two bullet point lists in one post!)
The names aren't just where it stops. Each of these chocolate bars gets a fancy new spooky wrapper to top the whole thing off.
These have actually been out for a few weeks, so this post is coming late, but at first I hadn't even considered writing about the Nestlé Scary bars, because they've really become table stakes in the last few years. I reflexively pick up one of each whenever they hit store shelves, enjoy them with a good horror movie (or four), and then I don't really look back! But that's criminal, because these are so awesome.
There's really nothing different about the contents inside the wrappers, with the exception of Scaries, which are all brown and orange instead of their usual multi-coloured candy coating.
They usually cost a bit of a premium. These days you would never pay more than a $1 for each of these bars, but because of the Halloween branding they're usually closer to $2. This year they actually have an 8-pack available, which makes them much more affordable.
They also come in fun sizes, perfect for giving out for Halloween treats! Here's the one spot that I think Nestlé falls down on this one, however. In my mind, they should re-brand all of their fun-sized bars with the Scary wrappers, but they don't. If you wanted to give out Scaries instead of Smarties, you'll pay a premium there, as well. It's only the most hardcore treat-giver that would spend the money to actually stock these for the ghosts and goblins that come for trick-or-treating.
So that's Nestlé Scary bars! Like I said, before this year I've taken these for granted, but no longer. I've got one of each waiting for me at home so that I can enjoy them throughout October. It may be the same old chocolate, but you slap Halloween on that sucker and you've got a buyer right here!
Now if only I could wash them down with some of that VooDew...
Cheers,
R
p.s. Big props to my homeboy Elmer Bludd for helping me prop up the bars for these pics