I thought I was meeting a friend for a drink at a bar last night. As it turned out, I was actually meeting my greatest enemy.
When I walked into the bar and ordered my regular boilermaker, the bartender said he was out of whiskey, but that he did have “one of these.” He then presented that horrible Halloween bouquet you see in the photo above. My mouth dropped. I started shaking with rage. I demanded my booze and vowed to drink it alone in the bathroom, until finally my “friend” showed up cackling behind me.
Before I arrived, my newest enemy had apparently conspired with the bartender to prank me with a plastic jack-o’-lantern stuffed with hideous candy corn socks and obscenely flavored candy corn. The two idiots shared a hearty laugh while I shook off my anger and tried to smile for the sake of being a good sport. But for the rest of the evening I wretched at the thought of taste-testing S’mores-flavored and Carmel Macchiato Vanilla Latte Espresso-flavored candy corn, knowing full well my duty as a candy corn critic would compel me to eat them and write about them.
It brings me no pleasure to announce that “Café Favorites Candy Corn,” which aims to taste like “Carmel Macchiato Vanilla Latte Espresso,” is outrageously bad. It tastes like the cappuccino powder my mother used to buy in bulk from a gas station in Missouri, and it coats the tongue with a thick, awful syrup. You’d be better off knocking back two hazelnut creamers and saving your candy money for an actual cup of coffee.
The candy corn manufactured to taste like “S’mores” actually tastes like old truck stop fudge. These two bags of heavily sweetened earplugs took me back home in the worst way, and I am a worse person for having eaten them.
