I've written about "squeeze" candies before, which are, essentially, toothpaste tubes filled with impossibly sour glucose syrup instead of toothpaste. That may not be the most fluid way of describing them, but as the contents themselves are not fluid, I can safely declare my cumbersome wording as being completely intentional.

These "squeeze" candies are all over the place and from various makers, but I only notice them during assorted holiday seasons, when they're patterned after cool stuff like blood or shiny Christmas wrapping paper. Beyond such festive forays, I've happily ignored the gooey confections...until today.

Whatever positive adjectives you can think of, ICEE Squeeze Candy deserves them. 7-Eleven Slurpees may be the standard, but that's only because people don't want to admit that the best slushies are more commonly found in K-Mart. Make no mistake, ICEE slushies > 7-Eleven Slurpees. ICEE slushies > almost everything else on the planet.

The slimy snacks taste unbelievably close to real ICEEs, with all of the appropriate sweetnesses and trademark sour notes. I picked up "Cherry" and "Blue Raspberry," staying true to the general rule that "red" and "blue" candies are the only ones that matter. (There's also a green one, but green sucks, so I didn't bother checking which slushie flavor it was meant to represent. Let's assume kale.)

I'm beyond pleased with these, especially the cherry one, which is so delicious that I now live in constant fear that I will lose the battle to its palatable charms, eat the whole thing in a minute, and deal with the intense stomach ache that squeeze candies are so prone to inducing.

If you couldn't tell, I really, really love these. Everything about them. I love that we can eat candy that looks like prop poison from a bad movie about murderous alien plants. I love that the containers manage to fit in both ICEE's hip polar bear mascot and a textual boast reading "TOO COOL!" I love that "Potassium Sorbate" is listed as an ingredient, because now I can end the search for my trip hop band name.

In other news, I kinda tanked on posting everyday in August, huh? I think some allowances should be made considering that I spent a fair portion of the month fending off rogue teeth with German accents. Besides, X-E's eighth annual Halloween Countdown is starting up pretty soon, and I'm gonna Babe Ruth this shit: It's going to be a good one. Haven't decided when we're starting. Pretty soon/not too soon. But boy, it will be fun. And how.