I’m used to hating on Halloween by this point, but today is pretty great. The leaves are dead and colorful, and there’s a familiar brisky crispness to the air that always feels exclusive to October 31st. Plus, for the first time in years, the streets around here are covered in trick-or-treaters, using their Joker and pirate getups to guarantee them a serious case of 24-hour diabetes.

I can’t tell if I’m more like Uatu or D.B. Jefferies, but if there’s ever a day when it’s fun to just sit back and watch the world go round, Halloween is it.

Whatever you’re doing tonight, have fun doing it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s Halloween Countdown. I know it was a bit (or a lot) scaled down in comparison to past years, but hey, at least I finished it this time. Which reminds me: here’s the last review of the spooky season!

One of the interesting things about Kellogg’s Candy Corn Corn Pops (and there are plenty of interesting things about it) is that it was produced and sold in 2001. I always get weirded out when I come across treasures that debuted after X-E was active. Granted, I basically only wrote about Transformers and He-Man in the site’s early days, but it’s strange to see something so perfectly X-Eish and know that I could’ve written about it when it was, you know, still available. But perhaps this is more interesting to me than it is to you.

Candy Corn Corn Pops really should’ve been called Candy Corn Pops, and I’ll believe that to my dying day. The cereal was a limited edition, as all Halloween cereals are, but for whatever reason, it never managed to return for additional October stints.

Part of me understands why. Candy corn is generally accepted as vile, and few people would roll the dice on a cereal flavored like it. Still, a larger part of me — let’s say my torso and left leg — is truly upset over the brand’s short stay, as Candy Corn Corn Pops features some of the best box art ever to grace the breakfast aisle. LOOK at that guy. LOOK at him! Look at him, and look at the neat way they faded the lower green background into the upper yellow background. Any reason to link back to my lymon tribute is fucking awesome.

Even in the oddball-heavy sea of cereal mascots, a mad scientist with green skin and Norfin troll hair truly stands out. The front of the box looks more like pop art than product packaging, and if I had any soul at all, I’d trim away the side and back panels, frame the front, and hang the thing in a place where everyone on the planet can see it. (more…)