Elina Shatkin
Marshmallow Brain Burgers, Finger Dogs, Pizza P'Eye's… More than any other holiday, Halloween provides opportunities for food shaped like severed body parts. (Imagine if candy-makers applied some of that imagination to their Easter confections.) It takes a lot of food gelatin and carnauba wax — but very little flavoring — to make sugar and corn starch look this gross.
Red cranial lobes, puffed up like atomic strawberries, replace the traditional hamburger bun in the Brain Burger. Glistening gummy eyeballs stare vacantly from atop the Pizza P'Eye.
Have you ever seen The Simpsons episode where Homer visits the Duff Brewery and finds different “flavors” of Duff Beer all being pumped from the same vat? That's the story with Flix Candy. All of their creations smell and taste the same: like soft foam injected with vague sweeteners i.e. very similar to Marshmallow Peep but worse.
Bonus points to Finger Fries, made by a totally different but unnamed manufacturer. They at least tried to make their bloody fingers, which stick straight-up out of a French fry carton alongside a pack of red corn syrup that doubles as ketchup, taste like something. It's not “strawberry artificially flavored” flavor advertised on the front of the package — more like lime antiseptic — but their brilliant presentation can't be beat. It's amazing what food coloring, corn syrup and the aesthetic sensibility of an eight-year-old boy can produce.
If that's still not gross enough for you, try cramming this 3-pound, 26-inch, so-phallic-it-ought-to-be-sold-at-a-sex-shoppe gummy worm down your gob.
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