Dear Boxed Baby Raisin Loving Neighbors,
Oh, Halloween. I look back on my childhood memories of trick or treating very fondly. At the end of the night, my friends and I would pour out our bags of candy onto the floor and trade whatever it was we didn’t want. By roughly age eight, our bargaining skills had become seriously sophisticated. We knew what was valuable and what wasn’t. Guess what was at the bottom of the cutthroat candy hierarchy?
Yeah. Sun Maid raisins.
A typical exchange would go like this:
“Hey, do you have Skittles? Sour Skittles?”
“Yeah, what do you have?”
“Uhhh. A box of raisins?”
“Ha. No.”
“Three boxes of raisins.”
“No.”
“For one blue skittle?”
“…Ok, fine. Only cause my mom will eat them.”
How nice for the mom who enjoys dried fruits and juice cleanses. But shitty for the seven-year-old with an insatiable craving for sugar. And no, not the healthy kind of fruit sugar in raisins (I believe the scientific word is fructose), but the mass manufactured kind that’s been crafted into a masterpiece of artificial flavors and colors.
I felt downright cheated each and every single time the response to my gleeful “Trick or Treat!” was that little red box. The iconic Sun Maid’s smirk taunts the child who received a handful of shriveled grapes in lieu of a squishy limited edition Halloween Peep (it’s orange, not yellow! So exciting.)
Cruel and unusual punishment indeed.
Listen, I’m not sure exactly what message you’re trying to get across.
Are you pointing out that candy is unhealthy and will rot your teeth and turn you into a toothless old hag? Every child is already well aware of that. That’s the whole point. After all, forbidden fruit tastes oh so sweet…and raisins are far from forbidden. As a general rule of thumb, anything your parents would encourage you to eat is not something you want to get on Halloween.
Do you understand what you’re doing? Or do you do it on purpose, for the looks of sheer disappointment from children who are too polite to tell you you’re doing it wrong?
Please, have a change of heart. Keep your raisins to yourself and stick with the fun sized Butterfingers and gummy brains.
Or at the very least, switch over to Raisinettes. Baby steps.
Sincerely,
Every Child Ever
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