Is Poisoned Halloween Candy a Myth?
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
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Is Poisoned Halloween Candy a Myth? Every year around Halloween, we hear the same concern: you gotta check the candy for poison because strangers put laxatives in Tootsie Rolls, Razor Blades in Apples and heroine in Snickers. But is this trick or treat dilemma an actual reality or just a clever way for your parents to steal your candy? The truth is out there (and by out there we mean in the episode that you should definitely watch).
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Written and Hosted By: Danielle Bainbridge
Graphics By: Noelle Smith
Directed By: Andrew Kornhaber
Produced By: Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com)
Works Cited:
Samira Kawash, former professor of English and Women’s Studies, Rutgers University
www.theatlanti...
www.npr.org/sec...
www.theatlanti...
candyprofessor...
“Today I Found Out” on RUclips:
• Has Anyone Ever Actual...
www.todayifound...
NYTimes 1982 article:
www.nytimes.com...
Smithsonian article:
www.smithsonian...
Psychology Today:
www.psychology...
Articles from Joel Best, PhD professor of sociology and criminology at University of Delaware:
"The Myth of the Halloween Sadist." Psychology Today 19 (November, 1985): 12, 14.
"The Halloween Sadist: Bogyman for Our Time." USA Today (October 30, 1987): 10A.
Additional Readings listed on his website (www.joelbest.net/)
“Tainted Treats: Debunking the Urban Legend.” Happy Halloween Magazine 2 (Autumn, 1999): 13, 35.
"The Razor Blade in the Apple: Halloween and the Mass Child Revisited." Pacific Sociological Association, San Jose, 1983. (with Gerald T. Horiuchi)
“(Sort of) Famous for Fifteen Years: Sociology and Media Coverage of Halloween Sadism.” Invited presentation at University of Tennessee Alpha Kappa Delta Luncheon, 2002.
“Scary Guys: The Halloween Sadist and Other Legendary Threats.” Invited lecture, Albright College, 2004.
“Studying Halloween Sadism and Where It Led Me.” Invited lecture at Department of Psychology Breakfast, Seattle University, 2010.
Sources on Ronald Clarke O’Bryan, who poisoned his son with pixie stix in 1974:
• Man Poisons Sons Candy...
www.nytimes.com...
History of Trick or Treating
• Where did Trick or Tre...
• 25 Curious Halloween F...
www.smithsonian...
www.history.com...
www.history.com...
Brief overview of Korean War:
www.history.com...
I was a kid in Houston when the life insurance scam poisoning mentioned in this video happened. Part of the reason this case was solved was that all kids in the Houston area were requested to turn in their Pixie Stix to their local school for chemical analysis. All candy turned in tested negative except for the candy of a schoolmate of the victim.
BTW, buying a life insurance policy on your kid is pretty shady and should put parents on a watch list.
I don't think it's shady to have a life insurance policy on your children. It cost a lot to bury someone. A child of a friend of mine died in a car wreck and we all pitched in so she wouldn't have any financial burden. Life insurance policies are necessary if you're not rich.
@@rebeccamiller475 Yeah, maybe a small policy that pays enough to cover burial and legal expenses would be OK, but I still think high value policies are a bit fishy.
I fully agree!
It's not really shady, my grandma bought one for me and my brother. I'm kinda glad she did. I still have yet to do that for my 2 though.
My dad bought a life insurance ar my birth, it means they want to have life insurance in case something happens.
That dad offing his son for insurance money is so incredibly evil! I'm shooketh to the core
He was hoping to kill more than just one kid. I was a kid in Houston when this happened, and most kids hated Pixie Stix which was basically citric acid in a tube with just enough flavoring and sugar to keep you from spitting it out.
Eating half a Pixie Stix in one go was something of a challenge.
@@Bacopa68 lol pixie stix were far from my favorite too
bnenomore I kinda liked them. But I'd space the sour rush into three or four doses over a few hours. That's the thing about cyanide: We can process a lot of it harmlessly, but once you go over the threshold, you die.
People called him the 'Candy Man'. The 'Candy Man' movie would have been better if it were about this instead of whatever it was.
Thank god he was executed! Innocent man my butt!
“Never take sweets from strangers” Unless it’s Halloween then that’s ok 👌😂
Ya, go to a stranger in a red suit for a candy and a picture. Rest of the year , stay a away from them.
Adults like confuse kids.
that's mostly because of child abduction but parents would probably claim its a poison risk to children. the things child abductors actually have done is pretty unfathomably sick even for adults to talk about, hard to draw the line between protecting your kids and giving them nightmares.
This channel needs more views, I swear to god.
more subs and rates too
Oh now that's messed up giving candied laxatives to kids. Does that dentist have too much time on his hands?
Yes
I was an 80s kid. Trust me. I remember all the fear and looked closely for holes. I still give my kids a once over now lol.
Another public panic I remember from the 80's in my area were claims of those wet&stick temporary tattoos sold in corner-store vending machines being laced with LSD by hippies/Satanists.
9000 calories?!?!
PBS Digital Studios it actually stunned me a bit!
Diabetes pretty much
Hello Chef Kawasaki
GIMMIE GIMMIE
I'm tired of Whoppers not getting the respect they deserve😩
Why kind of lunatic would hand out cheeseburgers on Halloween? :P
ornenors bro definitely
ornenors I hate them
They are delicious.
I love that malty taste lol
Whoppers are delicious, what are you talking about??
...
I like Whoppers. T.T
AdaptiveReasoning same
Me too tho
Whoppers are the bomb! It's the Milk Duds I had trouble with. Hard, chewy chocolate caramels? They looked like Whoppers but weren't malted milk balls. The color of the box was similar, too. I thought it was a mean trick of the candy companies.
back in the 60's or 70's when i became an adult, a couple of kids or so were actually poisoned. what seems to have happened, though, was by parents.
Actually, I think the final question should have been: "Aren't humans just the worst?" Thank you for also including the Halloween history to keep this from being a total downer.
The worst thing I ever found in many years of checking my kids candy was those hard candies with liquor in them ... honestly I'm sure had I not found them, they would've spit them out from the taste.
I like Whoppers. They're crunchy.
I remember in the 80's in Michigan some "redi-med" type places sponsoring Halloween candy X-Rays! My mom was an EMT and we would take our big bags of candy and dump them on the conveyor belt to be x-rayed! Crazy!
There was x-raying of Halloween candy was going on in the 70's in Michigan as well. And the candy scares were so bad in the 60's I remember having neighborhood Halloween parties to keep the kids from going out and trick or treating.
Radioactive candies are the best candies to be honest ^^
I remember that one kid from school ate some candy that had shattered glass in it. Cut up their mouth pretty badly, but they were ok in the end.
"All Hallows Eve has become a night of frolic, where children wear costumes and run amok!"
- Winifred Sanderson
I like whoppers..
Did you intentionally match your outfit to the kid in the painting at 5:35?
Bruh what even
?
Stories of these urban myths made it to TV around Halloween as I grew up. And while there might have been public service announcements to check candy, Mom and Dad checked assiduously anyway. Dad was given the task, and he dutifully sorted through. He would then grab a tasty piece or 2 saying, "Tax!" This turned it into a life lesson, and nobody could challenge him on it, although there were some scowls about it.
One of the best public relations gestures was at the hospitals: they offered to X-ray children's bags of candy on Halloween to check for nasties like pins and razors.
I can remember in the early 80s kids were getting butter fingers with razor blades and needles in them.
No they weren’t
You all are forgetting principal steve wilkin's main rule : always check your candy!
I never got bad candy trick or treating. But I did hide my candy in 2 stashes and mess with what the easy to find stash. The candy I didn't like. 2 years in a row my brother in law stole all my holiday candy. So I got revenge. I switched my the black jelly beans for sugar covered dog food, laxatives in chocolate wrappers, made my own candy that looked like reesees but switched the peanut butter for cat food, among other things. My brother in law never touched my candy again.
I, for one, love whoppers.
Tbh if I even got weed laced candy Id still eat it....😐
xCryptic Gaming same.
Same... If I'm a donkey
Btw I'm not calling you a donkey...maybe I am
Who tf would hand out expensive af weed candy? That stuff isn’t cheap and I know I wouldn’t give it out for free. Like fr.
Who would give out weed candy??? That shit is expensive
I died from poison candy way back in 1956. And I’m still celebrating Halloween.😂😂
I love trick or treating and Halloween. Great to know of the origins of the festive. As for the myths equally fascinating.
I remember in a high school science class we got to talking about Halloween and one girl said she used to like it until she found out its origins. I, being a die hard Halloween fan and having known about the pagen origins of Halloween since i was at least 5, was completely confused by her statement and assumed she was talking about some other darker Halloween origins than I was familiar with and wanted to hear more about it. She then told me what I already knew and I was even more confused until like a day later when I finally caught her drift.
What about Christmas? Pretty much every tradition surrounding Christmas is pagan, the date, the trees (which the bible says not to have because god hates people who do the whole tree thing, and it does say hate, yes, god hates according to the bible), gifts, super awesome food, and pretty much everything else about it is pagan.
Some believers don’t celebrate Christmas either bc it’s pagan
Heres one autistic persons reason for not wanting to trick or treat. 1
Your not suppose to talk to strangers 2. You don't take candy from strangers and 3. Never go to a house when you don't know the people. This is what we teach kids. He thought kids shouldn't be begging for candy. This is from a 9 year old. Just the facts with him.
I'd like to know where in the Bible it says that God hates people who put up Christmas trees.
@@chiprbob that's an out of context verse. Some groups of pagans in that era used to garnish trees with bright decorations and worship them as idols. Now God doesn't hate the idea of decorating a tree, but He does hate idol worship.
I know most of these rumors are just rumors, but if I ever have children, I will inspect their Halloween candy anyway.
Just got here from a Deep Look recommendation, another PBS channel. It looks like an interesting channel. You mentioned newspaper articles in the 1980s talking about how adult should screen their kid's halloween candies. Those kind of articles were also present in the 1970's and probably earlier. My parents would get rid of everything that was homemade or was not wrapped at the candy making plant. Us kids all knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who got a razor blade in an apple...
After the inspection the good treats seemed to have all not passed because the chocolate and good stuff came up missing
I once found pills in my candy. So....
OOF
The last time I went trick or treating at age 12, there was this really creepy guy who was being obviously fake-nice. He tried to hide the candy he gave me, but I saw a big orange wrapper.
When i got home, i found a big orange wrapper, a tootsie pop. And the wrapper was loose, and I pulled it apart to find a pin-hole drilled in the side of the candy!
I was so afraid that I would be blamed that i took a photo and then threw it away.
Then again, it could have been my dad doing it. Yeah, my parents were like that.
If it's possible
people will do it..
My friend's father found a razor blade in his apple when he was a kid.
so yes, it happens.
"who even likes whoppers?"
me with a box of whoppers: uhhh...
She’s right about the dirty pennies. When I went trick or treating as a child, there was an elderly woman who had this huge mixing bowl full of pennies and every child that visited got one. You never know where they have been.
I love my Celtic Heritage and upbringing. Samhain is actually our biggest holiday of the year.
Thank you! Finally someone else who celebrates it! I'm almost entirely Celtic and I thought everything is my culture had been forgotten about.
My parents found stuff in our candy once or twice including a needle so no it isn't just a myth.
Trick or Treat is telling kids I know for the rest of the year I have told you not to take candy from strangersBut,on Halloween youcan just disregard this.
We grew up with strict rules about this. Only once around the block. Only go to houses with the light on. Never eat any candy before you get home and a parent checks it first.
Most trick or treaters I've seen were accompanied by parents who hung back while the kids went to the door.
I had a friend who's sister got a needle stuck in her gums when she ate a piece of Halloween candy
That sounds very reliable...
Hey! I like Whoppers, especially the robin egg variant.
When I was a kid my brother got a box of nerds that was full of mouse droppings in his halloween candy. We called the police but the officer said even if my brother knew who gave it to him we couldn't prove the person actually put the droppings in the box and it could of easily happened at the factory (why we didn't try to sue Nestle Candy Shop I have no idea we could of got quite a settlement). The box was open when my stepdad saw it and picked it up to examine it, that night it had been raining and my brothers pillowcase got wet so the cardboard of the nerds box was wet and had opened (or it had already been open by the person who gave it to him who knows). My stepdad to this day claims some sicko gave it to my brother me on the other hand I have a little more faith in humanity than he does and choose to believe it was a manufacturing problem.
Thanks for making this video.
Mourning over every single piece of information that was shared in it.
ok but the dentist's name is DR SHYNE
??
yknow, like shiny teeth...hes a dentist...ok, I may be easily amused...
i admire any and all puns!!!! i never thought of that one lol.
whos watching this in April, not sheeped into watching this around Halloween?
It seems to be a general trend that while parents tend to be scared of strangers harming their kids it's way more likely that it's someone they know or a family member. With just about everything really this seems to be the case, the most likely person to poison a kid with candy is their family, the most likely person to abuse a kid is their family etc. Probably says something about how we as a society in general have a deeply ingrained xenophobia and how that is often used to cover up actual issues closer to home.
I think it's still a good idea to look over the candy lol. My parents never found any razor blades in mine or my brothers candy and I haven't found any in my kid's candy so far, but yea it's still a good idea to do it.
The chick flick comics got me aware of this when i was little. Also your outfit is fab.
My grandmothers friend ate an apple with a razor blade in it. Imagine giving out apples for Halloween
Guaranteed she made that story up
When i was younger i trick or treated in a manhattan luxury building and the person on the top floor stuffed rat poison in the tootsie rolls they left out
I LOVE WHOPPERS!
"dressed like Spiderman and elsa" oh no
Surely there's someone giving Ecstasy to kids pretending it's candy
When I was a kid we used to have two separate bags one for people we knew and could eat without our parents checking it and one for everyone else who was actually a stranger so we would eat that after my mom checked we also had A house that had a little wanted trail did put up a round things and have a little haunted house thing and at the end you could have a spoon full of brains just a plastic spoon with peach jello and milk molded in a brain shape Didn’t know the family too well but they were just neighbors and we eat it every year
Well there may not be razors in candy in America, but there are needles in our strawberries in Australia at the moment!! 🔪🍓😫
Oh pumpkin bucket 250 candy so my pillow case can probably hold 1k and that’s gone in a week
Being charged by murder and uhh... Being the worst
The Halloween trick-or-treat candy leaves the YoungBoy dead Timothy O’Brien
its made up so the parents can eat some of the candy :3
I have no best spooky urban legend to speak of...
9000 calories? Dear god. If I ever have kids, I'm gonna make sure it's portioned out well. Maybe put it in a jar for each kid and give them just a handful each day...
Girl you said 3 pounds?? 😂😂😂 get outta here, my bags use to get so heavy I put two on so they don’t rip
One neighbor would give us a bag of pennies. Of course it was the 80s so it actually meant more than it does now. My mom used to give out the small box of raisins. Thankfully eventually stopped that and switched to the Dum Dums lollipops.
in Britain we have bonfire night where we celebrate it by lighting fireworks in November
I love this video wonderful history.
Yes it's a myth, you can't rip open a candy and put it back together perfectly.
Fried Chicken but you can poke holes in it that’s very dmall
I Sellout Gawd I
You can that throw that piece of candy away, you must be an idiot to poke holes in candy and think you can fit a blade in there, wrapping it up perfectly.
Fried Chicken but sometimes drugs can be put in it
You can do pretty well with a Tootsie Roll.
You think the worst parts of society are some weird stranger, when really the danger is the people they are supposed to trust the most... So 😢
Funny, just yesterday I watched an episode of Monk, where poisened candy played a roll.
My ex claimed to have been one of those little kids that bit into a razor blade, but he said he got the candy from some randos handing out candy on the street in the neighborhood.
So what you're saying is... The people who are most likely to poison my candy... are the ones who check it??
I love Whoppers...
I also love your channel.
Well it IS possible that they did something else with the candy.....
In my neighborhood whoppers go your house TPd ...
6 days worth of calories in a candy bucket 😖😨😱😓
I think I got that laxative dentist candy once....
I think it was a to kill the home made treats people would make to give out. So candy companies would rise.
Maybe to kill Halloween all togather.
Kirara's Mom I can remember back before the tainted candy scare we would get homemade cookies and other treats. One family used to set up a beautiful buffet in the dining room and we trick or treaters could take our pick. There were caramel apples! Somehow a prepackaged funsize Snicker bar just isn't the same.
Statically speaking, if one especially a child is to be harmed it'll be by someone they know. Ask yourself save for the random jerk, what ill will do you have against a stranger so strong you'd hurt them?
How about the poisoned 🍎 ?
I love Whoppers :)))
apparently here in the uk, people give away ecstasy to kids at halloween.
This was very informative you definitely do your research 🧐
Woman I loooovvvveeeee whoppers
I love Whoppers!😭 😅
Great vid keep up the good work
Who would spend that much money to drug kids? Drugs are expensive and they wouldn’t spend it on kids. Would they?
Great video! I love this kind of stuff!! Instant sub for me!
but whoppers are good
Laxatives in candy? Don't give me any ideas ...
Im never going out for Halloween
Ain't taking any chances. takes 5-10 minutes to check the candy. It's not a big deal.
So maybe we shouldn’t freak out every year about Halloween?
I mean for real what actual drug addict is going to HAND OUT expensive drugs.
Or what person would hand out EXPENSIVE weed laced candy.
I guess we should instead freak out more about close family members during Halloween.
Why has parenting got so restrictive has it always been this way?
Sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn't
I agree, whoppers are awful
Whoppers are nice, but milk duds are better
As a parent, I used the "Inspect-the-Halloween-Candy-for-Poison-Treats" excuse to snag a few treats for myself..... of course I was comically blatant about it so the kids were fully aware of the joke.
For the SJWs out there, no children were traumatized at any time except by the scary decorations.
Wow,... that spook knows a lot about Halloween.
Family members are the lion's portion of sexual (and other) abuse of children, too.
I know four different girls who were "too pretty" as children. Two were sexually abused by uncles while quite young, one by her father, and one by strangers her mother invited to, in exchange for heroin. The nicest girls, they were, and three are still friends of mine, who never did anyone harm, but were stalked and preyed upon by loved ones or parental associates. The traumas stayed with them and most likely will unto death. All because they were pretty. Imagine physical beauty as a curse.
razor blades in candy; Trick or Treat ! I liked Dear Abby or Ann Landers' advice columns, back in the day. Parents should now have to watch out for: a needle, opiods (heroin), marijuana (which is legal for distribution) in some states), cyanide (found in apple seeds; other fruits or beans: peaches, apricots, cherry (pits), almonds and lima beans); bath salts, flakka, (crystal) meth, Molly (MDMA aka Ecstasy, the (90's underground) rave drug) and/or laced "rainbow" fentanyl stuff (that looks like Sweethearts).
I actually found a needle in my kids snickers bar 2019 Halloween no lie made me so angry and afraid
It was in there when they went trick or treat it was given to them by someone during going door to door