These Forgotten Halloween Treats Will Blow Your Kids’ Minds

Recently, my wife and I found ourselves telling our kids about the exciting times we had on Halloween in the 80s and 90s. We tried to convince them that it was the same as Halloween now, just fewer pictures.

We ended up in this discussion because a compilation of old Halloween commercials and news reports came up on YouTube. The kids were fascinated by trick-or-treating in the old days. I was fascinated by how baggy clothes were in the first half of the 1990s. Seriously, people were drowning in suits back then.

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Anyway, as we spun tales of All Hallows Eve in the time of hair metal, wax candy came up. Someone in the old-tyme collection was wearing wax lips.

The kids asked what they were, and could not get their heads around that they were just wax that looked like lips. Sometimes fangs. They may have a faint flavor; the package said it was cherry, but otherwise it was just wax. We were asked what we did to them, and they didn't like the answer. We would hold them in our mouths, say to our friend, "Hey, look at me!" then we'd laugh and start to chew the wax like gum.

Look, the world was very different before the Internet.

The wax lips discussion inevitably led to a discussion of a core memory, eating (?) wax pop bottles.

Yep, literally little wax bottles full of a liquid. Not pop, technically, and not flavored like anything in nature. The liquid was different colors and tasted like sugar water.

The wax bottles apparently have an official name, Nik-L-Nips, because a pack originally cost a nickel for a little nip of the liquid stuff. See, the kids could now have their very own flask to keep in their pocket. A bottle and candy cigarettes, now you're just like dad.

And to answer the kids' next question, yes, we DID buy them on purpose. They weren't a punishment, or used as a decoration like candy corn. Nope, we'd go into the gas station and plop our quarters down and say, "Gimmie these wax bottles, please." Then we'd take them home, bite off the 'cap' and drink the 'liquid.'

"Then what?" The kids said.

"We...um...chewed on the wax like it was gum," I told them.

"Was this before gum was invented?" They asked.

"Oh no, we had all sorts of gum choices back then."

At that point, the kids lost interest in old Halloween stories, thankfully. I didn't want to have to explain the olden days anymore. Thank goodness they never asked about Pixi Stix.