Friday, October 10, 2008

Razor blades and needles: Halloween memories of Gen X

While newsmen and newswomen report the story each year, the fact of the matter is that there has been no substantiated story about Halloween candy tampering.

And yet, this is probably one of the biggest urban myths to crop up during the childhood of Generation X.

The one thing that is surprising, is that the myth wasn't directly blamed on Gen X children (like most things in the 1970s.) It was blamed on Satanic Cults. But then again, media portrayals of children in the 1970s often showed them as being demon-possessed (remember Damian? Linda Blair? Rosemary's Baby?).

You know, maybe it was our fault after all. Thirty year later, Generation Y is also jumping on board the poison candy bandwagon.

3 comments:

Jennifer Chronicles (jenx67.com) said...

Great post, as always. I tell you what - in 1972 my mother said I couldn't go trick or treating in Hacienda Heights, Ca., b/c there were reports circulating that a little boy got an apple with a razor blade stuck in it. For the rest of my childhood, I checked every apple and took a big deep breath before biting in.

Le said...

As a child my vertren father - the one before boomers - would not let us eat candy made in China ... ever !!

He said there would be needles and metal in it ... or GERMS !!

Given the recent infant milk tragedy in China he might not have been all wrong .... le

Kristina said...

The article you linked to mentioned hospitals offering free candy X-ray...so we were so afraid of needles in our candy that we didn't mind a little radiation?