Halloween Candy Oscars 2009 - Part 5

HALLOWEEN IS HERE, and with it, the final category for the never-famous Halloween Candy Oscars where I always dish out the deadly details on the most delicious, best Halloween candy.

For Best Gummy Candy this year, we have Frankford's Gummy Body Parts going up against Spooky Treats' Graveyard Gummies and Horror Flix's massive Grave Grabbers. I found all three to be excellent contenders, with great detail and demented, fermented flavour.

Frankford again surprises with two major positive changes for 2009. The first is the obvious coffin that that contains the gummy body parts. The old grey coffin is replaced with a more realistic brown, with fabulous details such as evil red hands and blood-soaked nails. Also, they've given up the use of a spacer to increase its size, resulting in a coffin now half as deep as the old one, but which is 100% full of body parts.

2009 also sees yet another addition to the Gummy Body Parts - a freshly scooped brain! And with that bleeding cerebellum comes a new colour. Typical colours were a pink flesh tone, blood red, and white. But the new brain adds blue to the spooky spectrum, and major creep factor to the body parts. What's next for Frankford? A torn-out heart perhaps? Cross your severed fingers!

While the flavour is still superb, there is some disappointment. Body parts appear to have shrunk again, and instead of 100, there are now only 90. I did a full count when I opened my coffin, and indeed there were 90 bloody body parts. The removal of 10 gummies, plus the possible shrinkage has reduced the weight of the coffin from 750g to 675g. As well, the gummy consistency is all over the map. Severed fingers and noses are extremely flabby & soft, while fangs and feet are properly chewy.

Next up we have the goulish Grave Grabbers. These gummy hands come in various shapes, individually sealed. Click here to see the strawberry Skeleton hand, the green apple gnarled green monster hand, and the blue raspberry rotting corpse hand.

Distinguishing the subtle difference between the Skeleton hand and Frankford's body parts is like biting into a zombie's shin and trying to determine if he died Tuesday at midnight or Wednesday at 1 a.m. The Monster hand's apple flavour could not have come across more perfectly. And I've never tasted a more delicious rotting corpse's hand. Not that I hang out in morgues and do that kind of thing (on a regular basis, anyway).

Despite the details being the best of all the gummies, there is a devilish downside to these giant appendages. At a dollar apiece, these macabre mitts aren't very cost effective to hand out at Halloween, although if you did, your trick-or-treaters would be screaming - with joy.

Finally we have Spooky Treats' Graveyard Gummies. Each package contains only 12 of the gummies. But each package only costs $1.00. The gummy is black and coffin-shaped, each one with a different coloured mummy laying in/on it. These mummy detail is decent, while, aside from the shape, there is no coffin detail whatsoever.

Compared to the rest, these are about as exciting as a decapitated vampire. At such a low price, I was expecting them to taste like mouldy coffins and dusty mummy wrappings. But I was impressed. Their ghastly grape flavour is superb! It's such a nice surprise to have such a different tasting gummy. Overall though, nothing rocketed these to super-stardom.

I have to give Grave Grabbers two severed thumbs up for their fab detail, but their size is both a pro and a con. Graveyard Gummies receive two werewolf knuckles up for their great grape taste, but other than that, they're a little boring.

It's obvious Frankford is pouring money into their Halloween candy dept. Not only did they have an additional shape to flaunt this year, their graphic artist really stepped up to the crematorium and designed a superb new coffin container. Frankford's Gummy Body Parts wins 2009's Halloween Candy Oscar for best gummy candy! I can't wait to see what they have in store for the future.

Check out Halloween Candy Oscars 2009 - Part 4
Check out Halloween Candy Oscars 2009 - Part 3
Check out Halloween Candy Oscars 2009 - Part 2
Check out Halloween Candy Oscars 2009 - Part 1