SG Choice: The Gimmicky Halloween Tie-In Candies Our Games Deserve

We’re knee-deep into October now, folks, and for a site as pro-Halloween as Source Gaming that’s quite a bit of excitement. In the past we’ve tackled forests, enemies, and tools in video games. A grand gamut from solid ideas to pure gimmickry. But no amount of gimmickry can prepare you for our theme this time: the gimmicky Halloween tie-in candy we want our favorite video games to have.

See, I love candy. I try not to have too much of it for my health, but I do. Real sweet tooth. And while I’m not an idiot who would buy anything with Mario’s gorgeous cartoon head on it (although I am the idiot who bought a small tin of gimmicky Bowser apple candies from the Nintendo Store a few months ago. They’re… fine), I certainly would not be averse to more dopey video game confectionary tie-ins. Things that really tell you that you are a trash consumer. So I’ve brought in the rest of the SG staff to imagine some candies and chocolates from some grander, theoretical gaming Halloween. These don’t have to even be Halloween-specific, but they should make me wish I could find them in a discount pack at my supermarket.

Wolfman Jew: Come up one and all, and gaze-maze in gaze-mazement! Thrill as you nosh on some Resident Evil Pocket Herbs, gummies that look just like they do in the games! There are three: the green flavor tastes like spearmint, the red tastes like strawberry, and the blue tastes like blackberry. But we all know that just like how you should always combine your herbs, the right way to eat through a bag of jelly candies is by eating all the flavors at the same time, so these have special, legally spurious properties to make the flavors synergize! Pop one of each in your mouth, and you’ll feel like you just survived a laboratory’s self-destruct sequence!

Do you like Dark Souls? Are you real about Dark Souls? Are you a real Dark Souls gamer? Of course not, you hack! You filthy casual!… At least, not until you’ve tried the Estus Bar, a chocolate turducken that will let you appreciate Dark Souls on a deeper level than any scrub. We start with a caramel center, forged in the Kiln of the First Flame! Then, we surround it with peanut butter, slathered in dark chocolate and molded in the shape of a sword! Now more than ever before, you can dig through the layers of Lordran and relink the Fire!

Image: Source Gaming. Look at that guy! He could really use a good treat to reverse that Hollowing and raid New Londo Ruins! (also this is only here because I have too many pictures for the 2024 screenshot gallery).

Okay, so this one isn’t me pretending to be a pitchman, but I do think Nintendo should sell life-size edible Gooigis. According to the extremely trustworthy website Screenrant, Luigi is 5’9”, which alongside being almost my exact height (so I’m slightly taller than Luigi! Yay… ?) would make an incredible size for a jelly candy. You can make the flavor whatever you want; apparently Gooigi tastes like coffee, but I think something citrus-y or closer to green tea would be nice. But imagine the sheer decadence of eating an entire giant Luigi!

Finally… Sonic the Hedgehog sheet cookies! You get yourself a nice oval tin, just bursting with cookies in the Sonic Team logo! You could sell different colors for Sonic and Shadow and Knuckles, but the real benefit is the spines at the end. You can bite them off separately! I love when I can have a piece of a cookie to just rip off at the start! Makes me powerful, like Superman, or the stuffed polar bear from Road House.

NantenJex: There’s a lot of Pokemon-themed candy based on the video games and anime but nothing that I’ve seen that’s based on the Trading Card Game. This isn’t that surprising, afterall most things in the TCG can also be found in the main series as well, so why would there be candy based on the TCG specifically? Well, there’s one big part of the card game that’s exclusive to it and I think would make great candy: Energy Cards.

Just think about it, you need Energy Cards to power-up your Pokémon, almost like giving them a hit of sugar or caffeine, and when they are thoroughly juiced up they can actually perform an action, like me every morning at work. So I think The Pokémon Company should take the Energy cards, which are already circular, and turn them into some kind of hard candy with the flavour based on its specific type. Etch the symbol for that type into the candy and let kids (or adults) dissolve it in their mouth, slowly releasing the caffeinated or sugar-filled energy into their bodies.

Image: Bulbapedia. The three classic Types in card form.

It’s either that or turn Pokémon Candy from the games into real candy. Imagine each ball of candy you eat tastes like a certain Pokémon. The electric tingle of a tasty Pikachu, the chewiness of a Slowpoke tail, the living-life-on-the-edge flavour of Parasect. An easy rival to Jelly Beans if I’ve ever heard of one.

Cart Boy: Now, I strongly believe we all can come together and agree on one simple truth: Tropius is the sweetest Pokémon around. It grows bananas on its chin and then shares them with the masses, after all! So it’s only fair The Pokémon Company finally does something nice for the Fruit Pokémon, and making a treat in its honor would be appropriate. Since bananas are already peak produce, just dip a fresh batch in some chocolate, plaster the dinosaur’s glorious, generous mug on them, and ship ‘em to stores.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some treats are tough! Most people can munch soft, tasty fruits, but only hardcore candy-lovers bother with jawbreakers. Pac-Man’s Power Pellets always looked like jawbreakers to me, so why not run with the idea? If you can handle such unwieldy orbs, then you have no reason to fear the glorified sentient gummies that are the Ghost Gang!

Hamada: One sort of candy I feel is sorta overlooked is the rock variety. It’s not my favorite sweet, but you could probably slap a brand on it without much trouble and profit. And for the purposes of this prompt, it’d be as simple as finding a game series with important rocks in it and shaping the sugar to match them. Of course, I’ve gotta make everything about Xenoblade, so let’s get to the point: Core Crystal Rock Candy! Specifically, I’m imagining four versions based on the common Crystal design and three cross-shaped Trinity Processor cores. Raspberry for the commons, cherry for Ontos, apple for Pneuma, and grape for Logos. After all, players have dreamt of tasting these heavenly hard drives, and while gummies might be simpler to make, I just can’t imagine them without a crunch!

Image: Nintendo. Pyra: she likes Core Crystal Rock Candy; so will you!

But there’s room for more supernatural rocks in this article, so I’m looking to the world of Final Fantasy VII for an idea it already made up for us: Materia Pops! Your visit to Costa del Sol isn’t complete if you haven’t tried this metaphor for the way Shinra monopolized the magic system. And since Materia comes in so many colors, it’s not hard to imagine the flavors for these popsicles being the expected blue raspberry, green apple, red cherry, and purple grape. But on top of that, maybe we could see white for coconut and yellow for the lemon no one would ever want? I’m already envisioning the “Blizzaga in your mouth” tagline they’d put on the side of the box…

Finally, we’re looking to Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom for a treat so good, the princess herself got jailed the moment she threatened it. I’m of course talking about Gohma’s Cotton Candy, which is all the rage in Faron Wetlands. Admittedly, it’s white webbing on a stick, so you couldn’t pay me to eat the real deal, but that’s irrelevant when it comes to branding. Spin some cotton candy, make it white instead of pink or blue, stick it to a little Tri Rod, and I think we’re on to something. If nothing else, fans will wanna keep that replica as a souvenir, so I don’t doubt this’d be a success!

PhantomZ2: Most of the fictional foods that I’ve wanted to eat come from cartoons, but the one that always comes to mind no matter what from a video game is Kingdom Hearts’ Sea Salt Ice Cream. Who doesn’t love a cool soft delicacy at any time of the year mixed with a coating to make it taste even better with the same thing that makes any food taste addicting? While the flavor does have origins in Disneyland, the closest that we’ve gotten to an official Kingdom Hearts III-style Sea Salt interactable item is a BATH BOMB, something that you can’t eat. Thus, it’d be awesome if Disney and SQUARE ENIX licensed Kingdom Hearts for edible ice cream replicating the iconic item. However, I would prefer a variety of flavors, perhaps Keyblade-themed: Oathkeeper Vanilla, Oblivion Dark Chocolate, Decisive Pumpkin Candy Cane, or Two Become One Cookie Crumble.

…But that’s just all of us from Source Gaming. What about you? Do you have exciting ideas for sweets based on a video game we didn’t cover? Why not tell us yourself. And Happy Halloween!