Yeah, I also grew up poor, and now I’m the cool house that gives out full-sized candy bars. Even in this economy, and after having a bad year financially, I refuse to compromise on Halloween. I always strive to be the house that kid-me would have wanted to tell his friends about.

Haha, it does tend to evaporate like that!

Glad you checked your kid’s candy. Would have been a disaster had you not caught this

The guy down the street that doesn’t pick up after his dog was handing out signed investment guarantees into data center proposals for any kids who had them. What the hell, dude.

no

I’d take a lime over a potato or candy

Kids will take the potato for the laughs. My brother did it one year, and quickly had kids excitedly go “ohhh you’re the potato house??” when he offered the potato. One year, he ended up going through like three giant bags of russets, and still had an almost full candy dish at the end of the night.

He lives on the curve of a horseshoe-shaped street that is a popular destination for trick-or-treaters. The entire neighborhood goes all out with the Halloween decorations, several neighbors coordinate with themes and set up haunted houses, etc… They basically treat it like a big block party, and fully shut down the entrances at both ends of the horseshoe so kids can safely wander around and play in the street. Experiencing your first Halloween in his neighborhood is basically a rite of passage for new neighbors. And parents looking for good trick-or-treat destinations like it because there’s a public parking lot at the end of the horseshoe. So they can park at the end of the horseshoe, walk the horseshoe with their kids for an hour or two, enjoy the low-stress chaperoning with the closed street and amateur haunts, and end up right next to where they parked afterwards. It’s a whole thing.

Since he’s at the peak of the horseshoe curve, he’s the halfway point for that specific street. Groups of trick-or-treaters pass each other on the sidewalk, and the group that got a potato will naturally be laughing about it. So by the time those new trick-or-treaters make it all the way down the street to his house, they have passed several groups that were all laughing about their potatoes. And of course by that point, they want a potato of their own.

It basically generates a real-time micro-meme, where kids excitedly discussing their potatoes makes other kids want a potato. And since he’s at the curve, he’d have trick-or-treaters talking about the potato house all the way down to both ends of the horseshoe. And that means that they’d be generating potato meme-force for the entire second half of their trek, (regardless of which end they started at,) all the way down the street. At a certain point, it becomes self-sustaining and kids are actively seeking out the potato house like it’s some sort of urban legend.

Just plain raw potatoes out of a bag. They have a reputation for this and some groups of kids will be chanting " potato, potato, potato" before they even open the door. They were saying they may spring for full size russet baking potatoes for the enthusiasts next year.

Who knows, but don’t show up without your painment method.