With Halloween just days away, there are sure to be thousands of children out trick-or-treating, collecting all sorts of goodies. That was the case for the Allen brothers 25 years ago.
Trevor and Fraser Allen have always been competitive and on Halloween night in 1988, that competitiveness manifested into a wager.
“We had a bet, who could make their Halloween candy last the longest,” said Trevor. “I wasn’t losing.”
“We were best friends growing up and we did everything together, so it just made sense for him to try to win a bet and guarantee himself a win,” said Fraser.
Trevor, 12, and Fraser, 10, wrapped their candy in layers of plastic and electrical tape.
“I remember, when I wrapped it up, thinking to myself, ‘I’m giving away some good candy right now, I’m not gonna be able to eat it,” said Trevor.
And, he never did. However, he has kept the candy close by.
“It would go into junk boxes, it would go in my drawer, it’d be put in totes, this went from apartment to apartment,” said Trevor.
This Halloween marks a quarter of a century since the boys, now adults, wrapped their candy time capsule and the Allen brothers decided the milestone would be an appropriate time to unwrap their candy competition.
“You want to make it last as long as you can, but 25 years is kind of a good benchmark,” said Fraser.
The brothers unravelled layers upon layers, anxious to reveal their sweet treats and what they found, still quite intact, were suckers, penny chews and Life Savers.
“It smells like old Christmas decorations,” said Trevor as he unwrapped the soft, sticky archaic candies.
“It smells like chemicals,” said Fraser. “I was hoping to see some Chiclets.”
Gianfranco Mazzanti is an associate professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He says that hard candy is incredibly resilient to aging because it doesn’t usually have contain much water, so it is unlikely to see mould, even after two decades.
From a scientific point of view, Mazzanti says he is quite impressed by the brother’s bet.
“Almost nobody is going to do a 25-year experiment, you know, that should be publishable in something to win an Ig Nobel Prize or something. You know, there is something called an Ig Nobel Prize, rather than the Nobel Prize, for those kind of weird things,” says Mazzanti. “The patience of 25 years, carrying that thing around, I think it is completely admirable.”
The pair even taste tested the candy, finding flavour in the Rockets, but decided to take a pass on some of the other treats.
“You did win the bet, so here you go,” said Fraser, passing his brother his $5-dollar prize.
“Thanks for the bet brother,” replied Trevor.
Now, the brothers are crossing their fingers that the candy-testing doesn't result in a tummy ache.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jacqueline Foster
