It’s Halloween season, a time when millions of kids and adults head out into their local neighborhood or go to house parties, eating candies or bobbing for apples. The estimated number of trick-or-treaters in 2017 was about 41.1 million kids who visited 66.6 million housing units.
That sure sounds like a lot of fun. But you know what I believe isn’t fun from this holiday? It isn’t the fact that Reformation Day is completely shadowed by this mass desire for candy and egging houses. It isn’t the fact that teenagers wander the streets late at night dressed as Pennywise. These things irk me, but they aren’t what I a problem with.
What I do have a problem with is “fun” sized candy bars. I put the word “fun” in quotations because the name does not fit the product, in multiple ways.
For starters, I have never once in my life heard someone explain their meal or sustenance as “fun.” Yes, someone might call their dinner fun if they were at a themed dinner, but that implies the context around the food and not the food itself. People don’t call food fun. Food is not a toy you play with out in the garage. Little Timmy doesn’t get a “fun” size crunch bar for Christmas and freak out because he can play with it. No, he either eats it, or he accidently lets it melt by leaving it next to the fireplace.
Secondly, if for a minute we were to forgive the first transgression, one can’t say that a little nugget is more fun than the actual-sized candy bar. The full-size candy bar is superiorly better than the “fun” size; there is no denying that fact. To say that it’s “fun” to downsize is ridiculous. Fun sounds more like a company’s attempt to make a less enjoyable experience sound good to the consumer.
Now, I wanted to look at the history of this cursed idea and see if I could figure out why a company would do such a thing. After some research, it seemed that they used to name their smaller size of candies “junior” but then discontinued that line. They then made it just a little bit bigger and renamed it “fun size.” I find a major problem with this. Junior size makes sense. It is the smaller version of the regular size. It follows the correct wording of size. But then these companies decided to throw consistency out the window, and create chaos abounding with their wretched renaming of “fun.”
Folks, I cannot stress this enough. There is nothing fun about “fun” size. It is inferior in size and honestly insulting that companies think they can name it “fun.”
I encourage you to give away the bigger size candy bars this year. And I know, that seems like a lot. But if you look at the numbers on Amazon, buying full size crunch bars compared to the “fun” size bars will actually save you a few pennies. And with other candies the numbers of pennies are quite close. So, I encourage you in the future to be the favored house that gives out full-size candy bars and makes all the kids smile.
