ONCE AGAIN, something I first wrote for Everything Holidays, this time about my most-favoritist topic that I haven’t written about nearly enough on my own site lately: the wonders of junk food.

The confectioners of the world are continually hard at work to come up with the latest candy fads. Here are just a few kid-favorites of recent years, for your party and trick-or-treat-giving consideration.

• CHUPA CHUPS. Little round lollipops from Europe, promoted by Spice Girls and fashion models as a playful treat. The 120-piece package comes in a metal tin or a plastic container shaped like an old-fashioned milking can.

  There’s also an interactive version, Crazy Dips–the pop’s shaped like a foot; you lick it once, then dip it in the Pop Rocks-like fizzy candy tht comes in the same foil pack, then re-lick for a miniature mouth-explosion.

• MEGA WARHEADS. “Extremely Intense” sour hard-candy drops. There’s sweet fruit flavors inside, but only after your mouth dissolves the ultra-sour outer layer. Part of a whole hot-and-sour craze that emerged in the mid-’90s; other products of its type include Too Tarts Sour Powder (“The Candy With Attitude!”) and Atomic Fireballs.
• ALIEN HEAD POPS. Pseudo-fluorescent green lollipops, shaped just like the outer-space visitors publicized in “alien abduction” TV documentaries. You can also get a 60-lollipop package with an alien-head shaped plastic container.
• BUBBLE GUM AND GUMMI CANDY IN FAST-FOOD SHAPES. Kids can consume empty calories while fantasizing about other empty calories: Burgers, hot dogs, peanuts, pizza, French fries, etc.
• SPIN POPS. Battery-powered handles (bearing the 3-D images of popular cartoon stars) that turn your lollipop around for you, making the empty calories even emptier.
• BUG CITY. Not quite as gross-looking as Gummi Worms, but these chewable critter-shaped candy bits still deliver the double-dare-you factor.
• CANDY AND GUM IN PLASTIC NOVELTY CONTAINERS. The gum sticks or candy bits aren’t the attraction here, it’s the make-believe grownup lifestyle acoutrements the containers look like: Beepers, boom boxes, computer mice, cell phones, rolls of measuring tape, label makers, telephone headsets, microphones, even fire extinguishers.
• BOTAN RICE CANDY. Chewy lemon-flavored rice candy bits with two wrappers. You discard the paper outer wrapper, but leave the transparent inner wrapper on. It melts in your mouth.
• TONGUE SPLASHERS. Gum balls that dye your tongue (the colors last about five minutes); packaged in miniature paint cans.

But I wouldn’t leave you wanting these goodies but unable to find them; so here’s some places to look:

• ARCHIE MCPHEE’S HALLOWEEN GOODIES. Costumes, goofy candy, party props and more, from a leading mail-order novelty store.
• STUPID CANDY AND GIFTS. “A complete waste of perfectly good technology.” Online sales of Roach Hotel Candy, Label Maker Bubble Gum, Space Alien Glow Pops, and much more.
• CANDY DIRECT. Tasty treats from the familiar to the ridiculous; online ordering.

IN OTHER NEWS: A soft-money “Astroturf campaign” (John Hightower’s term for fake “grass roots”) is being waged on behalf of four Seattle City Council candidates, depicting them as valiant defenders of City Attorney Mark Sidran’s assorted “civility” laws. The campaign’s led and funded by a Microsoft vice president. Since when have MS executives known a damn thing about civility?

TOMORROW: The joys of oral surgery. (Really. Sort of.)

ELSEWHERE:

• “This book reads like the author dictated it from his desk half-drunk….”
• Finally, somebody takes critical judgment to chronicle cinema’s next-to-last vestige of non-ironic sleaze, the direct-to-video “erotic thriller….” (found by Memepool)
• Neither Sexwithsara nor Toad the Wet Sprocket is included in a supposedly “Canonical List of (actual) Weird Band Names….”