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Old 11-02-2015, 05:19 AM   #1
Jets4Life
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Default Debunking the "Needles" and "Razor Blades" in Halloween candy Myth

A Winnipeg mom is warning parents to carefully examine Halloween candy after she found a sewing needle poking out of a small chocolate bar her daughter collected on Saturday night.

Jennifer Tichborne said the candy's wrapper looked like it had been tampered with and when her daughter broke the chocolate bar in half, she saw the needle. Its eye still had thread attached.

"I freaked," Tichborne said.

"I didn't know what to think of that. I just couldn't believe I was actually looking at it."

Tichborne said she must have missed the candy when she first inspected what her daughter brought home. She posted pictures of the finding on Facebook so other parents would be reminded to check their kids' treats, too.



http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito...heck-1.3299168



last year:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/police-...ound-1.2085629

Ok, first off, I'm not saying that this mother is lying, but in 99% of these reportings (or more), it's found to be a hoax, perpretraited by children, or mentally ill parents. There have been instances in decades past, where a man was given the death penalty for deliberately spiking his son's candy bar with cyanide, and killing him, then blaming tampered candy. Another time a man found wrapped chocolate at his work at the post office, only to give it away to children, without realizing that the small candy bars were laced with marijuana, in some elaborate drug smuggling operation.

In another case, a child accidentally consumed his uncles heroin, mistaking it for candy, and died. However, the are barely any credible confirmed cases of stranger tampering with candy.

I'll dissect the mother's story:

1. "On Saturday night, Tichborne took her daughter trick-or-treating on all streets between Winnipeg's Strathcona and Clifton Streets and then between Dominion and Garfield Streets. They also made their way between Sargent and Wellington Avenues and then from Wellington to Notre Dame Avenue."

-If you check a city map, you will realize that it would be impossible for a speed walker (let alone a mothers and small child), to walk that distance within a 3-4 hour time frame. In fact, one would be hard pressed to go from home to home, delivering mail in an 8 hour shift. We are talking about all streets in between Strathcona and Clifton, then Dominion and Garfield. At the very least from Sargent at the south, and Notre Dame at the north.
I compared the area I used to walk as a child, in my neighborhood, and it is anywhere from 10-15 times the distance, and it took my parents and I at least three hours to trek less than 10% of that distance.

2. The dead giveaway. Look at how the Aero bar is cut. It's cut nearly perfect, yet there is a needle sticking out of the bar. Even just throwing an Aero bar in a container, and walking that distance, small pieces of the bar would shred, or at least break off if it were legitimately tampered with. There is no way you can walk a dozen city blocks, and have it remain perfectly divided it two.

3. Why would these people appear on camera, or conduct numerous interviews with the media, without filing a report with the Police. If this really happened, it would be a #1 priority for any Police department, as it would inflict bodily harm on an innocent child, not to mention the paranoia of other residents of the community.

4. History:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths

<i>"Poisoned candy myths are urban legends that malevolent individuals could hide poison or drugs, or sharp objects such as razor blades, needles, or broken glass in candy and distribute the candy in order to harm random children, especially during Halloween trick-or-treating."</i>

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp

"We checked major newspapers from throughout the country from 1958 through 1988," he said, "assuming that any story this horrible would certainly be well reported."

Well, they found a total of 78 cases and two deaths. [The two deaths Best was referring to were the O'Bryan murder and the accidental poisoning of Kevin Toston.] Further checking proved that almost all of the 78 cases were pranks. The deaths were tragically real, but they, too, were misrepresented in the beginning.

The pranks, he said, were all of kids — after years of hearing similar stories — inserting needles or razor blades into fruit, not realizing (or maybe realizing) how much they frightened their whole town.

"My favorite," Best says, "was the kid who brought a half-eaten candy bar to his parents and said, 'I think there's ant poison on this.' They had it checked and, sure enough, there was ant poison on it — significantly, on the end he had not bitten." Of course, the youngster had applied the poison himself.


Best has tried mightily over the years to destroy this particular myth, but obviously to no avail. "It's the old problem of trying to prove a negative," he says.</i>


http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/hal...ing-A-Myth.htm


What investigators found

In one of those cases, it turned out that a child who died after supposedly eating Halloween candy laced with heroin had actually happened upon a stash of the drug in his uncle's home.

In other cases, children who were initially thought to have died as a result of poisoned Halloween candy were found by pathologists to have succumbed to natural causes.

In one of the very few incidents in which Halloween treats were actually implicated in the death of a child, investigators discovered that the fatal sweets had been poisoned by the child's own father, who had recently taken out a life insurance policy on his son.</i>

"Tainted Halloween candy is a contemporary legend, spread by word of mouth, with little to support it," Best concluded.

Like most contemporary ("urban") legends, this one has more to reveal about our collective psyche than it does about real-world events. "Contemporary legends are ways we express anxiety," Best explains. This legend shows just how anxious we can be.


-----

Please spread this post. It's about time this urban legend dies, and children can enjoy Halloween without these attention seekers creating unnecessary panic in the community.
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Old 11-02-2015, 07:00 AM   #2
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I posted in the other threads that this doesn't actually occur but didn't bother to do the research. Nice work. Even if a case or even cases existed it would be irrelevant to worry about as traffic would be an exponentially greater risk than any risk from candy.

I do not inspect my kids candy. I just eat it without the lie
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Old 11-02-2015, 07:06 AM   #3
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I just call it tax when I eat it because the sooner they learn about the big bad tax man the better.
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Old 11-02-2015, 07:15 AM   #4
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I like how the daughter was able to, not only perfectly break the Aero in half, but also manage to do so while pulling the needle straight out of the chocolate horizontally - there's no damage to the piece without the needle. When you break an Aero you generally push up on the top or bottom part of the chocolate - in the middle - therefore, causing it to break at the stress point. If there's a needle in both sides, when it breaks, the end of the needle is also going to go up or down and is going to tear through the chocolate - it's not going to come out and not have caused any 'damage' to the chocolate. It's so painfully obvious that it was added after the chocolate was broken in half.

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Old 11-02-2015, 07:43 AM   #5
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Not to mention...Aero usually has a pretty distinct look to their chocolate in general. That doesn't look like an Aero piece at all.

Looks like they grabbed some random chocolate truffle, cut it in half with a knife, sort-of pushed the needle in, and tried to 'profit' off the story with 15 seconds of 'fame'.
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Old 11-02-2015, 08:01 AM   #6
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Not to mention...Aero usually has a pretty distinct look to their chocolate in general. That doesn't look like an Aero piece at all.

Looks like they grabbed some random chocolate truffle, cut it in half with a knife, sort-of pushed the needle in, and tried to 'profit' off the story with 15 seconds of 'fame'.
I ate a few Aero's that looked like that this year. The shape has changed. Might still be some old style ones out there, but just to clarify your above point isn't correct.
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Old 11-02-2015, 08:07 AM   #7
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If people are concerned I will be taking in Aero bars for further inspection. Feel free to PM me and we can schedule a pickup of all your Aero bars that you may feel need inspecting.
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Old 11-02-2015, 08:25 AM   #8
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Child kidnapping is in the same vein, the media is always telling people to watch out, because there are strangers out there who'd love nothing more than to snatch their children away. When in reality, child kidnapping is 99% someone who already knows the kid and is almost always one of the parents. People don't respect that kidnapping a small child in Canada is almost logistically impossible.
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Old 11-02-2015, 08:38 AM   #9
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Back when I was a kid, on the way home from trick or treating, I opened a box of smarties and without looking poured a mouthful of small rocks into my mouth. Never heard of anyone getting a pin or razorblade though and that was back when you would get a few candy apples and popcorn balls.
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Old 11-02-2015, 08:51 AM   #10
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In my old neighbourhood, there was an old lady that people said baked cookies with exlax in them and gave them out at Halloween. I don't know if it was true, but I know that parents in the neighbourhood believed it enough that everyone avoided her house.
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Old 11-02-2015, 09:43 AM   #11
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My favorite this year has been the multiple postings about how the drug dealers are running around handing out drugs made to look like candies, to the little kiddies. Right. Because they just hand out product for free, no compensation, no profit. In the middle of a group of the biggest generation of helicopter parents ever, who'd be on said drug dealer like flies on pig ####, if that even had snowball's chance in hell of happening. Of course, the "argument/rebuttal" is that "you never know, it could happen" and "no one ever said that drug dealers are smart!" Well, yeah, that could happen and so could the Cubs winning the world series and clearly, the drug dealers are a great deal smarter than you.
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Old 11-02-2015, 09:48 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hevishot View Post
If people are concerned I will be taking in Aero bars for further inspection. Feel free to PM me and we can schedule a pickup of all your Aero bars that you may feel need inspecting.
Frighteningly they will look the same at pick up as they do at drop off.
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Old 11-02-2015, 10:19 AM   #13
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http://news.nationalpost.com/news/ca...n-inside-candy
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Old 11-02-2015, 10:24 AM   #14
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^^
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In another incident a child bit into an O’Henry! chocolate bar after trick-or-treating in St. Catharines, Ont., and bit into something made of metal, which turned out to be a razor blade.
I'm sorry unless you have some kind of razor blade from the future that can maneuver around delicious pockets of whole peanuts, caramel and fudge, then this isn't happening.

How do you get a razor blade through this??

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Old 11-02-2015, 10:25 AM   #15
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Give it two weeks.

The Police will either conclude that it was a hoax, or either the parents or the child was responsible. 99.9% of the time, that is exactly what happens. I'll wait for the day they charge a complete stranger with this, as this has happened thousands of times in the past decade, and I cannot find a single instance of where an actual sadistic stranger was charged.
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Old 11-02-2015, 10:41 AM   #16
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And if it did happen and isn't a hoax it's likely a piece of the machine that made the candy and so tampering wouldn't be visa le
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Old 11-02-2015, 11:03 AM   #17
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No way you get a razor blade in a kit kat, too much wafer.
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Old 11-02-2015, 11:22 AM   #18
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This one is being reported by multiple children

http://6abc.com/news/police-needles-...candy/1062433/
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Old 11-02-2015, 11:27 AM   #19
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No way you get a razor blade in a kit kat, too much wafer.
a wafer thin razor blade, slid between the layers
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Old 11-02-2015, 11:33 AM   #20
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...eaths/1652807/

5 traffic related deaths per Halloween. Twice the normal rate.

If you want to be scared of something it's traffic not needles
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