The PCU Staff recently reminisced about the best treats we remembered getting on for Halloween when we were much younger. Below are our best entries. Sound off below in the comments on what YOUR favorite Halloween treat or memory was!

Adam: Sodas. One year me and my friends went over to the rich neighborhood, and this one house gave out no-kidding sodas. Big ones. It added a couple of pounds to our bag, but who cares? In a sea of Milky Ways and Reeses Cups, that thing really stood out.

Marc: It wasn’t one particular thing, but one year — in my early teens — my friends and I hit the neighborhood for HOURS. We filled up pillowcases with candy thanks to the square mile of South Philly rowhomes (50 houses per street). We hit over a thousand homes and at the end of the night I had about two and a half pillowcases of candy. It lasted through Easter.

Harry: My Halloween was incomplete unless I got an Almond Joy or some Kit Kats. Those are the candies that I loved. We had one particular corner store that gave out penny candy (yes, there was such a thing) such as Now & Laters, Jolly Ranchers, Soda Candy, and Swedish FIsh. Most of us always tried to make it home to see Charlie Brown get his rock, and we were happy it wasn’t us! Yes kiddos, there was life before Blu-ray and DVRs!!!

Eric: For 4th grade I was going to be Luke Skywalker from Return of the Jedi and I had to get my appendix taken out, so I couldn’t participate in Halloween and it was also my parents’ anniversary. I had to recover at home alone with some turkey sandwiches, snacks, and some movies. It was actually kind of a fun night in.

Virginia: When I was growing up, there was this dentist everyone knew lived in the neighborhood. His house was huge and clean. Usually his lights were off on Halloween, but one day they weren’t. So my dad convinced me (I was 7) to go see what “The Dentist House” had. It was sparsely decorated and, by the time I was halfway up the driveway, I was convinced I was getting floss and a free toothbrush. The wife answered the door and she looks ecstatic to see a Trick-or-Treater and grabbed this HUGE bowl of candy. She held it out for me to pick one. They were all King-sized candy bars, the big ones that no parent bought because it’s way cheaper to buy a fun size bag. This dentist family didn’t skimp out though, which is weird because, well, it was known as “The Dentist House,” so why would there be candy there? Wrong. They had the best kind. My love of Reeses’ made the decision for me and I got that awesome four-pack. Best Reeses’ I ever had.

Armand: My life. Back in 2004, I went to a Halloween party as one of the bank robbers from the film Dead Presidents. I went all out, facepaint and everything. The police saw me and my homeboy (similarly costumed) about to walk into my friend’s house party. They thought we might be getting ready to rob the party. My then girlfriend had to race outside and explain that we were actually supposed to attend the party. After we were let go, never again have I worn a costume. I still like the movie though.

Paul: My mom thought that Halloween was evil so I couldn’t go trick or treating. That’s why I like horror movies and Halloween so much.

Manny: I have not been trick or treating in a long time, but I used to always love when I got little gag toys. Candy is good, but who cares about candy when you got a parachute man or those little styrofoam airplanes? Better still was when you got something that lit up, like glow sticks. We’d tie them to the end of a string and spin them around. So much fun at night!

Jason: A neighborhood young homeowner (I was in middle school, think the guy was 20’s-30’s) decided to be funny and give out ballons full of pixie stick powdered sugar the same year that Pulp Fiction came out. My mom didn’t understand why there were so many cops in the neighborhood. Neither did I ’til a few years later.

Ron: There was a guy who lived in my neighborhood growing up who made homemade root beer (he was literally the 2nd person to live in the neighborhood, him and the man across the street cut down the trees for over 3 miles to make the dirt road that became our road when they got around to paving it) and every year all the kids got a bottle of homemade root beer. One year, I helped him wash the bottles, so he gave me what I now know was a growler of root beer when everyone else got a 12 oz. bottle.

His root beer made the BEST burps. When you’re eight, that is vitally important.  I know I won the burping contest that weekend….

Doug: My love of theater and special effect makeup. Dressing up on Halloween meant that I could change into something or someone other than myself, and for a kid with a very visible disability, that was awesome. I was about 11 years old when I started looking up how to do different things with compounds like rigid colodion, liquid latex, etc. It was this fascination with changing my appearance that led me to theater in high school, and subsequently to the friends I have now. Every year, I try to do something new, and it’s been a blast.

And that’s it from the PCU staff. What cherished treats or memories are still with you years later?