Well, another Halloween has come and gone and once again I'm compelled to chronicle the ups and downs of this year's spooky season. I like doing these, even if just for myself, as it gives future me a window into the Halloweens of yesteryear.
On paper it was a banner year! I had quite the checklist and I was able to hit pretty well everything on it, but I will admit a severe case of burnout around mid-October. It wasn't necessarily that I was Halloweened out or anything like that, but my "real life" got intensely busy around late-September and early- to mid-October and it made it a little tough to savour the season.
I also made the decision in early September to start my Stranger Things rewatch in anticipation for the final season dropping in November, which ended up dominating my TV time. I think it mostly works as a Halloween-y show (season 2 even takes place at Halloween), but as a result I didn't get as many movies or video games in as I usually do. I'm not sad about it, but I do feel like my Letterboxd took a hit as a result.
With that out of the way, let's get to the good stuff!
Wednesday's Meal of Misfortune at Wendy's
This was a great way to kick off the Halloween season! Of course, this was meant to coincide with Netflix dropping the second season of the hit show, Wednesday, but the synergy with that show's release in the late days of summer gave us Autumn people something to look forward to very early on.
It didn't hurt that the food was pretty great! I mean the nuggets were just regular Wendy's fare, but the sauces looked and tasted pretty great, too. And the Frosty also looked amazing. We're not done with Wendy's, though! We'll circle back later.
Burger King Scooby Doo Kids Meal
Burger King, not to be outdone at Halloween, also kicked things off pretty early with a banger kids meal featuring the Scooby gang in their Halloween costumes!
I find BK does this sort of thing; they take dormant franchises and give them very random promotions. Last year they famously did an Addams's Family meal (which featured what I think was their best Halloween sandwich, the Wednesday Whopper), but earlier this year they also did a Naruto meal out of the blue. With no new Scooby movie or show released this year this promo may seem misplaced, but Scooby-Doo and Halloween go hand-in-hand, so I thought it was very cool.
My kids who love the occasional BK run actually couldn't be arsed to go there this season, so I only got to see one of the toys, but I got this cool Daphne dressed as a purple cat!
Obligatory Cereal Post
I'd be remiss not to bring up this year's cereal fare, such as it was. I must say, it was pretty lackluster, but that is becoming the norm. The one big highlight was that we finally got a new Count Chucula box here in Canada! We've been rocking the same box with the cut-out mask on the back for something like 12 years, but this year we were on par with the US and got the Jim Henson-inspired box art. I've already written all about this, so I won't say any more, but it was definitely a highlight.
Outside of that, we did get Demogorgon Crunch, which was pretty cool! It tasted just like French Toast Crunch with some marbits thrown in, but it was colourful and the box was amazing.
I was hoping we'd get the new Enid cereal from Wednesday, but alas no dice. It's weird, because we've actually had Wednesday cereal here in Canada ever since it was released last year. I got the impression it was only available seasonally in the US, but it never left store shelves here, it's that big of a hit. I figured the Enid cereal would be a no-brainer, but what do I know! I'm sure we'll get it next season.
Coffee Straight from the Pumpkin Patch
Of course there were many delicious pumpkin-flavoured coffees to be had this year. This all goes without saying, but I do bring it up, because there were some new offerings.
McDonald's dropped a pumpkin spice cold brew, which was pretty good I must say. It didn't have me thirsting for more, but it was something to fun to grab one afternoon.
Tim Horton's brought their pumpkin spice cold brew back this year, which was very happy about. It might seem weird, but last year - at least here in Canada - they didn't have it available. I think they had some promo going on at the time and let that replace their usual Autumn releases. My one gripe is that this year they had a pumpkin-infused cold foam on top, which sounds like a no-brainer, but I found to be a bit much. IMO, it actually taste better without the foam. I think when they first introduced their pumpkin spice cold brew it actually had a chocolate cold foam, which was deadly, but alas not this year.
As per usual, the Starbucks pumpkin frap was amazing. #BasicBitch
And since I'm talking coffee, this a good enough place to gush some more about these stacking Peanuts Halloween coffee mugs I scored at Home Sense this year. Again, I already mentioned these in an earlier post, but I'm just obsessed. They weren't the Charlie Brown Halloween themed cups I wanted, but they were the Charlie Brown Halloween themed cups I needed.
Halloween Bubbly
Again, not a lot to write about in the way of spooky soda this year, but it's tradition.
In Canada, we were treated to what I assume will be one last year of Mountain Dew VooDEW. As we've seen Mountain Dew phase out VooDEW in lieu of an actual candy collab with Trolli this year, I kind've doubt we'll continue to see VooDEW even though it's only been dropped up North twice. This is also judging by the fact that you can still find tons of the stuff at every corner store around here. I don't think it sold quite to expectation. As a guy who has been buying imported VooDEW for years, it certainly didn't knock my socks off. It was the 2023 US version, which tastes like Sour Patch Kids.
Outside of that, Fanta put a big push on again this year. I personally miss WTFanta!? but I can't complain about a fruit punch flavoured pop based on Child's Play! It was much better than last year's Beetlejuice apple-flavoured offering. They also did a bunch of other horror-themed labels, like Michael Myers and Freddy Fazbear.
I'll throw this in here, even though it's not technically soda pop, but Alani Nu had some bangers this year, in the form of Witch's Brew and Pumpkin Cream energy drinks. While I liked the Witch's Brew right away, it took me a while to appreciate the Pumpkin Cream variety. I eventually realized that they tasted surprisingly like a Tiger Pop sucker, which somehow mentally made them more palatable? I dunno, I'm weird.
Alas, as of writing this I have yet to find a Trolli Mountain Dew at my import store. It's not uncommon for me to find them months later, during the Christmas season, so when I do I'll make sure to post it on my socials.
KitKat Halloween
This was a fun one that only hit Canada this year: KitKat Scary Friends!
We've actually been getting the KitKat vampire here the last few years, which I believe dropped in the US this season. The Scary Friends are slightly smaller, but feature a vampire, Frankenstein's monster, a witch, a mummy, and an adorable bat.
As much as I enjoyed these, especially as an early seasonal drop, I noticed that Nestle quietly retired their full size Halloween bars this year. I don't think they were at thing outside of Canada, but each year Nestle would sell their usual bars, but with cool Halloween packaging complete with cute names, like Coffin Crisp instead of Coffee Crisp, Scaries instead of Smarties, and ScAero... you get the idea.
Hopefully they'll be back in time to come, but for now KitKat Scary Friends was a nice swap.
Oh, and since this won't fit anywhere else, we also got more Reese Halloween Shapes this year. We've only ever had Reese Pumpkins before, so it was fun to get amorphous blobs that somewhat resemble bats and ghosts, as well.
BK's Halloween Extravaganza
As if a Scooby-Doo Halloween kids meal wasn't enough, Burger King said to the other fast food burger joints "hold my beer" and went hog wild this season. Not only did they do a bright orange Jack-o-lantern Whopper and mummy-themed mozza sticks, but they had chicken nuggets that were shaped like vampire fangs that you could dip in blood-coloured sauce. Honestly, this didn't blow open the season the way I thought it would. I feel like this should've been the most talked about item of 2025.
I got to enjoy the Whopper, which was just another sandwich, but the nuclear orange bun was pretty clutch. Unfortunately, we didn't get the vampire nuggets here in Canada, which was a major bummer, but I'm hopeful we'll see this menu again next year.
Bucket-geddon
I'm not done talking about Burger King, though! This year pretty much every company decided to drop a Halloween bucket, and BK was no exception. All of their Halloween-themed stuff this year had this cool retro "let's all go to the lobby" look to it, which is what adorned their bucket. I thought it was pretty cool and really stood out amongst all the others.
I actually decided to abstain from buckets this season, both because I'm kinda bucketed out and also because I think if I brought any more them into my house my wife might throw me out.
Some highlights this year included Home Depot (yes, Home Depot), Dunkin' Donuts Munchkins, and - one of my favourites - Tim Hortons. The Timmies one was especially difficult to ignore as this year it was covered in black and purple cats. Also, they must've expected a bigger turnout, because my Timmies had plenty of buckets to go around well into late-October.
Of course the king of the Halloween bucket, the Boo Bucket from McDonald's, was back this year. They had some new, but very familiar, buckets that looked almost exactly the same as those from prior years, but included new black cat and red zombie variants, which I must say were enticing.
Funny side story time: while I was mostly successful at staving off my bucket addiction this season, one morning while I was checking the mail I noticed that someone had thrown garbage all over my lawn. I was understandably annoyed at first, but then I realized that it was actually a black cat Boo Bucket! So, like any lost kitten, I cleaned it up and gave it a home.
Out There Walmart Edition
For me personally, this honestly might've been the highlight of the whole damn season. I love the WNUF Halloween Special and it's quickly become one of my must-watch Halloween movies every year. A few years back Chris LaMartina, the director of WNUF, dropped a sequel, the Out There Halloween Mega Tape. Of course, I wanted to watch it immediately, but with shipping and duties combined with the American exchange rate, it was just too expensive to have shipped to Canada.
A few weeks into the Halloween season I started hearing word of a WNUF/Out There Blu-ray 2-pack hitting Walmart shelves from Terror-Vision so I reached out to Brad Henderson (acquisitions for Terror-Vision) to see if it was dropping in Canada. I was surprised when he said that a very small number of discs would be hitting Canadian Walmarts, and so the hunt was on.
I honestly figured there was no chance I'd see it in Halifax and that most of the sets would go to Ontario, but I figured dropping into some of the local Walmarts around me as I was running other errands wouldn't hurt. After a few weeks of checking here and there, I figured there was no chance I was getting it. One day while I was doing a Spirit run I popped into a Walmart Supercentre and was shocked to find they no longer carried any movies whatsoever! I had pretty well lost hope, but I checked out my nearest Walmart one last time and was shocked to find a single copy of the Blu-ray set! I practically danced out of the store.
So I finally got to watch the movie, which I loved - it will take a few more viewings to know how I rank it against the original, but this one heavily features aliens and UFO specials from the 90s, which is my bread and butter, so I can see it becoming a serious favourite.
Frosty Fright's at Wendy's
And finally, the last item on my list is actually the last Halloween-themed promo I got to partake of this year: Frosty Frights!
These dropped in the US last year, but didn't grace Canada. I was pretty bummed at the time, but when I heard they were coming back this year I thought Wendy's would for sure bring them to the North.
While I saw them all over my socials from US friends, I kept coming up with bupkis at my local Wendy's, so I'd given up hope. Then the week of Halloween itself, Wendy's Canada came out of nowhere with one last trick or treat and dropped Frosty Frights!
As a guy who had - as I previously mentioned - case of Halloweenitis, this was just what I needed! And even cooler was that I actually scored a rare neon variant!
Another Halloween in the Books
And that's it for Halloween 2025! I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff, but honestly it was hard to keep up this year. If you're a brand whore and promo addict like myself then you had your work cut out for you.
I didn't actually get to do a lot of the seasonal trips and events that I usually enjoy this year, like hay rides, corn mazes, apple picking, etc. It was a bad year for crops in Nova Scotia, as we suffered a terrible drought this summer. Also things just got crazy around here with the kids getting back into school and their many different activities and sports that a lot slipped through my fingers.
So, I was glad to have all these different junk food promos to keep me busy on my lunch breaks or the occasional trip to Spirit Halloween for a seasonal infusion.
How was your Halloween? Did it meet your expectations? As usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts! You can drop a comment on this post or on my Bluesky and Insta.
Happy Halloween!
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