This weekend I’ve been sharing tasty facts about your favorite candy treats on Twitter. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Kit Kat flavors available in Japan include wine, sweet potato, wasabi, and soy sauce.
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2. A 3 Musketeers bar originally included three smaller bars: one vanilla, one chocolate and one strawberry.
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3. Chocolate magnate Milton Hershey had reservations on the Titanic. He ended up taking an earlier ship.
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4. M&M’s actually stands for “Mars & Murrie’s,” the candy’s founders—Forrest Mars Sr. & William F. R. Murrie.
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5. The name PEZ (as in PEZ Dispensers) comes from the German word for peppermint — PfeffErminZ.
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First thing’s first: what’s the deal with Halloween? This visual history should give you the context you crave for this monster holiday.
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Halloween can be all fun and games … unless it happens to involve one of the 7 Halloween Pranks Gone Wrong.
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Speaking of pranks (which I am normally not a huge fan of), this greatest Halloween prank ever is always worth seeing again.
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From Flossy reader Janel, the Ray Harryhausen creature list (and if you don’t think stop motion makes things just that much scarier, you have nerves of steel!)
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Necessary classic costume picture of Baby as a Lobster reminds me: any good last-minute costume ideas, Flossers? Or did you already go as or see something great this weekend?
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Without further ado, here’s some indulgence for your sweet tooth: a fantastic post (cough, cough) on Halloween Candy.
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What are the top selling candies from around the world? Some of the results of this Sweets Quiz may surprise you (I mean really … gum?)
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And since I’m taking a global view (though deviating from Halloweeny links for the moment): a Flickr slideshow of pizza boxes the world over.
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Halloween doesn’t just have to be for kids – Slashfood has some well-researched and inspired ideas about what kind of wine to pair with your candy consumption (you know, all that candy you confiscated from your kids in the name of health and moderation!)
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And speaking of health, if you’re looking to compare the relative nutrition (er, make that “relative harm”) of your Halloween candy booty, this gallery of candy facts should make an excellent resource.
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Remember to send none of your tricks but all of your link-treats to FlossyLinks@gmail.com. Happy Halloween!

Whether you’re taking some little ones out trick-or-treating or going to an adult party dressed as a radish, we join you in the spirit of Halloween and offer up a few not-so-famous firsts related to the holiday. Oh, and please have your kids save their Necco Wafers, Good ‘N Plenty, Circus Peanuts and other “ick” candies for my dad, who never met a sweet treat he didn’t like!

First Costume of the Costume King

If you grew up in the 1960s, 70s or 80s, you’re no doubt familiar with the $2.95 Halloween costumes-in-a-bag that featured an illustrated smock and a plastic mask. Those mass-produced costumes were manufactured by Ben Cooper Inc., a Brooklyn, New York, company founded in 1937. The trick-or-treating for candy tradition was gaining serious steam at the time due to the Great Depression, and Cooper (a theatrical costume designer with a keen business sense) capitalized on the trend by producing inexpensive costumes fashioned in the likenesses of popular characters of the era. His crack legal team purchased the licensing rights first to several Disney characters, and then Spiderman, the first Marvel character to be thusly immortalized in reflective plastic. During the next 50 years everyone from Farrah Fawcett to the Beatles to Rubik (of Cube fame) to the various Smurfs were represented in the Ben Cooper line. As for the company’s founder, the very first Halloween costume he ever wore was a little Devil suit at the tender age of seven.

First Visit by the Great Pumpkin

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For a while, Central Park, the 770-acre green oasis in the middle of Manhattan, wasn’t considered a place you really wanted to go. In the early 1980s, there were 1,000+ crimes of various types committed in the park every year, but muggers and vandals aren’t the only creeps that have run rampant there. From its opening in 1857 through today, the park has played host to all sorts of scary things going bump in the night.

A Secret and a Mysterious Death
The weirdness starts at the very beginning with Calvert Vaux, co-designer of the park. (more…)

The political climate of late has certainly been wild and wacky. As the midterm elections approach, Ranker.com takes a look at some of the craziest moments so far.
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Winsor McCay may have died in 1934, but his influence is still strongly felt in the cartoon and animation industry. Not only did his talent impress the likes of Walt Disney, the power and depth (and sometimes beauty) of his sociopolitical cartoons from 1929-1930 still resonate today!
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To quote an episode title from Lost, “Dead Isn’t Dead” when it comes to superheroes. From bizarro worlds to wormholes to “no, really, he/she was just frozen in a block of ice for 100 years, don’t worry about it,” it seems bothering to have a superhero funeral is largely a waste of time!
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Whenever there’s a photo dump of unusual photos, I can’t help but speculate that a handful must be photoshopped. But in some ways I’m not sure I care – there are simply stunning no matter how some might have been “touched up”!
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What is the secret of long-lasting love? Getting a tattoo of your intended? (Ok we all know that initiates almost certain doom). Carving your initials on a tree? Or padlocking a love note to a metal bar? Yes it’s true, in some places, the “padlock of love” is a popular tradition! (Thanks Jan!)
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From Flossy reader Janel, a very cool link for fans of both Star Wars and Beethoven. One very talented man finds a way to musically marry the two off the cuff.
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Most of us probably don’t pay too much attention to those faded sides of buildings sporting old painted advertisements, but consider that those were done by hand by advertising artists. It’s a dying art, so one photographer has made it a mission to catalogue all of them that he sees.
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Finally, Emily sent in a great link this week to a short film that finds a way, like Wall-E, to make a normally inanimate object seem rather heroic and endearing.
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Stay tuned – more links on the way tomorrow! And you can send in your submissions anytime to FlossyLinks@gmail.com.

It’s the holiday weekend, so let’s just get silly with some Halloween videos. Some are old, some are new, some even try to be spooky, but all are meant to bring you a laugh, one way or another!

Note: None of these videos will jump out and scream at you.

Dawn of the Ted

Part of the Misery Bear series from BBC Comedy.
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Floating Head

From Waverly Films.
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YES! You can play this challenge/contest without knowing a thing about the weekly hunt! It’s sort of a one-off – a stand-alone if you will. Will you?

Answer the Level 3 bonus-round question correctly and you may win your pick of anything you want from the neatoshop (valued under $25). Ready? Set. GO!

Oh, and don’t forget, even if you’re not the winner, you still need to solve the challenge to compete for next week’s Day 5 final challenge!

Most colleges have a campus-specific tradition or two that you simply must participate in before you graduate. Here are a few of them – be sure to leave a comment and tell us what your college or alma mater does!

1. Naked Quad Run – Tufts University, Medford, MA.
I don’t need a special day to run around naked, but apparently they do at Tufts. On the night before winter reading period, many Tufts students throw off the shackles of clothing all the way from West Hall to the Residential Quad. The tradition originated when Tufts, an all-male school, and Jackson College, an all-female school, were combined to create the Tufts we know today. Many young men, angry at the flagrant display of women’s rights, took matters into their own hands, or, er, other parts, by streaking in front of the President.

2. Cadet Versus Civilian Snowball Fight – Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
Just as Tufts used to be all-male, Virginia Tech used to be all Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). In honor of its heritage, civilians and cadets engage in a no-holds-barred snowball fight during the first big snowfall of every year. If you’re at VT, see snow, and hear a fire alarm, you best run for cover. The cadets are coming. Check out the 2010 fight:

3. Healy Howl – Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
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For many of us, long before nights of joyriding in cars or filling bar-rooms of debauchery, weekend nights were simpler times spent at home with family watching television.

In 1989, ABC’s block of Friday night programming became collectively known as TGIF (Thank Goodness It’s Funny). How well do you remember the shows that have aired throughout the years?

Take the Quiz: TGIF

If you’ve seen Mad Men, you’ve probably noticed books embedded within the show. In each season, period-appropriate books show up and sometimes even relate to major plot points (like Meditations in an Emergency and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword). The New York Public Library has been tweeting about these books and has now assembled a complete collection of the books shown onscreen (there are even screen-grabs at the bottom of the post!), along with some recommended reading beyond what has been featured on the show. From Lady Chatterley’s Lover to The Clue of the Black Keys, it’s all there.

In related Mad Men book news, the fictional Roger Sterling has been working on a memoir called Sterling’s Gold throughout the last season. Guess what? It’s actually a “real” book — it’s available for pre-order on Amazon. The description features these pearls of wisdom:

A few “sterling” examples:

When a man gets to a point in his life when his name’s on the building, he can get an unnatural sense of entitlement.

The day you sign a client is the day you start losing him.

Being with a client is like being in a marriage. Sometimes you get into it for the wrong reasons, and eventually they hit you in the face.

When God closes a door, he opens a dress.

Right on, Roger.