‘Check your kids’ Halloween candy’ meme makes timely return

This Halloween, a popular meme is making its return. But with a more abstract twist.

The “check your kids’ Halloween candy” meme, which first went viral in meme form in October 2014, parodies “a Halloween urban legend about people hiding needles and razors in candy before giving them out to trick-or-treaters,” according to meme database Know Your Meme.

However, Know Your Meme cites an October 2011 video, titled “RAZORS IN YOUR APPLE (on Halloween)” from YouTuber Jack Douglass, as the first major parody of the candy warnings. Douglass’ video has gained more than 1.5 million views in the years since it was posted.

The following year, a user on photo sharing website Imgur posted a men’s facial razor in an apple. The trend spread to Twitter, where, in 2014, a user posted a handgun next to a Twix candy bar, joking that they had found the weapon inside the candy, according to Know Your Meme.

Now, years later, the meme has reemerged. And it’s “more abstract and surreal” than before, per Know Your Meme. Because this time around, users who are posting the memes have put objects in between the image of the candy that normally wouldn’t go there.

This year’s slew of memes began as early as Oct. 4 after Twitter user @JohnBiggs tweeted a warning with an image of Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights“ in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, according Know Your Meme.

Though it appears @JohnBiggs has since deleted the tweet, the memes have continued to dominate Twitter — with everyone from NASA to Dave & Busters participating in the viral trend.

“Please check your scientist’s candy this Halloween! We just found the Carina Nebula in a candy bar. Frightening!” NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies wrote in an Oct. 11 tweet.

“Be diligent and check your child’s candy this year, just found unused vacation days in this chocolate bar. No words,” the LinkedIn official Twitter account wrote in an Oct. 11 tweet, featuring an image of a beach inside a candy bar.

Arcade and restaurant Dave & Busters tweeted: “Be diligent and check your child’s candy this year, just found a finger trap shoved inside a candy bar. No words.”

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation joked it had found a slimier surprise in a candy bar. “Be diligent and check your child’s candy this year, just found an invasive silver carp shoved inside a Milky Way. No words,” it tweeted.

The notion that a person might spike Halloween candy with drugs or sharp objects is called “Halloween sadism,” a term coined by Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, who has studied the phenomenon.

Best’s research suggests that it is rare that contaminated treats are ever given to children on Halloween and that it is even more rare that a child is injured by a contaminated treat.

Halloween sadism, according to Best’s website, “is a story that is told as true, even though there may be little or no evidence that the events in the story ever occurred. Contemporary legends are ways we express anxiety.”