Junk Food Nation, Happy Halloween!  Awkward Mondays will return next week.  Tonight thousands of kiddies will be out trick-or-treating, and TV stations across the dial will be showing marathons of horror movies.  Horror movies comes in many shapes and sizes – the absurd, the gory, the fantastical, the realistic, torture porn, cartoon, etc. And I hate horror movies.  HATE’EM.  Why?  Um, because they scare me, that’s why. I mean, I already shared with you all how Scream scared the piss out of me.

I get scared by the same things you do: killers jumping out of hidden closets, characters seeing things in mirrors that are horrifying, blood blood blood, and monsters that rip humans from limbs to limbs.  Woo, giving myself shivers just writing this. But I can get over it. Watching a remake of a Friday the 13th movie might give me a fight-or-flight response, but once its over, I’m usually ok.  Usually. I’m not staying awake thinking about Michael Myers.  I gots bills to pay, I’m more scared about not making rent!

No, to me the SCARIEST movies follow a very simple concept: they take traditional notions or icons of good or innocence, and turn them into the objects of fear. Said another way, I’m used to, say, demons, monsters, and deranged convicts/murderers being scary.  What I’m NOT used to be scary? Things which are SUPPOSED to be “good.”

1) DOLLS. Child’s Play is a movie that I will NOT WATCH.  EVER. AGAIN.  It took me years to get over this movie. MGM Studios took something which is normally not scary – a kid’s doll – and made that the antagonist. You wanna throw a six-armed monster at me with two faces and huge teeth? Frightening, but whatever.  You make an effing TOY laugh maniacally as he chases humans with a tiny knife? Or have a scene where the doll is in one position, and when you look back, it’s in another position????  The doll in the original Poltergeist still scares the sh*t out of me.

More after the jump.  To commemorate the Fall: Kellogg’s Limited Edition Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts!

The Money Shot

Kellogg’s Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts!  I finally found you!  I love love love pumpkin pie, so I wanted to see if Pop-Tarts could match up.  Also, I was looking for these everywhere during my quest to find a pumpkin snack for my eat!drink!snack! post.  Limited Edition = junk food gold.

Festive!

Kellogg’s has all the motifs going here.  Fall reddened leaves, the picture of the pie slice with the whipped topping, the amber trees and rollings hills in the background.  I half expect there to be the smell of wood burning oven when I open the box.  Even the color of the sprinkles – orange, yellow, brown – matches the theme perfectly.

Leaves, baby!

One side note…these Po-Tarts will last without spoil until next August???  Yikes, preservatives.

And yes, I got the 12-pack.  Don’t look at me like, that, skeptics. I might need to have a pumpkin pie treat in the morning…for a week straight.

I want arts and crafts with my pastries

Further recipes on the back of the box!  I LOVE IT!  Apparently, you can make Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts better by adding MORE frosting and candy corn!!!  Well, DUH.  And I love the suggestion that you’d have these at Thanksgiving – who WOULDN’T?? THEY LOOK JUST LIKE TURKEYS!  Gobble gobble sugar high!

Things to do with a box

And even more fun stuff INSIDE the box?  Say it ain’t SO, Kellogg’s!  Although the suggestion is really just to take the cardboard box, cut circles, and draws eyes on it… creativity at its best!

Untoasted

Toasted

Kellogg’s Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts gave off an AMAZING pumpkin spice smell as soon as I opened the box.  And that was inside the foil wrapper too!  Made me very optimistic for this snack.

Pumpkin Pie...filling?

After toasting, Kellogg’s Limited Edition Frosted Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts smelled – less pumpkin spicey.  I dunno, maybe the heat seared off some of the external seasoning?  They smelled more like traditional Pop-Tarts after toasting – sweet frosting and dough smell.  Still, I remained optimistic.

Pumpkin gel

One bite, and I was sold…sort of.  Don’t get me wrong, they were good – but not…great.  But I had to stop myself – these were pumpkin pie POP-TARTS, not pumpkin pie; it would be unfair to expect a total pumpkin pie experience from these.  Instead, I’d say that Kellogg’s delivered – the orangey gel inside tasted like pumpkin pie filling, although I wished there was MORE of it.  But the flavor was spot on.  The rest of the Pop-Tart was consistent.  I did, however, feel like the dough and frosting acted to drown out the pumpkin flavor sometimes, but I did get ENOUGH pumpkin flavor to feel satisfied.

All in all, a successful Pop-Tart; one of the only ones I’ve ever liked.  Kudos, Kellogg’s.

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More conceptually scary movies:

2) CHILDREN. There’s a reason why Stephen King is a genius. In Children of the Corn, he took another traditionally innocent thing – children – and turned them into killers.  When you think of kids in real life, you think of them playing XBox and Wii.  You don’t think of them with pale glowing eyes murdering adults in their sleep.  Children have been scaring people for ages.  The creepy children in The Shining.  The possessed boy in The Omen.  And the movie Orphan??? FORGET IT!  It’s so bad that if ANY creepy little girl comes up to me and surprises me, I’m putting a boot into her stomach and running like a chicken with his head cut off down the road.

3) ANIMALS.  I LOVE DOGS.  But the movie Cujo might’ve scarred me for life.  Thanks Stephen King. Thanks.  Thanks for Pet Cemetery also.  Jerk.

4) HOTEL ROOMS.  There’s a reason that people are creeped out by random hotels on the side of the road, and the movie Vacancy  is it.  Hotel rooms and the like are supposed to be places of sanctuary; yet in that movie it becomes a place of fear.  And even BEYOND that, I’m constantly being sketched out by the idea of secret cameras in any hotel room. While you were watching a porn movie in Room 101, you WERE the porn movie in 102!  CREEPY!!!!

5) CLOWNS. Um, do I even need to describe this?  Stephen King’s It.  Game, set, match.  Now bring me some new undies because I soiled myself.

Traditional notions of good, flipped on their head, make the scariest movies bar none.  They warp your mind and make you feel unsafe in places where you WANT to feel safe, and where you SHOULD feel safe. Stephen King, is the champion of this. Safe airplane ride? The Langoliers.  Innocent high school girl? Carrie. All your wishes come true? Needful Things.

Do me a favor, movie industry, and knock it off.  Churn out more craptastic movies like Final Destination 8 and the like, but leave my traditional notions of good and safety alone!  If I see an Angry Birds horror movie – I’ll be pissed.

Any thoughts?  Tell me in the comments below or hit me on Twitter @junkfoodguy or on my Facebook Page.