Day 4081: Candy and Dogs

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Popular Halloween Candy

    by state.

Online candy retailer, CandyStore.com, says a whopping 96% of the people who celebrate Halloween will buy candy, spending an average of $31.93 each. (The 4% who aren’t buying candy are the ones who undoubtedly drop toothbrushes into underwhelmed kids’ treat bags.) The company cites data from the National Retail Federation, which estimates that overall Halloween candy spending will hit $3.6 billion this year, a 16% jump over last year. 

 So what are we all buying? CandyStore.com has analyzed its sales data for the past 15 years and has determined that the top 10 Halloween candies are, in order from No. 1 to No. 10, Reese’s Cups, M&M’s, Hot Tamales, Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Starburst, Hershey’s Kisses, Candy Corn, Hershey’s Mini Bars, and Snickers.

Alabama: Skittles
Alaska: Twix
Arizona: Hershey’s Kisses
Arkansas Butterfinger
California: M&M’s
Colorado: Milky Way
Connecticut: Almond Joy
Delaware: Sour Patch Kids
Florida: Reese’s Cups
Georgia: Jolly Ranchers
Hawaii: Hershey’s Mini Bars
Idaho: Snickers
Illinois: Sour Patch Kids
Indiana: Starburst
Iowa: Reese’s Cups
Kansas: M&M’s
Kentucky: Reese’s Cups
Louisiana: Lemonheads
Maine: Sour Patch Kids
Maryland: Hershey’s Kisses
Massachusetts: Butterfinger
Michigan: Starburst
Minnesota: Hot Tamales
Mississippi: 3 Musketeers
Missouri: Almond Joy
Montana: Twix
Nebraska: Sour Patch Kids
Nevada: Hershey’s Mini Bars
New Hampshire: Reese’s Cups
New Jersey: Tootsie Pops
New Mexico: Hot Tamales
New York: Sour Patch Kids
North Carolina: M&M’s
North Dakota: Hot Tamales
Ohio: Blow Pops
Oklahoma: Skittles
Oregon: M&M’s
Pennsylvania: Hershey’s Mini Bars
Rhode Island: M&M’s
South Carolina: Skittles
South Dakota: Starburst
Tennessee: Tootsie Pops
Texas: Sour Patch Kids
Utah: Candy Corn
Vermont: M&M’s
Virginia: Butterfinger
Washington DC: M&M’s
Washington: Tootsie Pops
West Virginia: Hershey’s Mini Bars
Wisconsin: Butterfinger
Wyoming: Reese’s Cups

TMI ?

 

 

 

 

How dogs changed the course of civilization

“Fur babies.” Dogs on planes. Dogs in purses. Dogs in restaurants. Dogs, dogs, dogs. Man’s best friend is now in every part of our daily – and nightly – lives. It’s a relationship that goes back 20,000 years.

Yes, 20,000 years. Dogs were the first thing that man ever domesticated, the first way that we adapted our environment to us – and that fact changed, well, everything.

What we know for sure is that all modern dogs are descended from the gray wolf. And that, most likely, packs of these wolves followed early humans – a nomadic people – around, hoping to dine on the scraps and refuse they produced. Eventually, as the theory goes, a few dogs got close enough to humans to grow somewhat tame. And humans realized the utility of having an animal around – for safety, hunting and the like. But as the wolf became the dog, the relationship went from a utilitarian one to a much more intimate one.

In an excavation of a 12,000-year old village in ancient Israel, for example, a woman was found buried with a puppy – a sign that even that long ago, dogs meant more to humans than just what they could do for us.

Fast forward to the late 1800s, when something else happened that changed our relationship with dogs: flea and tick shampoo was developed. Prior to that innovation, dogs were purely outside animals – they were considered too dirty to be allowed to spend any time inside. No longer.

“Once this animal sort of crosses the threshold from being outside inside, he starts to be a member of the family because now your dog is sleeping on your couch. He’s sleeping with your kids. He’s sleeping with you. You see him every morning when you get up. He is literally part of the household. This is a really fundamental transformation where you go from dog as pet or even companion to becoming a member of the family.”

And once dogs got into our houses, they changed us as much as we changed them. 

“[The dog] sits right on that border: one leg in the animal world, one leg in the human world, the world of culture,” Dr. Margo DeMello, an anthrozoologist at Carroll College, said: “In some ways, the dog has lost a lot of its animal-ness and gained some humanness, but that is also transferred to us. Our lives are richer, and our lives are different because of this relationship and because of this intimacy that we have.”

 

 

 

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