X

Pickle, bacon, coffee and gravy candy canes? That's twisted!

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's time to think about Christmas. Deck the halls with these truly disturbing holiday treats.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read
pcikle.jpg
Enlarge Image
pcikle.jpg

Pickle-flavored candy canes are dill-icious. Hah, we're just kidding, they sound hideous.

Archie McPhee

Thanksgiving is over, and for many, it's time to think about Christmas, and how one of its most charming candy traditions has gone completely off the rails.

Goofy Seattle-based retailer Archie McPhee, home of Crazy Cat Lady action figures and glow-in-the-dark finger tentacles, has taken the simple, sweet candy cane and twisted it even more than normal.

It's as if someone in the Archie McPhee product development played a game of MadLibs to come up with the flavors that'd be most hideous in candy cane form.

Bacon candy canes replace the minty freshness of a traditional candy cane with a meaty taste that might go better with your morning eggs than as a sweet snack.

Maybe these dill-icious pickle candy canes are more your flavor. The site urges you to "hang (them) on the tree for a briny surprise."

The gravy candy canes may be the cruelest holiday prank -- they look enough like traditional canes that you could substitute them in the office candy dish without anyone noticing until it's too late. Hey, that guy in accounting probably deserved it.

You can shock the flavor wimps in your family with a wasabi candy cane, which will add the spice of a sushi dinner to your candy dish.

The site also sells Krampus candy canes (smoky cinnamon, for that fire-and-brimstone flavor of the creepy holiday demon), coffee candy canes (sadly, not caffeinated) and Hanukkah canes. Those last ones are the traditional mint flavor, but they come in bright blue and white stripes.

The canes cost $7 (that's about £5 or AU$10) for a box of six, although restoring any friendships you break by offering up these monstrosities may cost more. In the end, you might want to try a Bah, Humbug cane -- the blank slate of holiday candy, advertised as having "no flavor, color or Christmas spirit."

Credit goes to Thrillist for spotting these weird Christmas treats.