"What's going on in this candy-coated heart of darkness?"
— Ralph while interrogating Sour Bill, Wreck-It Ralph
When we were children, our parents always warned us about all the bad things that would happen if we ate too much sugary food like candy, cake, and ice cream: our teeth would rot, we'd get fat, we'd get diabetes, and all those other wonderful things. Turns out this metaphor also works on a deeper level when it comes to things in our adult lives that are bad for us, too. Life is filled with temptations big and small, and any one of them could lead you down a path you don't want to go down, just like eating too much delicious candy can leave you with a mouthful of rotten teeth. (And an absurdly expensive dentist's bill.)
Common variations:
- Candy is used as a G-rated metaphor for drugs and/or treated as if it were a drug in children's media.
- Candy is compared to some extremely desirable thing that can only be obtained by doing something immoral, or something that seems appealing but has no actual value (at best) or is outright harmful (at worst).
- A Child Hater/pedophile/somebody else who Would Hurt a Child attempts to attract unwitting victims by handing out free candy.
- Someone hands out Razor Apples to trick-or-treaters on Halloween.
- Somebody goes on a diet and can't have sweets, but Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere.
- A romantic relationship turns from sweet to sour. This version of the trope might come from the association between chocolate and romance.
- Someone anonymously receives a "special present" of candy or dessert that has laxatives, poison or another nasty substance in it. May include a note that says “From Your Secret Admirer XOXO."
- A Bitch in Sheep's Clothing-type villain has a dessert motif or is an anthropomorphic dessert of some kind.
- A Level Ate made of sweets appears to be a literal Sugar Bowl, then turns out to be a Crapsaccharine World under its sweet, happy surface.
- "You are what you eat" becomes literal when someone starts turning into candy after eating too much of it.
- A child eats medicine after mistaking it for candy.
Common motifs associated with this trope:
- Candy is an Age-Stereotypical Food, so candy examples tend to be more associated with child characters, while dessert examples are more associated with adult characters. After all, it's harder to lure an adult into the back of an unmarked white van with free lollipops.
- This trope is also more strongly associated with female characters than male ones, probably because of the assumption that Girls Love Chocolate. (A male character associated with this trope is likely to be a Sissy Villain because everybody knows Real Men Hate Sugar.)
- Related to the above, expect the color pink to be featured prominently (and probably an intense, eye-searing shade of bright pink rather than a soft, pale pink) due to its separate associations with sweet food and femininity, in which case it likely overlaps with Psycho Pink.
A Sub-Trope of Bright Is Not Good. Other related tropes include:
- Bad Humor Truck: A villain drives an ice cream truck.
- Consuming Passion: Eating somebody is used as a metaphor for sex.
- Evil Tastes Good: A villain uses food/drinking/eating metaphors for villainy.
- Gingerbread House: A house made of delicious food that may be used as a trap to lure in those with a Sweet Tooth.
- If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You: This trope often underlies the belief that healthy diets must consist of unappetizing meals, the logic being that eating Disgusting Vegetarian Food never brings nasty surprises to your physical well-being, or corrupts you spiritually like delicious food does — especially desserts.
- Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: A female character's femininity is used to cover up (or contrast with) a villainous side.
- Pie on the Windowsill: Someone tries to steal a pie from a windowsill that's been left there to cool.
- Sinister Sweet Tooth: A villain likes sweets.
- Sweet Tooth: A liking for sweets can be easily exploited.
- Tempting Apple: Apples used as symbolism for temptation, usually as a reference to the apple of knowledge in The Bible.
- Tempting Cookie Jar: Cookies in a jar, even (actually, especially) high out of reach, are irresistible to small children.
Sometimes overlaps with:
- Erotic Eating: When the sweets are eaten or licked in ways that are meant to tease, seduce, or excite onlookers.
- Giant Food / Mountain of Food: What's more tempting than a table full of desserts? Being surrounded by giant desserts!
- Schmuck Bait: Because a windowless white van with "Free Candy" painted on the side just wasn't obvious enough.
- Schmuck Banquet: A dining hall filled with cake, pies, and other assorted desserts? Who would be dumb enough to pass up this offer?
- A Weighty Aesop: Too much sugar is bad, m'kay?
Examples:
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Advertising
- In the PIF "Keep Medicines Away From Children
", three little girls are eating assorted pills that they think are candy. Downstairs, their mothers comment that it's gotten very quiet. When the camera cuts back to upstairs, the table is still covered in medicines, but the girls are nowhere to be seen.
Narrator: To children, medicines look like sweets. If they can reach them, they'll eat them. So keep all medicines out of reach, and don't keep them once you're better. - Played with in the PSA "We're Not Candy." Four pills, portrayed by puppets, realize they have fallen out of their bottle. They get worried that a kid might think they were candy and eat them. They sing a song teaching the viewers that pills are not candy, and they can be dangerous if they're not taken carefully.
We're not candy (believe us)
Even though we look so fine and dandy
When you're sick, we come in handy
But we're not candy! Oh no!
Anime & Manga
- Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Ruruka Ando, the Ultimate Confectioner, was already a manipulative and self-centered Alpha Bitch despite her adorable appearance and bubbly exterior even all the way back during her high school days, but she ends up Jumping Off the Slippery Slope during the final killing game where her fears of betrayal in the midst of a situation where everyone is actively being terrorized and murdered one by one by one of their own reach a boiling point. This leads to her killing her longtime and fiercely loyal boyfriend Sonosuke Izayoi by provoking his forbidden action via Mouth-to-Mouth Force-Feeding, as well setting up a plot to murder Kyoko using a hidden pit trap. It's also worth noting that this is where she is additionally revealed to have the ability to incorporate hypnotic effects into her food, something she demonstrates on Juzo. It's also been hinted at that her trust issues have been eating away at her ability to work with other even before the shit hit the fan, if Koichi's comments about her plot to overthrow the Foundation and found her own independent organization for some time now are anything to go by.
- Junji Ito Kyoufu Manga Collection: In "Ice Cream Bus," Sonohara, a single father, moves to a new neighborhood with his young son Tomoki. There is a bus that drives children around the neighborhood, with the friendly driver giving them free ice cream. Sonohara becomes suspicious of this and discovers that the children eventually start turning into ice cream if they eat enough of it.
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Stocking loves sweets so much that she was Kicked Out of Heaven for her gluttony, alongside her sister Panty who was kicked out for having too much sex. Usually she doesn't suffer any consequences from over-eating them due to being an angel (she claims that all the fat goes to her boobs), but in "The Diet Syndrome," she mysteriously starts to gain weight. She exercises vigorously and even stops eating her favorite sweets, but when she finds out she's somehow gained even more weight, she calls it quits and devours several plates of her favorite Swiss rolls. The next morning, she balloons to a comically enormous size; it turns out the rolls were made by a Ghost who's trying to make everyone fat, created from the despair of obese women who couldn't get thin.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Charlotte is an adorable, harmless-looking doll-like witch who resides in a barrier filled with desserts. Mami thinks she's going to be an easy kill, but gets the shock of her life when Charlotte suddenly reveals her second form, a giant worm with razor-sharp teeth. She bites Mami's head clean off and feasts on her remains right in front of a horrified Madoka and Sayaka.
Comic Books
- Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: The Joker kills a troop of Cub Scouts with poisoned cotton candy.
Eastern Animation
- KikoRiki: In "The Sweetness of Honey", Barry becomes addicted to honey as if it were a drug. All three times he tries to eat it, he starts feeling sick and is in need of medical attention from his friends.
Fairy Tales
- Hansel and Gretel: While hungry and lost in the woods, Hansel and Gretel come across a lovely gingerbread house decorated with candy, which they help themselves to. It turns out to be the house of a witch who uses it as a trap to lure in children so she can kidnap them, fatten them up, and eat them.
Fan Works
- Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles): Pinkie Pie invites Rainbow Dash to hang out at Sugarcube Corner, and offers her a cupcake. Said cupcake turns out to have a knockout drug in it, which incapacitates Rainbow Dash long enough for Pinkie to drag her down to the basement so she can torture her to death and make cupcakes out of her flesh.
- Gaz's Horrible Halloween of Doom: While Gaz is trick-or-treating and finds out that a certain house is handing out Mondo Deluxe Poop Candy Bars, she threatens her rival Iggins into telling her where it is. It turns out to be a trap set by a lunatic paranormal investigator who's trying to catch "Sugar Fairies," and since Gaz happens to be dressed as a fairy princess at the time, he kidnaps her and throws her in the back of his van to show her off at a paranormal investigators' convention.
- A Mother's Touch: Weaponized by Yoko and a non-horrifying version of this trope. She knows that Sora loves her pancakes, and she needs answers over why he's really in her dimension. So she makes a delicious stack of chocolate chip pancakes with syrup and whipped cream which Sora immediately enters the kitchen to dig in, to which Yoko smirks at how her plan has gone off without a hitch.
- Pony POV Series:
- Derpy's Trademark Favorite Food is muffins. During Angry Pie's fight with her, she drops a giant cinnamon crumb cake muffin on top of Derpy, which the pegasus eats her way out of. It turns out to have poison joke in it, which causes her to lose control of her body and start dancing around like a ballerina.
- Later, the Valeyard (a brainwashed Doctor) tries to convince Derpy that they're still friends by offering her a muffin, but Rarity destroys it before she can eat it, because it's poisonous. The Valeyard then reveals that he already gave her a muffin sometime in the past which allows him to control her mind.
Films — Animation
- Coraline:
- The dinner scene in the Other World features a notable amount of sweet options, including a chandelier for dispensing milkshakes and even a cake that customizes it’s frosting on it’s own (and that frosting just so happens to spell out the words "Welcome Home!"...). All of this is ultimately a trap though by the Beldam to tempt Coraline into abandoning her family and life in the real world for her.
- Right before the Other Mother shows her true colors and throws Coraline into a cell behind a mirror for daring to stand up to her, she pulls out a box of "cocoa beetles from Zanzibar" (which are exactly what they sound like, all the way down to actively moving and squirming while being served), which only serves to deter Coraline even more.
- During Coraline's game to find the ghost eyes, she must take the second one from the Other Spink and Other Forcible who had, at that point, become a two-headed creature made of stale taffy that is implied to have been their true form all along (a clear nod to the real Spink and Forcible's interest in foreign taffy). Unlike their real world counterparts who are ultimately benevolent, if eccentric to a rather unnerving degree, the Other Spink and Other Forcible are minions for the Beldam who are actively helping her in making sure the ghost children stay trapped in the Other World.
- Dougal and the Blue Cat: Dougal dyes his fur blue and pretends to be a different dog named "Blue Peter" to infiltrate Buxton's lair. However, Buxton has found out about Dougal's love of sugar. Dougal tries to hide his true identity by claiming he hates sugar. So Buxton puts him to the test by locking him in a room full of sugar. Dougal has to try very hard to resist eating the sugar, because if he does, his true identity will be revealed. Dougal manages to resist eating the sugar by reminding himself that he needs to focus on saving his friends.
- KPop Demon Hunters: The song that rockets the boy band Saja Boys to stardom is "Soda Pop," a song about metaphorically drinking up someone's love. Like a sweet soft drink that rots your teeth out of your head, their candy-coated pastel aesthetic hides from the public that they're actually demons out to get everyone's souls and drink them up like soda.
- Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return: Candy County is a land filled with all sorts of candies and other sweets. There are multiple signs at the entrance warning visitors not to eat the candy.note The Jester uses his magic to change the signs so that they encourage Dorothy and Wiser to eat the candies, and he even sings a Villain Song called "Candy Candy" in which he commands them to eat as much candy as possible. This gets Dorothy and Wiser arrested and nearly executed because the people of Candy County consider it a very serious crime.
- Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure: The Greedy is a sentient ocean of taffy who seems to spend his days wolfing down on mountains-worth of candy and sweets. While benign at first glance and initially appearing to be a Tragic Villain who just needs a friend, he soon shows his true colors upon learning that Ann's heart is made of candy (which he believes to be the solution to his unsatisfiable loneliness, as in, a sweetheart). As it leads to him hunting down the eponymous duo with the intent of killing them when Ann tries to escape him.
- Wreck-It Ralph: The candy-themed racing game Sugar Rush seems to be a bright and happy place to the point of being a literal Sugar Bowl, but it's actually a Crapsaccharine World whose throne has been usurped by Turbo, now calling himself King Candy. He turned the game's real ruler, Vanellope, into a glitch while trying to delete her from the game, and got all the other racers and citizens to fear and hate her by convincing them that the game would be shut down and they'd all be left homeless if she was ever allowed to race.
Films — Live-Action
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Child Catcher of Vulgaria successfully captures the hero's children by luring them in with the promise of free sweets.
- Descendants: The Rise of Red: Uliana's plan to get back at Bridget for indirectly causing her to turn into a flamingo after the former ate one too many Enchanted Flamingo Feather Cupcakes was to concoct a cursed cupcake to turn the future Queen of Hearts into a monster during prom night. The trauma from the incident proved to be the once sweet and bubbly Bridget's Start of Darkness thanks to what Cinderella earlier indicated was out of her need to Never Be Hurt Again.
Uliana: So I'ma serve her what she deserves, what she deserves
And that's justice! Dressed up like the sweetest dessert... - In Ghostbusters (1984), Egon uses a Twinkie as an analogy, not for temptation, but still for something dangerous. He says that if a regular-sized Twinkie represents the normal amount of supernatural activity, the amount that's present now would be equivalent to a giant one.
- The title of the film Hard Candy alludes to the reveal that the protagonist is an underaged girl who lures sexual predators so she can inflict vigilante justice on them. Her victim is a pedophile who apparently raped and murdered a little girl.
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: While the school is in full-scale rebellion against Umbridge and her few supporters, Filch receives a box of chocolates that make his face break out into boils when he eats them.
- The Stuff: The titular substance is a fluffy, gooey material that tastes delectable and proves to be so popular once it starts being sold as a dessert that it ends up driving local ice cream brands out of business. Then it turns out to be alive and have the ability to take control of humans who consume it to turn them into hordes of zombies.
Literature
- Aesop's Fables: In "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse," a country mouse invites his cousin, a town mouse, to dinner. The town mouse is not impressed by the country mouse's simple meal, and invites him to taste fine life in the city. He leads the country mouse to the remains of a delicious feast, including jellies and cakes. In the middle of eating, they are interrupted when the cat jumps on the table and chases them away. After they escape, the country mouse decides he's had enough and wants to go home.
Town mouse: What, leaving already?
Country mouse: Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear. - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Mr. Willy Wonka holds a contest where five lucky children who discover Golden Tickets in their candy bars will be given a wondrous tour of his magical chocolate factory and a lifetime supply of sweets each. Over the course of the book, four of the children get humiliating punishments for being greedy and/or messing with things they shouldn't: Augustus falls into the chocolate river while drinking from it and gets sucked up a pipe, Violet tries some experimental gum and blows up into a blueberry, Veruca tries to catch herself a nut-cracking squirrel and gets thrown down the garbage chute, and Mike gets shrunken down when he tries to teleport himself in the Television Chocolate room. Charlie is the only one able to resist all the temptations of the factory and is rewarded by being made Mr. Wonka's heir.
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: The Oompa-Loompas sing a song about a girl named Goldie Pinklesweet, who devours an entire jar of chocolate-coated pills from the medicine shelf that turn out to be ridiculously powerful chocolate laxatives. Her grandmother ends up having to call the ambulance, and although she survives, her body is permanently damaged to the extent that she has to spend seven hours on the toilet every day for the rest of her life.
- Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights: In "Gumdrop Angel," Ophelia is having her birthday at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and the festivities include the serving of the Birthday Gummy, a large pink human-shaped gummy. Its gumdrop nose is supposed to be saved for Ophelia, but her older stepsister Angel eats it because she's fed up with Ophelia being spoiled by their father. It turns her into the next Birthday Gummy, and she gets devoured by a horde of ravenous children.
- Flowers in the Attic: Literally. Corinne poisons her children in order to make sure that nobody finds out about them (because it would cause her to be disinherited) with arsenic-laced sugar powder in the desserts they eat.
- Harry Potter:
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Harry and his friends want to spy on Malfoy because they suspect he's the Heir of Slytherin, so they come up with a plan that involves Harry and Ron transforming into his flunkies, Crabbe and Goyle, using Polyjuice Potion. The potion requires some of Crabbe’s and Goyle’s hair, so Hermione drugs some chocolate cupcakes with a Sleeping Draught and leaves them out to tempt the two Slytherin boys into eating them.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
- Harry's Fat Bastard cousin Dudley is forced to go on a diet when his school runs out of uniforms that fit him. When the Weasleys arrive at the Dursleys' house to pick up Harry for the summer, Fred and George "accidentally" drop several candies in brightly colored wrappers on the floor, and Dudley picks one up and eats it. It turns out to be a magical prank candy called a Ton-Tongue Toffee that makes his tongue turn purple and swell to four feet long. Mr. Weasley angrily calls them out for this because he knows they did it on purpose, knowing Dudley wouldn't be able to resist it because he was dieting.
- Later, Fred and George invent the Canary Cream, a magical custard cream (sandwich cookie, for non-Britons) that briefly transforms a person into a life-sized canary when eaten. People start buying them and using them to prank their friends.
…and for the first couple of days of the holidays, people kept bursting into feather all over the place. Before long, however, all the Gryffindors had learned to treat food anybody else offered them with extreme caution, in case it had a Canary Cream concealed in the center, and George confided to Harry that he and Fred were now working on developing something else. Harry made a mental note never to accept so much as a crisp from Fred and George in future.
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
- Hermione warns Harry that some girls who have crushes on him are planning to try and slip him love potions so he'll take them to Professor Slughorn's Christmas party. So, when Romilda Vane offers him Chocolate Cauldrons filled with love potion, he turns her down, but she shoves the box into his hands. He leaves the chocolates lying around but forgets he has them, which causes trouble when Ron finds and eats them months later.
- Professor Horace Slughorn's favorite sweet is crystallized pineapple. Young Tom Riddle, the future Voldemort, gifted him a box of it in order to flatter him into revealing information about Horcruxes. This would become the moment Slughorn regretted most in his life, as it led to the death of one of his favorite protégés, Harry's mother Lily.
- Laughing Jack: The titular clown carries candy that he offers to kids, and after his corruption, he maintains the practice to build trust with children and kill them. James' mother is unsettled to find her son outside with candy, who she assumes to be from a stranger, and not the so-called Laughing Jack like he claims. Later, James gets mutilated and nailed to the wall by the very clown who posed as his friend and playmate.
- In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the White Witch converts Edmund to her cause with addictive Turkish delight.
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Sweetsleep is a medicine that can be used as a sleep aid and seizure treatment in tiny doses, but it's so strong that as little as three pinches is enough to kill a grown man. Because it smells and tastes sweet, it is easily hidden by assassins in sweet foods like cakes, pies, and honeyed wines. The Waif calls it "the gentlest of poisons."
- In A Dance with Dragons, at the grand re-opening of the Meereenese fighting pits, the Sons of the Harpy force a confectioner to prepare poisoned honey locusts for Queen Daenerys Targaryen. Her soldier Strong Belwas, a notorious Big Eater, eats them instead by accident. He gets very sick but miraculously survives.
- Fire & Blood: The young King Aegon III Targaryen is targeted by an assassination attempt involving poisoned apple tarts. He doesn't like sweet food, so he doesn't end up eating any of them, but his cupbearer and friend Gaemon Palehair and his queen Daenaera Velaryon both eat the poisoned tarts. Daenaera survives, but unfortunately Gaemon doesn't.
- Sweet Valley High: In Twins, Jessica joins the Unicorn clique and wants her twin sister Elizabeth to join too. To become a member, Elizabeth has to prank Lois Waller: invite her out for milkshakes, and when she’s not looking, scrape off the whipped cream on Lois’ milkshake and replace it with shaving cream. Elizabeth refuses to do it, but Jessica impersonates her and plays the prank, which nearly ruins Elizabeth’s friendship with Lois until she explains that it was Jessica, not her. She helps Lois get revenge on the Unicorns by playing the exact same trick on them.
- Warrior Cats: Yew berries are tasty-looking red berries that are so poisonous that eating just a single one could kill a cat, hence their nickname of "deathberries" among the Clan cats. Most older cats know what they are and avoid them like the plague, but kits don't know any better, which has led to some near misses.
- In Forest of Secrets, Cloudkit is out taking a walk with Fireheart and Cinderpaw, and almost eats some deathberries before Cinderpaw stops him and explains what they are. Later, after Brokentail plots with Tigerclaw to have his rogues attack ThunderClan, even though they had taken him in and cared for him, his mother Yellowfang is alone in her den with him. He demands something to make his wounds stop hurting, so she gives him three deathberries and tells him to "eat these, and the pain will go away for good." He doesn't recognize they're deathberries because he's blind, eats them, and dies.
- In The Darkest Hour, Sorrelkit sneaks out of camp and sees Darkstripe having a secret conversation with Blackfoot. To keep her quiet, he gives her deathberries for a treat. She nearly dies, but Firestar finds her in time and scrapes most of the deathberries out of her mouth, and Cinderpelt shoves yarrow down her throat to make her vomit up what's left. Her life is saved, but it takes her a long time to recover.
- The Witches:
- In the prologue, the narrator warns the reader that any random woman they meet could turn out to be a witch, such as "the lady with the dazzling smile who offered you a sweet from a white paper bag in the street before lunch."
- The Grand High Witch's big plan to wipe out all the children in England involves all the witches opening candy shops and holding openings promising free candy to every child. The candies are dosed with a potion known as Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker that will transform them into mice when they're at school, causing all the teachers to panic and kill them en masse.
Live-Action TV
- The Big Bang Theory: When President Seibert tries to get the main quartet to attend a party, Sheldon cautions the other three not to "get in the van just because he's offering candy." Sheldon demands to know what the catch is, for Seibert to admit that it's for a fundraiser.
Sheldon: Ah, there it is, the tear-stained mattress in the back of the van.
- Heathers (2018): In a series of promotional posters for the show, the characters are seen eating dangerous-looking sweets, including a lollipop with a razor blade in the center, a popsicle with a knife handle for a stick, a Slurpee with red syrup leaking down the side, and a cupcake with prescription pills instead of sprinkles.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In "Serendipity", a pedophile locks himself in a bathroom stall with a little girl, squirts honey on his penis and tells her to lick it off, because it's sweet and tastes like a lollipop.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "The Way of the Warrior", Garak and Quark use root beer as a metaphor for the Federation.
Garak: It's vile!Quark: I know. It's so bubbly and cloying and happy.Garak: Just like the Federation.Quark: But you know what's really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it.Garak: It's insidious.Quark: Just like the Federation.
Music
- 10,000 Maniacs: "Candy Everybody Wants" uses candy as a metaphor for schlocky media driven by sex, violence, and not much else, with the song's narrator peddling it to viewers "so their minds are soft and lazy."
- Baby Bugs: "Baby Teeth” is about the narrator's desire to eat nothing but lollipops and cotton candy as an act of Self-Harm, deliberately ignoring her doctors’ orders for her to brush her teeth so that they will all fall out and she can give them to an unnamed other, feeling she isn’t worthy of them and deserves to stay unhealthy and frail".
- Melanie Martinez:
- In "Cake", the singer uses a Lysistrata Gambit to punish her boyfriend who she feels is only using her for sex.
You smell just like vanilla
You taste like buttercream
You're filling up my senses
With empty calories
I feel like I'm just missing
Something whenever you leave
We've got all the ingredients except you needing me - In "Milk and Cookies", the singer kills her despised husband with poisoned cookies.
Do you like my cookies?
They're made just for you
A little bit of sugar
With lots of poison, too
- In "Cake", the singer uses a Lysistrata Gambit to punish her boyfriend who she feels is only using her for sex.
- MILGRAM: In the music video for Mahiru's Second Trial song, "I Love You," she appears to be feeding a slice of strawberry cake to her boyfriend, but the scene is filtered Through the Eyes of Madness, revealing that she's actually forcing him to eat a dead rat. It serves as a metaphor for the toxicity of their relationship, but her final report reveals that they were literally eating rats to survive after they had run away together and run out of resources.
- Night Club's "Candy Coated Suicide" describes a toxic relationship with the perpetrator masking their toxicity using a sweet, appealing exterior (hence the "candy coating" mentioned both in the title and in the song itself) that makes them irresistible despite being ultimately damaging to the narrator. Additionally, Emily Kavanaugh has described the song as "like if an 8 year old and her stuffed animals discovered LSD and went on a solid 4 day bender", indicating it could be referring to the relationship between a person and drugs.
Tell me why
I like the way you get me high
So alive, that you just make me wanna die
Tell me why
Why I still want you to be mine?
You're a poison in my mind
Stop my heart and hope to die - Vocaloid:
- "Appetite of a People-Pleaser" concerns a girl who Desperately Craves Affection and tries as hard as she can to be loved by everyone, but starts to experience a Loss of Identity because she gives up everything to make everyone happy. The video shows her eating a chocolate cake, happily at first but then with a resigned expression on the words "Maybe if I try a little harder, it will be okay, one day, keep on eating more and more, divide my life away into servings..."
- In "Full Course for Candy Addicts" (which is sometimes said to have the opposite energy of the above song), the singer compares the experience of eating their lover to a table full of sweet desserts.
Strawberry tart drizzled with a special sauceTop it with an eyeball and add more creamIs the sweet scent making you dizzy?My love comes with a fork and knife~
Mythology & Religion
- In Classical Mythology, Hades falls in love with Persephone and kidnaps her, but she refuses all of his romantic advances. Finally, at his urging, she eats six sweet, juicy pomegranate seeds. When her uncle Zeus comes to take her back, the rules of the Underworld state that Persephone is bound to it since she has eaten food from there, but Zeus compromises by declaring that Persephone will spend six months of every year with her mother Demeter and the remaining six months in the Underworld with Hades, one for each seed she ate. So, when Persephone and her mother are together, Demeter is happy and blesses the earth with spring and summer, but when she has to return to the Underworld, Demeter's sadness creates fall and winter.
Theatre
- Heathers: The Musical: In Heather Chandler's Villain Song "Candy Store", she tries to goad Veronica into joining the Heathers' ultra-popular clique and playing a humiliating prank on her unpopular friend Martha. Just like candy can rot your teeth, being In with the "In" Crowd seemed appealing to Veronica at first because everyone thinks she's cool and nobody bullies her anymore, but now she's being separated from Martha and forced to bully her or be knocked down to the bottom of the school totem pole herself.
Video Games
- In the short online game candypink, you play a worker who has started a job at a candy factory. Your supervisor, Almond, is very friendly as she walks you through all the steps of making pink heart marshmallows, up until you find out that the cooking process requires you to cut off your finger and blend it into the mixture.
- Dragalia Lost: Lilith is the archdemon that embodies pleasure, with her influence causing others to act hedonistically without regard to themselves or others. As a boss, her attacks are themed around candy, such as firing giant pieces of candy at adventurers or trapping them in candy cages that the free adventures have to smash before it blows up with the adventurer inside it.
- Kirby's Dream Land: Blopper is an enemy exclusive to Extra Mode who disguises itself as a cupcake whilst attacking Kirby. It even launches frosting which can hurt Kirby if he touches it.
- In the The Emperor's New School online game Red-Eyed Tree Frog Man, the plot is kicked off by Yzma giving Kuzco a pie (labeled "Special treat just for Kuzco") that turns out to be dosed with a potion that turns him into a frog. He has to free himself and all the other frogs or they'll be used in a science class experiment.
Webcomics
- Homestuck: When characters enter Trickster Mode (which is triggered by licking a red-and-green spiral lollipop juju), their color schemes become extremely brightly colored and clashing, and a decoration appears in their hair shaped like a candy, dessert or piece of fruit. The effect is similar to a drug binge; affected characters become obnoxiously happy and hyperactive to the point of losing all inhibitions, but are shown to be horrified or embarrassed afterwards by what they did while under the influence. After Jane comes out of Trickster Mode, she looks downright traumatized, sweating and with messy hair.
Web Animation
- Charlie the Unicorn: In the first episode, Pink and Blue drag Charlie with them on a journey to Candy Mountain. When they get to the place, the five letters in the word "candy" come to life and sing them a song about all the sugary delights to be found in Candy Mountain, after which Pink and Blue encourage Charlie to enter. It turns out to be a scheme to knock him out and steal his kidney.
- Helluva Boss: The Deadly Sin of Gluttony herself, Beelzebub, is introduced generating sweets like cotton candy and other kinds of candies for hungry guests at her party while singing an entire song named after the former where she downright states "I'm what you want, not what you need". And as she sings, she encourages other demons to overindulge to their hearts' desires. Zigzagged in that it's worth noting that she's highly effervescent and sweet otherwise, being a loving girlfriend towards her partner Vortex and nothing but friendly towards the more cynical Loona, with "Mastermind" even portraying her as one of the few royals in court willing to stand up for Blitzo after he faces wrongful accusations of raping and stealing from Stolas to venture into the mortal world. In other words, in a world populated by demons, with the very protagonists of the series being an organization of assassins taking hits from sinners against humans in the land of the living, Queen Bee just so happens to be amongst the most affable of the ones we've seen so far.
- In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan-animation Derpy Gets Pranked, Derpy sees a muffin on a plate sitting on the ground and flies down to eat it. While she's distracted, the Cutie Mark Crusaders drop an anvil on her, crushing her head into a bloody paste.
- Happy Tree Friends: Nutty is a squirrel who is obsessed with candy and will do absolutely anything to get it. This nearly always leads to him getting horribly maimed or killed, although it never sticks due to Negative Continuity. One example is the episode "As You Wish", where he wishes for a giant lollipop, tries to swallow it whole, and promptly chokes to death.
Web Original
- Not Always Right: This guy and his friend were tired of their food being stolen at work, so they made a fake cherry cheesecake out of cooking lard complete with graham cracker crust. While they didn't catch the thief, nobody ever robbed the office refrigerator again.
- SCP Foundation: The Foundation has catalogued and contained several examples of anomalous candy or other sweets that do something dangerous when eaten.
- SCP-261 is a vending machine that produces snack food from other dimensions. While most of the foods it dispenses are harmless, it has produced dangerous stuff on occasion, including:
- A cake labeled "TASTE ME" that caused a D-class to grow seven inches taller and increase in mass by 13.6%, but also gave them a fatal seizure due to expansion of the brain.
- A package of gummies shaped like human hands with extended middle fingers and filled with cyanide, in response to the machine being given a counterfeit yen coin.
- A caramel figurine of SCP-682 contaminated with arsenic and ricin.
- A tin of "Crmls," caramel candies which caused a test subject's teeth and tongue to disappear.
- A box of teardrop-shaped "UnSweethearts Candies" with messages like "I drink to forget you" and "You are the reason for my restraining order" written on them. Each candy contained 1 milligram of cyanide.
- A bag of "candy for polly morph by dado" that causes anyone who eats them to fatally transform into a parrot.
- A tube of "Russian Roulette Drops" that dispenses a randomly flavored sugar pellet into the mouth when bitten down on. Flavors include chocolate frosting, blueberry, orange cola, and 85% pure capsaicin.
- A bag of "Tethh cande" containing tooth-shaped candies that cause teeth to grow inside the eater's skin.
- SCP-490 is a self-driving ice cream truck that activates between 2-5 am and starts playing music which magically lures people to it. Anyone who enters the truck through the back doors will be processed into "Super Surprise Flavor!" popsicles made out of human flesh.
- SCP-839 is an anomalous species of living gummy worms. When eaten, they burrow through the stomach lining toward a specific organ, devour said organ and then transform into a replacement for it. This replacement has odd side effects depending on the color of the worm; for example, a red-colored instance of SCP-839 replaces the heart and may cause increased blood sugar and type 2 diabetes.
- SCP-956 is a seemingly harmless piñata. When approached by a child, it will beat the crap out of said child until their body ruptures and spills out a large pile of candy (designated SCP-956-1). A child who eats this candy will transform into another murderous piñata, while an adult who eats it will have a seizure.
- SCP-1176 is a mummy that constantly produces honey. To anyone whose blood type is AB+, it tastes delicious and healthy, but anyone with a different blood type who attempts to eat it will have a severe allergic reaction and die.
- SCP-1517 is an anomalous species of cicada which lays eggs that look and taste like jawbreakers. When the eggs hatch, the nymphs seek out living tissue, start eating it and converting it into various types of candy. They were first discovered when seven missing teenagers were found in the back room of a candy shop with their bodies partially converted into candy and covered in SCP-1517 nymphs.
- SCP-1921 is a cotton candy machine previously used by Herman Fuller's Circus of the Disquieting. When SCP-1921-A3, a black liquid labeled "Clown Milk," is poured into the machine, it will start producing SCP-1921-A2, a black cotton candy. If anyone eats SCP-1921-A2, it will integrate itself into their nervous system and brain and make them vulnerable to being controlled by songs played on SCP-1921-B1, a circus calliope.
- SCP-5740 is a series of donut-dispensing machines set up by dado that advertises free donuts for cops. If a cop eats one of those donuts, it causes a live, full-sized pig to magically appear inside their rectum which they have to crap out over the course of a few hours (and the dirtier the cop, the bigger the pig—the worst cops have gotten pigs weighing up to 500 pounds). When asked why this was happening by an incognito Foundation agent, dado said:
certainly is having nothing 2 do with dado seeing peoples on dado television (now on sale at dado electronics mart and fish emporiums) being smack about by police. no sir says dado. nothing 2 do with so many fine dado customer being harass and threaten and beat upon by police. dado certainly is feeling no obligation for dado to come to defense of consumerbase. dado certainly is not taking stand against fine local policemen, only sell upon policemen some fine dado-nut. all policemen like dado nut.
- SCP-261
Web Video
- Pop Cross Studios: In What if CUPHEAD BOSSES Were FOLKLORE CREATURES?!, the Van Helsing family is tasked by a Crossroads Devil — in a similar manner to the original Cuphead brothers — to hunt down and kill a bunch of evil beings and creatures who made deals with him and refused to pay up. The first debtor they were sent after was the Bonbon Witch, a malicious Humanoid Abomination who lures hungry children to her with a sweet smell, then welcomes them to her candy kingdom, inviting them to eat as many sweets as they want, with the help of her candy minions. Sadly, as soon as any child eats these sweets, they immediately feel sick and fall to the ground, whereupon the Witch's sweet demeanour vanishes, and she turns the lower half of her body into a "horrific candy fiend" with tentacles, pulls them into her mouth and eats them. The narrator of this video notes that he can't picture himself ever trying to eat a castle made of sweets — even if he didn't know the tale of the Bonbon Witch, the sweets could be centuries old and all manner of forest animals might have urinated against the walls. (Bear in mind, Christian created this depiction of Baroness Von Bon Bon before the Cuphead Show did the same thing.)
Western Animation
- Codename: Kids Next Door: Downplayed.
- While Heinrich von Marzipan's greed is often represented by his love of sweets as a candy hunter, his rival Abby/Numbuh 5's similar love of sweets has not corrupted her in the same way.
- In particular, in "Operation C.A.R.A.M.E.L.S.", the magic ritual that creates the Sacred Golden Caramels, "the most delicious sweets that ever existed", requires the seeker to give up the quality they treasure most to create them. If the seeker is greedy enough to eat all of their caramels, they are cursed to lose that trait forever. It is revealed that five years before, Heinrich was once a girl named Henrietta, but lost her beauty during the ritual. When Abby left her, she ate all the sweets she had, leaving her as Heinrich. But Abby had secretly taken Henrietta's last caramel with her to save Heinrich/Henrietta from themselves until they could learn to share. When Abby reveals this, Heinrich has a Heel–Face Turn and shares, causing Heinrich to revert back to Henrietta.
- The Cuphead Show!: In "Sweet Temptation", Sugarland is a separate dimension made entirely of sweet treats and ruled by Baroness Von Bon Bon. Cuphead finds it by chance after he had gotten into a fight with Mugman over stolen Halloween candy. Once there, Cuphead must abide by two rules: don't tell anyone about Sugarland, and don't take even a tiny bite of the Baroness's sugar castle. Of course, Cuphead being Cuphead, he immediately breaks the first rule by bringing Mugman, and Mugman breaks the second rule while there. As a result, both Cuphead and Mugman are transformed into sweets themselves, perfect for the Baroness to devour. They barely manage to escape with their lives...but when they get home, they find Elder Kettle wanting to eat them.
- Futurama: In "Put Your Head on My Shoulders", Fry wants to dump Amy because he's grown bored of dating her. He tries making an analogy by saying, "Y'know how you like chocolate but after a while you get bored of it?".
- George and Martha: In "The Sweet Tooth," George develops an addiction to sugary foods. He can't stop eating sweet, no matter how hard Martha tries to get him to moderate his eating. His addiction is played similarly to a drug addiction, with George doing things like stashing candy, claiming he can stop eating it whenever he wants, etc. At one point, he has a Nightmare Sequence where he is eaten by a giant, gummy version of himself, providing a commentary that addiction can consume you. At first, this seems to make him give up on sweets and start eating vegetables instead, but then it turns out that he still has candy stashed in his house.
- Gravity Falls: In "The Inconveniencing," when the kids and teens are exploring a haunted convenience store, Mabel finds several bags of Smile Dip, a powder candy that was banned in America. She tries it and starts suffering from vivid hallucinations, seeing talking yellow dogs and colorful candy landscapes, though the aftereffects are no worse than a pretty bad stomachache.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: "The Return of Harmony -- Part 1" introduces Discord, an inexplicably powerful Reality Warper who can do things like turn clouds into cotton candy and make it rain chocolate milk. While he seems silly and puts on a friendly facade, he's an Eldritch Abomination and Manipulative Bastard who brainwashes the Mane Six into acting the opposite of their Elements of Harmony and hating each other.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In "Candy is Dandy", the Mayor rewards the girls for saving him with a piece of candy. They quickly get so addicted to it that they make a deal with their arch-nemesis Mojo Jojo where he commits crimes and they "defeat" him for more candy, then bust him out of jail, rinse and repeat. When he reneges on the deal and steals the Mayor's candy jar For the Evulz, the girls beat him to within an inch of his life. The beating is so violent that they're horrified by what they've done after.
- Robot Chicken: In the "Keebler Attacked" skit, Cookie Monster attacks the Keebler elves' tree, so they hold his mouth in place with a giant metal hook attached to a rope and pour massive amounts of cookies down his throat until his stomach explodes, killing him.
Keebler Chef: Now! Give the monster what he wants!
Keebler Soldier: Diabetes?
Keebler Chef: Good comment on modern culture, but no! Cookies! - Teen Titans (2003): In "Mother Mae-Eye", the Titans wake up with a sudden craving for pie. A kindly old woman randomly appears in Titans Tower, starts feeding them pie, and taking care of them like babies while turning the Tower into a gingerbread house. Starfire finds out that she's actually an evil old witch who feeds on the love of her victims and intends to bake them into a giant pie.
- Total Drama: In "The Very Last Episode, Really!", before the final challenge of the season, Heather tries to sabotage Gwen by leaving a laxative-filled cupcake with a note implying it was from her boyfriend Trent. However, it fails to work since Gwen gives it to Owen instead.
Real Life
- Antifreeze naturally tastes sweet due to containing ethylene glycol. Because of that, it has caused some poisoning deaths in animals and small children, and has been used in some cases of deliberate poisonings for the same reason. Nowadays, manufacturers add a bittering agent to prevent this from happening.
- In 1858 in England, because ingredients cost so much, it was common practice for food manufacturers to adulterate their product with cheaper ingredients and fillers, like powdered gypsum in candy as a replacement for sugar. When a batch of peppermint humbugs was accidentally prepared with arsenic instead of gypsum, a mass poisoning incident occurred where 200 people fell ill and 20 people died.
- In 1974, on Halloween, Ronald Clark O'Bryan gave his son Timothy a tube of Pixy Stix laced with cyanide so he could collect the life insurance money from the boy's death. He also gave his daughter Elizabeth and three other children cyanide-filled Pixy Stix to divert suspicion away from himself, but none of them ate it. After Timothy's death, O'Bryan was quickly arrested, sentenced to death, and was executed by lethal injection in 1984.
- In 1989, Peggy Carr died of thallium poisoning while her family suffered its ill effects after drinking copious amounts of tainted Coca-Cola left behind by her neighbor George Trepal in an effort to create a "perfect crime" for his local Mensa chapter.
- In 2004, Donna Ozuna-Trout was arrested for trying to poison her neighbors, the Eickhoff family, by leaving a package at their door containing a two-liter bottle of Vess root beer, some glazed donuts, and a Bavarian cream coffee cake, all contaminated with lye and antifreeze (enough to kill eight adults, according to the toxicology report that followed). Stephanie Eickhoff believed they were meant for her children, as their birthdays had been the day before and they might have thought someone had sent them birthday treats if they'd gotten to the package first.
- Medicine—especially the kind that comes in small colorful pills—sometimes looks like tasty candy to young children, which is why parents are often warned to keep it on high shelves and/or in locked cabinets. Some public school health classes also teach students how to tell the difference between medicine and candy for the same reason. It doesn't help that there is some medicine that is deliberately made to look and taste like candy, like vitamin gummies and chocolate-flavored laxatives.
- This is a problem for manufacturers of children's medicines: if they taste sweet, they're easier to eat — but if they taste too good, then children might eat more of them than they're supposed to, or even eat them when they're not sick, which could be dangerous. This is a news article in 2023 about the FDA taking steps to prevent medicine from being too candy-like.
- This is a problem for manufacturers of children's medicines: if they taste sweet, they're easier to eat — but if they taste too good, then children might eat more of them than they're supposed to, or even eat them when they're not sick, which could be dangerous. This
- There have been incidents where people ate (or were pranked with) chocolate-flavored laxatives, thinking they were just regular chocolate. The results are usually messy.
- Serial killer Andrei Chikatilo lured some of his young victims with offers of food or candy before stabbing them to death.
- In 2024, Willy's Chocolate Experience was a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-themed event in Glasgow, Scotland that promised fun for families and plenty of chocolate. The initial advertisements were AI-generated images of luscious candy landscapes that looked much more beautiful and elaborate than the actual event. What attendees got was a dingy warehouse with a few bare-bones props including a rainbow arch and a printed candy-themed backdrop hung against a wall, actors in cheap costumes purchased from Amazon the day before the event, a story derived from an AI-generated script that was 15 pages of rambling nonsense about an evil candymaker who lived in the walls, and a quarter cup of lemonade with a single jellybean for each child. Parents were so furious that they ended up calling the cops.