Halloween Candy Wheel

When I was young trick or treating was going door to door ringing a doorbell and getting candy. While that is pretty much the same today, there is a lot more car / trunk based candy give outs and just sitting on your driveway with a bowl of candy to socialize and pass out candy to oncoming kids. I noticed there was a bit less of ringing doorbells and saying "trick or treat" as I moved into my own home.

So I wanted to put a twist on the classic trick or treat by building a little spin wheel and having the kids spin for their treat. So Alyson and I got to work buying the items for the different categories on the wheel. We obtained the following candy and items:

• A tall multi-colored spin wheel that we could write with dry erase marker.
• Solar powered lights for driveway.
• King Size Candy (Skittles, Starburst, 3 Musketeers, M&M's, Snickers)
• Regular Candy (Reese, Nerds, Gummy worms, Lemonheads)
• Chap Stick
• Neon Bug

We nicely organized the candy & treats in preparation for the big day and thankfully the cats did not mess with any of it.

We had to get to working writing our sections on the wheel, so we ended with the following:

• 1, 2, 3 or 4 Candy
• 1 Chap Stick & 1 Candy
• 1 or 2 King Candy
• 1 Bug & 1 Candy
• Free Space - Pick anything
• 1 of Each

So a few good chances existed on the wheel to get some cool candy or a bug or some helpful chap stick.

As Friday morning arrived (Halloween) we got to work making some Jell-O shots for any adult in the group that wanted a bit of their own fun. With not much drinking at home anymore we had a perfect reason to use some vodka to create a little treat for the adults in the bunch.

With the Jell-O made it was off to work for a shorter day than normal, because once the clock struck 3:30pm I knew it was time to leave early to head home and prepare for the early crowd of kids.

After getting home I moved a speaker outdoors and moved my colored Hue lights around to produce an outdoor and indoor light show synced with the Halloween music playlist. We took some chalk and drew some lines on the main street to show kids that indeed this cul-de-sac has candy on it. We threw on some costumes and grabbed a drink and got ready for the night to fall and trick or treaters to arrive.

Right out of the gate with our first visitors the wheel wasn't anchored that well and an aggressive spin sent it tumbling. So either Alyson or I had to hold the wheel base while the kid spun. Secondly, we learned the wheel took a long time to spin when a kid is just standing there waiting for candy. It could take anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds for the wheel to finally land on an item. Finally with most of our spaces being "1 Candy" it felt like with ~300 pieces of candy left that we needed to adjust.

We quickly changed some labels like "1 Candy" to "4 Candy" and even introduced an "8 Candy" to increase the wow factor. Once word started spreading that our street had large candy and a wheel we had larger groups approaching and we started burning our candy supply fast. Alyson had a good idea to ask a kid to spin for the entire group and they all got that selection or could spin again if they didn't want that item. This helped speed up the process when we had a line forming of ~10 to ~20 kids.

While these lines were formed the adults of groups would normally engage in some conversations where we (mostly Alyson) could offer some alcoholic jello shots. This funny enough had two types of responses between "Absolutely not" or "Hell yeah" which generally was the older parents vs younger parents. I don't think any kids tried to lie their way into a Jell-O shot, but some of the parents looked young enough it was tough to tell.

As the night pushed on - our next issue arose that it was getting really dark outside that it was tough to see anything. We had moved far enough away from the house that the colored lights weren't helping and the street light was too far away on the street. My outdoor lights have been broken since I moved in, so we resulted to phone lights to keep the wheel illuminated.

Kids kept coming and we were running so low on candy we had like 6 pieces left and a few larger king sizes. We even had a few people come back with a larger group as word had spread about the wheel, Jell-O and king size candy. Unfortunately with our candy supply at the end and the night approaching 8:30pm we noticed a gap of no kids visiting. With nothing to offer anymore and the wheel a shell of former gifts we started packing things up and turned off the lights to call it a night.

Looking back it was an overwhelming success with tons of great feedback during the event with a checklist of things to iterate on for next year:

• We need better outdoor lighting - maybe moving our setup towards the street to use the streetlight or finally fixing the outdoor lights.
• The wheel needs to be a tougher spin - it can't spin for 20 seconds delaying things.
• The wheel needs to be anchored better so we don't have to babysit it during spins.
• We need more of the mainline candy - people aren't fans of the less popular candy.
• We need more candy.
• We need to reiterate the Jell-O shot is vodka and a split of water & vodka.

The next Halloween is far away and we will hopefully elevate the Halloween experience once again.