38 Things to Know About Candy Before Getting Your Halloween Fix

Halloween is now only a week away and kids are putting the final touches on their costumes -- or begging mom to take them to the store still.

In light of the country's biggest candy sharing holiday of the year, Mental Floss put together dozens of facts about candy, some of which are sure to surprise you.

We're highlighting just a few but the trivia magazine pulled together 38 facts in total:

• How many licks to the center of a Toostie pop? 364 licks -- get counting.

A lick machine at Purdue University figured out the question always asked by a wise old owl. (Image source: GoRun26/Flickr)

• What is the Dum Dum lollipop's "mystery flavor"? It's the flavor that results when one flavor ends on the production line and another picks up.

This is actually a rhyme to the reason for the mystery flavor of Dum Dum suckers. (Image source: Kodamakitty/Flickr)

• Believe it or not Cheerios once paired its cereal with Circus Peanuts candy -- those spongy, thumb-size orange candies. Although not a success, it did inspire Lucky Charms.

Cheerios once featured this candy in its boxes, later inspiring the more successful Lucky Charms. (Image source: KateMonkey/Flickr)

• Swallowing gum...no it won't stay in your stomach for years. It will pass normally.

Swallowed gum will not take years to digest. (Image source: Shutterstock.com)

• Milk Duds are actually duds, a mistake. Initially, the manufacturer wanted nice round balls. When the machine failed, the imperfections of the duds stuck.

Before these candies could get stuck in your teeth, manufacturers decided to allow the imperfect ball of chocolate covered carmel to stick around. (Image source: showbiz kids/Flickr)

• Former President Ronald Reagan's love of jelly beans prompted Jelly Belly to create a flavor just for his inauguration. Blueberry was created specifically to round out the trio of patriotic colors.

Jelly Belly might have created the blue jelly bean for Reagan's inauguration, but the president favored the licorice flavor. (Image source: Tim Ebbs/Flickr)

• Making one peep in 1957 took 27 hours to make. Now, it takes six minutes to make a peep.

Peep production has speed up dramatically since the 1950s. (Image source: lightsoutfilms/Flickr)

Watch the full list of honestly fascinating candy facts:

Now you can go forth and impress your friends or fellow parents along the trick-or-treating route on October 31.

Featured image via SykoSam/Flickr.

(H/T: GeekOSystem)

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