It was a blast from Halloween past.
Two Nova Scotia brothers recently opened a candy time capsule – a collection of Halloween treats collected decades earlier.
Trevor and Fraser Allen of Fall River, N.S. made a bet 25 years ago, over who would be able to keep their Halloween stash the longest.
The winner would take home $5.
Trevor, who was 12 years old at the time, set out to secure his win by wrapping a handful of Halloween candy within several layers of plastic and electrical tape.
"I remember when I wrapped it up thinking to myself, 'I'm giving away some good candy right now, I'm not going be able to eat it,'" Trevor told CTV Atlantic.
The ball of candy was kept inside various boxes, in desk drawers, and moved a number of times from apartment to apartment, Trevor said.
This October 31 will mark 25 years since the candy was locked away, and the brothers thought it was about time to take a walk down memory lane and unwrap the candy time capsule.
Inside, they found suckers, Penny Chews and Life Savers candies that remained relatively intact.
But the stockpile wasn’t as sweet as Trevor had remembered it 25 years earlier.
"I thought I packed away some chocolate," he said. "I remember thinking I was packing away some good stuff."
Gianfranco Mazzanti, a food science professor at Dalhousie University, said he wasn't surprised the sweet treats withstood the test of time.
"Hard candy is incredibly resilient to aging," he said.
Because candy typically has low water content, Mazzanti said it's unlikely the treats would develop mould – even after 25 years.
"It's also a fantastic experience. Almost nobody's going to do a 25 year experiment," he said.
Nevertheless, the brothers weren't too keen on tasting all the treats.
"It smells like old Christmas decorations," Trevor said upon unwrapping the candy.
"It smells like chemicals," Fraser added.
With a report from CTV Atlantic's Jacqueline Foster
