When I was a kid, Halloween was much different than it is now. I stayed at my Grandparent's apartment which was in a large complex. We used pillowcases to collect candy from stranger's doors. There were rumor's of hand made treats like apples being filled with razor blades or people putting needles in candy bars, but we threw out the apples and had our mothers inspect the candy before we ate them. The candy was full sized, not this bite sized stuff and often we dumped candy off to go a second time because we had so much loot. We even got loose change which ended up being a few dollars which was actually a lot in the 1970's. We trick or treated in groups and had candy on our minds rather than serial killers. It was a festive community holiday and stay at home mothers played a big part in overseeing things.
Over time, with more divorced families and women going to work there was less oversight and more realization of the danger of going up to stranger's doors asking for candy.
With the Tylenol cyanide scare there was a realization that there was no countermeasure to such orchestrated evil and that effectively ended Halloween as a community holiday. People organized Halloween parties of friends, but blindly cavorting about the community asking for candy at stranger's doors had ended Halloween.
It was sad that so much good cheer was destroyed by a few psychopaths seeking to sow ill will.
Alas.
