It wasn't exactly a smile inside this Hershey's bar.
Authorities in Southern Maryland issued a "Halloween Candy Advisory" after a sewing needle was reportedly found in the wrapping of a piece of chocolate.
“The kid was handling the piece of candy, handling a Hershey bar, about 2 inches in length," Calvert County Sheriff's Office Spokesperson Steve Jones told Southern Maryland Newspapers Online, "and he noticed and felt something in the packaging. The mother opened it and found the sewing needle ... I think the kid got poked.”
According to the advisory issued Friday morning, there haven't been other local reports of similar incidents:
The Calvert County Sheriff's Office would like to encourage all to thoroughly inspect your Halloween candy. We have received 1 report of a sewing needle found in a Hershey candy bar wrapper from the St. Leonard area (Cherry Lane Subdivision). At this time we believe this is an isolated incident. We will also be reporting this to Hershey as it may be a manufacturing issue.
“Sometimes hoaxes sometimes people placed needles in there. We have no reason to believe that is the case here,” Jones told WJLA.
HuffPost has reached out to Hershey's and to the Calvert County Sheriff's Office for further comment. We'll update this piece with any new information.
Meantime, maybe take heart that a New Hampshire report of a razor blade found in a trick-or-treater's Halloween bag was later determined to have been a "misunderstanding."
Police said Friday the boy was using his school backpack to collect the candy and it appeared the razor blade came from the child's broken pencil sharpener that was in the backpack.
More semi-reassuring reading: Snopes' history of pins and needles in Halloween candy -- last updated in October -- which finds that most, though certainly not all, reported incidents turn out to be hoaxes.
But since we don't need Snopes to tell us that all such reported incidents are alarming, here's a palate cleanser, courtesy of Mental Floss -- it's the odd tale of one of the few confirmed cases of non-hoax Halloween candy adulteration:
In 2000, parents began finding an odd trick mixed into their children’s treats: Snickers wrappers stuffed with marijuana. Police jumped on the case and quickly traced the wacky chocolates back to a homeowner who seemed truly confused about the whole hullabaloo.
Eventually, the police and the homeowner pieced together what had happened. The man worked in the dead letter office at a local postal facility, and when he found a bag of Snickers in a lost package, he brought them home to give out as treats. He hadn’t realized, though, that the candy bars were actually someone’s attempt at smuggling pot through the mail.
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