Halloween warning: Kids you may get a candy bar that plays Doom

With Halloween less than a week away, parents everywhere are riddled with anxiety over what some stranger might put in a candy bar. The worst case has kids take a bite filled with a razor blade, needle, or broken glass. But there is hope.

A cheeky warning

On a fun twist to the old urban myths, the good guy Makers (that's people who invent technology) over at Adafruit have created the ultimate Milky Way candy bar. It can literally run the video game "Doom."

"Adafruit would like to remind parents this Halloween to please carefully inspect your kids' candy," a voiceover in a video of the confectionary wunderkind says. "We found Doom running inside this Milky Way bar."

Doom Candy

This data crunching candy bar, which the maker dubbed "Candy of Doom" is one in a growing list of everyday items being able to run the classic game. In so many forms they are to numerous to count, but in Adafruit's world, Doom has been played on a John Deere Tractor, on a Notepad App, inside the very game Doom, played on a rotary telephone (you may not know what that is) and powered by 100 pounds of moldy potatoes.

So far, this trend has been running the silent version of the game. The hope is that some crafty tech maker or hacker, or just a plain old ingenious developer will try their hand at adding sound to some strange playback technique for the icon "Doom," game platform.

There are many more ways to host the game Doom, as shown on the PCGamer.com website where we found this intriguing story, and has an archive of Doom Tags page.

The truth of the matter

The candy bar has a functional screen running the game, as Adafruit's way of warning parents that someone might have gotten a computer into your kids' candy. There is precious little chance of the danger that can be posed in candy bars during the Halloween holiday, but the truth is we must be careful.

For context, it is always a best practice to be safe, but the truth is there is a very small probability that someone will go to the extreme trouble of placing something expensive and dangerous in candy. But many fear-based outlets will run the story as if millions are doing it.

Running Doom on everyday items is of course a high tradition of gaming and hardware hacking. It has a combination of open-source code and simplicity, combined with its low requirements system-wise have produced many head-scratching results over the years.

So beware, a genius maker could have you playing Doom on your candy (Milky Way or Mars for everyone else) bar this Halloween season. It might produce some safe belly laughs, for those who are treated to it.