Weather 
A disheartened Midwestern mother has packaged proof of the funeral pyre that is the US economy.
In a recent TikTok video, Danielle Martin, a physical therapist and mother of two, shared her shocking discovery.
“Look at what I found going through my son’s Halloween candy from his trunk-or-treat over the weekend,” she teased before revealing the sad sight of an individually wrapped gummy bear.
For the uninitiated and/or the childless, trunk-or-treat is an alternative to traditional door-to-door trick-or-treating that sees the youth soliciting candy by going from car to car in a designated parking lot.
“One single, individually wrapped gummy bear. It’s all you get—one gummy,” Martin underscored, calling the single plastic-wrapped bear a recession indicator.
“A true sign of how horrible our current economy is,” Martin surmised.
Typically, gummy bears, even those packaged for Halloween, come with at least 5 to 7 mini cubs per pack.
In her caption, Martin added the rallying cry, “Bring me more bears.”
The clip has been viewed nearly 340,000 times since she posted it last week.
The comments section was rife with outrage.
“The inevitable result of maximizing profits and minimizing overhead. I guess private equity bought gummy bears,” speculated one viewer.
“The audacity to label it ‘gummy bears’ plural,” added another.
“It’s actually more expensive to package them this way,” said a third.
“Remember in the 90s we had to go back to the car to switch out our loot bags because the candy was too heavy? I’m so sad for today’s kids,” reminisced a sad Millennial.
“Been waiting my whole life to be the whole chocolate bar house. We now make 200K combined and can’t afford to be that house,” added another.
“I would make sure that’s not an adult gummy,” cautioned another.
A fellow parent shared that they too have previewed the end times courtesy of individually wrapped Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids.
In an email to Bro Bible, Martin shared that her son was in fact “thrilled” with the individually wrapped offering.
“His favorite stuffed animal is ‘Blue Bear,’ a gummy-bear shaped stuffed bear, so when his candy looked like his bear that was very exciting for him.”
Martin added that she was not criticizing the candy nor the person who handed it out.
“I was by no means bashing the individual handing out these candies, just merely commenting on its singleness. We were happy to receive any candies or treats that were being handed out,” she explained.
She added that many commenters called trunk-or-treats the downfall of Halloween, a stance she firmly opposes.
“Trunk or treat gives families more opportunities to participate in fun, free and festive activities all month long! It prolongs the excitement, and I don’t feel that it detracts from trick-or-treating on Halloween at all,” she stated.
Moreover, Martin shared that she was surprised by many of the more inflammatory responses to her post.
“I was shocked at how many comments insinuated that this might be a THC gummy; that was not ever a thought in my mind. Many others were making it political.”
The rage-bait debate over the individually wrapped gummy bear has, unsurprisingly, made it to Reddit.
“Individually wrapped gummy bears from a zoo trick or treat event,” wrote an unhappy user, who posted side-by-side photos comparing the item’s packaging to a multi-pack, captioning the post ‘A story of rage in three photos.’
“F—king nonexistent is what their FUN size stands for,” one commenter suggested.
Martin’s post and the Reddit grievances come as a recent Finance Buzz study found that the cost of filling the candy bowl has climbed 71% since 2021 — more than triple the national inflation rate of 22%.
