Pour the coffee, settle into the recliner and grab the funnies, because Slick and Muffin are back with a fresh Sunday strip. This week, they take on one of the most relatable Halloween traditions out there: buying candy for trick-or-treaters and then quietly eating it yourself.
What’s in the news: the rise of the buffer bag
A new Halloween survey from Mars, fielded by Morning Consult and reported this week, found that more than 40% of shoppers restock their candy so they don’t run out before the doorbell starts ringing. Even better, about two in five shoppers now buy a separate “buffer bag” just for the household. In other words, a bag of candy whose whole job is to keep you away from the other bag of candy.
The National Retail Federation also expects Halloween spending to climb again this year, and nearly everyone celebrating plans to buy candy. So if your pantry already has a suspicious number of orange bags in it, and it’s only mid-October, you are in very good company.
Naturally, Slick saw this news and decided he had cracked the code.
The strip, panel by panel
Panel 1: Slick hugs an enormous bag of Halloween candy on the kitchen counter, beaming with pride. “Candy bought early. Genius!”
Panel 2: Muffin, arms crossed, eyebrow fully raised: “It’s October, Slick.” Translation: there are about three weeks between that bag and the first trick-or-treater, and she knows exactly who lives in this kitchen.
Panel 3: Slick is way ahead of her. He winks and holds up a second, smaller bag. “Relax. Got a buffer bag.”
Panel 4: Muffin leans on the counter, unimpressed: “A buffer bag for what?”
Panel 5: Slick taps his head like a raccoon who has never once been wrong: “To protect the real bag.”
Panel 6: Cut to Muffin holding up both bags, surrounded by a mountain of empty wrappers, staring straight at you: “Now we need a buffer for the buffer.”
Why does it land? Because the buffer bag is a perfectly logical plan that falls apart the moment a raccoon (or a human) is left alone with it. Slick believes he has outsmarted temptation by giving it a decoy. Muffin knows temptation doesn’t care how many bags you buy. Every bag is just the next bag. By panel six, the only thing left to protect is the plan itself, and her deadpan suggestion that they need yet another layer of candy security is the kind of logic that would make any snack-loving household nod in shame.
If your house has a buffer bag, a buffer for the buffer, or a secret stash behind the cereal boxes, no judgment here. Just maybe hide the good stuff on a higher shelf.
Laughed? Give the video a like and subscribe so you never miss a new Funny Papers strip every Sunday morning. Slick and Muffin also star in the Heritage Hollow Adventures books, and you can browse even more stories on the Choice1-3D bookshelf.
