Last October (2017), I made it a goal to drink 31 different beers—a new one each day—by the end of the month. Incredibly, I was successful in my attempt, which I dubbed #31FallBeers (look it up on any form of social media!) This year, I wanted to try something similar, but there were two important changes I needed to make. Firstly, I wanted to be able to expound more, so I decided against social media blurbs in favor of long-form posts on my site. Second: it needed to be much, much cheaper than drinking 31 different beers. The result? #31DaysOfJunk. Strap in and hold on tight, and please enjoy this month-long odyssey into the sugary, fatty belly of the autumnal beast.

It’s taken me years to warm up to the alien combination of mint and chocolate. Mint and chocolate? Who came up with that, man? That’s like saying “lemon and chocolate”. It’s a forbidden dance. Such different flavor combinations were never meant to mingle. Chocolate is meant to be paired with other sweet flavors. (Okay, and occasionally ‘sea salt’, you snobs.) Sure, mint and lemon come in sweet variations in the candy world, but neither are, by their nature, sweet.

I think I first flirted with the odd couple when I tried mint chocolate chip ice cream for the first time. The mint was more of a muted background flavor; an afterthought. A brief cooling sensation that cleared the way for the main attraction: the chocolate flakes. Plus, I’m always down to eat green ice cream, no matter what the flavor it.

But I never got into York Peppermint Patties, though my dad swore by them. I did appreciate that they were enrobed in dark chocolate—that’s always a good thing. But let’s be honest: because of its gooey filling, it’s basically like eating chocolate-covered toothpaste.

This is the same reason I can’t get down with Junior Mints. The soft, paste-like center makes me think I’m eating Colgate, man! How can you not think you’re eating toothpaste when it’s the exact same flavor and consistency? Yuck.

However, these Spooky Junior Mints get major bonus points for switching up the color of the filling. Not only do we get orange, but we also get black! How cool is that! Sometimes that’s all you gotta do: switch up the color. The orange filling is noticeably oozier than the black filling. In fact, the black filling is downright solid. Maybe it’s just the batch I got. But if both fillings were equally as runny, it could make for a fun game of biting into one and blindly trying to guess which color you got.

Charming, yes. But you haven’t yet completely swayed me, “mint and chocolate”. Yuck.