When Now and Laters were Good `n' Plenty.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Fred Tasker

When your front walk bristles with trick-or-treaters Friday, don't give them something as cliched as chocolate, or as healthy and unwanted as fruit.

Give them a sweet bit of history. Give them the candy of your childhood.

There's no way to sugar-coat this: Retro candy has returned. The hottest things down at the corner candy website and the rare sweet shop are: Atomic Fireballs, BB Bats, Candy Cigarettes, Wax Lips, Mary Janes, even Root Beer Barrels.

Of the 6.3 billion pounds of candy eaten in America this year, only half will be chocolate. The rest will be the hundreds of other, more imaginative sweets of old.

Maybe it's aging baby boomers embracing second childhoods, maybe a sign of moral …