Jimmy Kimmel‘s controversial Halloween trick has returned.
After a two-year hiatus, Jimmy Kimmel Live! has officially brought back and endorsed its annual YouTube prank challenge, “Hey Jimmy Kimmel, I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy!” On Nov. 2, the talk show featured a compilation of fan-submitted home videos of parents telling their young children they consumed their treats, causing a whole lot of tears.
“There are people who are unhappy that we’re doing this, but we put it to a vote and this was the will of the people. Elections have consequences,” Kimmel joked on the show. “By the way, I do want to say for the record, kids cry about everything. My son had a psychotic meltdown this morning because he didn’t like his umbrella.”
He also reflected on the challenge itself, which he launched in 2011. “The first time we did this was 10 years ago,” he said. “We’ve been doing it so long, some of the kids we tricked, grew up to have their own kids to steal candy from.”
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In late 2020, months after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid nationwide shutdowns, Kimmel announced that the talk show decided not to host the candy prank “because kids have suffered enough.” He added, “And guess what? The parents went ahead and did it anyway.” And so, the show still shared fans’ home videos showing them tricking their kids.
While the talk show didn’t go ahead with the challenge in 2021, it did share more prank videos sent in by parents, with the show noting that they were “unauthorized and unwanted.”
“We did not invite parents to take part in our annual YouTube Halloween challenge this year where they pretend to eat all their kids candy and record it,” Kimmel said. “It just felt like kids have had it hard enough lately so we decided to hold off this year. We did not ask parents to do this but a lot of parents just went ahead and did it anyway. I think we got 200 videos.”
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