"Kiff" Returns With A Spooky Good Time At An Olde Candy Shoppe for This Year's Halloween Episode

The Halloween specials have already become a fan-favorite aspect of the hit Disney Channel animated series, Kiff, and now this year’s has arrived, bringing us to a cursed Candy Shoppe for the occasion.

Ye Olde Candy Shoppe of Horrors

It’s Halloween and we see Kiff in full festive regalia dressed as a mad scientist at Slim Pickins, the favorite Table Town grocery store, purchasing a lot of candy. While she shouldn’t be buying her own candy as a kid, who should instead be out trick or treating for candy, she has agreed to spend the evening with Barry at his house as he has to watch his youngest brother, Kristophe, for the evening.

That’s not to say they’re not going to have fun - they have a full spooky demonstration where Kiff (as a mad scientist) brings her creation to life as Barry rises with another head (Kristophe) protruding from his belly. This is sure to scare everyone that comes to their door.

Their first guests, a group of teens, who are presented with a cauldron of candy to choose from after Kiff and Barry’s little show to choose from. Instead of picking one or two items, the teens take the full cauldron from Kiff and dump it into their trick or treat bag, leaving them with no more candy to give out for the night. While Kiff and Barry are huffing after this, the doorbell rings again and a lone, small child is there. Without any candy, Kiff and Barry can’t give the kid anything, much to the child’s disappointment. While Kiff and Barry try to explain, it becomes a bit overbearing and intimidating for the kid, causing him to stumble backwards and eventually tripping over himself and falling down, where he breaks his knight costume and exposing some oversized bloomers/underwear. This embarrassing moment causes the kid to run off.

Not wanting anything like this to happen again, Kiff, Barry, and Kristophe head back to Slim Pickins only to find the store closed. In the parking lot, they spot the boy from earlier, who quickly runs away. Kiff and Barry (with Kristophe in tow) give chase, and find an old candy shop located next to the cemetery. They go into the creepy, darkly-lit shop looking for more candy, and meet the owner - who is as creepy as the store.

This, of course, gives us our musical moment for the episode where the owner sings about a curse while serving up bags of candy for Kiff and Barry.

After they pay, the kids step out of the store and into the streets of Table Town - but not as they know it. Thanks to a bit of exposition and detail, we learn that they are in an antiquated version of Table Town, about 200 years prior to the Table Town they live in.

Looking for help amongst the town’s residents - who look an awful lot like the modern day residents but are clearly earlier ancestors - they find Principal Secretary. Alas, this is not the PS they know and love, it’s Constable Secretary, and he threatens to take them to the police station since nothing that these two are saying are making sense.

As he is questioning them, time literally slows down and stops, and two terrifying ghouls float out and head toward the trio, whispering that they do not belong. The kids evade them, hiding in an alley as time unfreezes.

Now, they know they need help and a newspaper confirms that they have, in fact, time traveled to the past. Now, everyone that they could know is still far away from even being born. Who do they know that is over 200 years old?

Just then, we hear Helen nearby, screaming at trick-or-treaters. That’s someone that they know! However, the kids know who Helen is but Helen has no idea who they are. That said, she still lets them inside her apartment, and the kids give her a very specific recap of the next 200 years.

The kids see the boy in the knight costume once again, and in an almost exact replay of events from a clear ancestor of Beverly - right down to the stumbling over and tripping and breaking his costume. After pointing this out, Helen explains that the boy is clearly a time phantom, someone who is going to experience something so terrible tonight that he will end up haunting Halloween for centuries to come. Therefore, it can be assumed that if Kiff and Barry prevent whatever that event is, the curse will be broken and the kids will be sent back to their proper time.

While the kids are leaving Helen (who has a hot date with a centaur, calling back to earlier mentions of a past with Halfway There Day’s icon, Centaur Claus), they see the boy being made fun of by several residents of the town. They try to cheer him up with some of their candy, but he runs away, all the way to the cemetery where they can finally give the boy the Licorice Lozenge he had been asking for since Barry’s house 200 years into the future.

This clearly was not what caused the curse, as the kids were stuck in the past after the gifting of the candy. Maybe the curse isn’t broken because he can’t Trick-or-Treat properly, after seeing other kids doing so and the boy’s reaction to this.

Now, Kiff and Barry want to give the boy the full, proper, trick or treat experience. They rush back to Helen who loves acting, to act the part and give the boy some candy. However, it seems that Helen has never acted before but is intrigued by the idea. Could this be the event that prompted this part of Helen’s persona?

As Kiff and Barry are making the boy a new costume (one that looks like Chubbles Wubbington that gives us a brief glimpse of an early Nana Chubbs), we learn his name: Little Crumble Smallsmith. Now, getting the full experience, they all head back to Helen, as time freezes once again. Helen points out that these creatures are Time Goblinoids, and are generally bad news.

The kids, including Crumble, are being chased through town by them and once again find themself in an alley to hide. However, as Barry points out, this is the first time all episode that Kristophe wants to get involved, going into a nearby pickle barrel for a snack and getting the attention of the Time Goblinoids. Barry jumps in front of them to save his brother, which catches the Time Goblinoids off guard.

Turns out that they are just friendly bureaucrats who exist to track down and return lost time travelers to their proper time. In fact, they are kind of offended at the mere thought that the kids thought they were evil and looking to harm them based solely on their outfits - which are actually considered highly fashionable.

That aside, the Time Goblinoids return Kiff, Barry, and Kristophe back to their present, where they discover they are back in the candy shop. Now, the store is well lit and substantially less creepy than earlier, and the shop owner comes out saying that he has waited a long time to see them again. Turns out, the shop owner is the older Crumble, who explains that the hurt from the Halloween 200 years ago weighed on him so heavily that it turned into a curse. In turn, he sent random folks back in time in the hopes of finding someone to undo his pain and give him what he always needed which was never candy, but friendship. It was Kiff and Barry (obviously) that undid the curse. Now, Crumble has grown up into a nice, friendly person but with the curse undone, he can finally rest and turns to dust blowing into the cemetery next door.

With all this time travel though, the gang has arrived back on Halloween and at an earlier time, so they know what the teens are going to do. To stop this, Kiff calls up more new friends, the Time Goblinoids, who become part of their scare routine and terrify the teenagers away.

You can catch this episode now on Disney+, Disney Channel, the DisneyNOW website, or even the Disney Channel YouTube channel, which you can find below.