I offered children the option of choosing a potato again this year. A few kids seemed to remember from last year, a few were very excited, some were confused, and parents generally thought it was funny. A few people mentioned having seen the idea on the local news, online, etc., so the foolishness is spreading.
I bought a couple of variety bags with red, white, and purple types.
Last year, I only had white potatoes, and only allowed one potato per group in order to artificially inflate desirability and cause fights. This year, only one potato of each color was in the treat bowl at any time, and no more than three potatoes (one per color) were allowed per group. There were no quarrels or disagreements this year, so based on this unsatisfactorily small sample size, I guess it's statistically unlikely that four or more kids in a given group will all want a potato.
*exemplar potatoes in the above photo are not representative of typical sizes.
We had 14 purple (generally the largest) 25 white, and 24 red (generally the smallest) to start. This morning, final tally of the remainders are 8 purple left, 15 white left, and 20 red left. The number of white potatoes taken (10) equals the combined number of purple (6) and red (4) taken. This breaks down to kids choosing the white potato 50% of the time, purple 30%, and red 20%.