Chris...my beloved mother hid the baskets occasionally...up until the Easter she put them behind chairs right on top of the heat coils in the tile floor, that is. That sort of took the fun right out of hiding them for her. As bad as we felt over our melted chocolate as kids, I never really learned the intensity of how horrible *she* felt until I became a mother myself. (That's a universal law. You don't truly "get" your own parents until you become a parent yourself.)
With my remarkable tendency to overdo everything, my kids used to leave a plate of carrots out for the Easter Bunny. After all, Santa got cookies.
I don't remember it because I was too young, but my mother talked fondly all her life about the year my paternal grandmother gave me a foot tall *solid* white chocolate rabbit for Easter. My mother - kind woman that she was - rescued me from being sick by consuming a great deal of the chocolate herself. She didn't mention whether or not *she* got sick...but she must have.
One of my favorite pics of my teenage Goth daughter was of her going to school on Halloween as the Easter Bunny.