Every October, I find myself staring at grocery store displays overflowing with Halloween candy, and the same question hits me year after year: which treats actually deserve a spot in my shopping cart? After decades of trick-or-treating, handing out candy, and let me be honest, sneaking pieces from my kids’ Halloween haul, I have developed what I consider a pretty solid candy ranking system. Find out which treats top our list and which ones to skip this trick-or-treat season.

The truth is, not all Halloween treats are created equal. Some candies have earned their legendary status through generations of satisfied sugar rushes, while others make you wonder how they even made it past the factory quality control. I have watched kids trade their Halloween candy like it was precious currency, and believe me, the hierarchy becomes crystal clear pretty quickly.

Let me start with what I consider the absolute champions of Halloween candy. Chocolate reigns supreme in my book, and nothing beats the classic combination of peanut butter and chocolate that you get with Reese’s Peanut Butler Cups. I remember being eight years old and actually mapping out my trick-or-treat route based on which houses gave out the full-size versions. Those orange packages became the gold standard by which I measured every other house’s generosity.

Snickers bars deserve serious respect too. The perfect balance of nougat, caramel, peanuts, and chocolate creates this amazing texture experience that keeps you coming back. Plus, they have staying power. While other candies disappear in seconds, a Snickers bar gives you something to savor. Kit Kats fall into this top tier as well, and not just because of their satisfying snap when you break them apart. The wafer and chocolate combination hits different than other candy bars, and they are surprisingly shareable, which matters when you are dealing with demanding trick-or-treaters.

Moving into what I call the solid middle ground, we have candies that do their job without setting the world on fire. Twix bars bring that caramel and cookie crunch that makes them memorable, though they sometimes get stuck in your teeth in ways that make you question your life choices. M&Ms are reliable crowd-pleasers, especially the peanut variety, but they lack the wow factor that pushes candy into legendary status.

Skittles occupy this interesting space where they are undeniably popular, yet I have never met anyone who considers them their absolute favorite Halloween treat. They taste the rainbow, sure, but sometimes you want more than just a rainbow of artificial fruit flavors. The same goes for Starburst, which deliver intense flavor but require serious jaw commitment that not everyone is prepared for.

Now we venture into controversial territory. Candy corn sits in a category all its own, inspiring either fierce devotion or complete disgust with very little middle ground. I respect the tradition behind these little triangular treats, and they definitely scream Halloween in a way that other candies cannot match. But taste wise, they are basically sugar shaped into a corn kernel, and once you eat more than three pieces, they all start to blend together into one overwhelming sweet blob.

The worst Halloween treats, in my experience, are the ones that feel like afterthoughts. Those generic hard candies wrapped in crinkly plastic that nobody can identify, the peppermints that somehow ended up mixed in with actual Halloween candy, and anything that involves coconut unless you are specifically a coconut person. I have watched countless kids  dig through their trick-or-treat bags and push these items aside like they were contaminated.

Tootsie Rolls occupy this weird space between candy and punishment. Some people swear by them, but I have always felt like they were what you got when the house ran out of good candy. They are not terrible, exactly, but they are not exciting either. They just exist, taking up valuable real estate in your Halloween  bag.

What makes a great Halloween candy anyway? It needs to deliver immediate satisfaction, offer interesting texture, and ideally, create some sense of nostalgia or emotional connection. The best Halloween treats transport you back to being a kid, when getting a full-size candy bar felt like winning the lottery.

The candy landscape keeps evolving too. New flavors and varieties appear every year, trying to capture lightning in a bottle, but the classics endure for good reason. They have survived decades of competition because they understand something fundamental about what we want when we bite into Halloween candy.

My ranking system ultimately comes down to this: would I be genuinely excited to find this in my trick-or-treat bag, or would I keep digging for something better? The answer separates the Halloween heroes from the forgettable filler, and after all these years, I think I have figured out which is which.

Reference

O’Neil, C. E., Fulgoni, V. L., & Nicklas, T. A. (2015). Candy consumption patterns, effects on health, and behavioral strategies to promote moderation: Summary report of a roundtable discussion. Advances in Nutrition, 6(1), 139S–146S. https://doi.org/10.3945/an.114.007401

Avena, N. M., Rada, P., & Hoebel, B. G. (2019). The impact of sugar consumption on stress driven, emotional and addictive behaviors. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 103, 178–199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.05.021

National Cancer Institute. (2022). Sources of added sugars in the diets of the US population ages 2 years and older, NHANES 2017-2020. Risk Factor Assessment Branch, Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program. National Institutes of Health.