Humor, Life

Halloween Candy Made Me a Better Person

Writer McWriterson

It didn’t.

Make me a better person.

However, I typed my topic of “Halloween candy” into the Portent Content Idea Generator that I discovered on Ally Bean’s blog a while back, and this was one of the titles that appeared.

It was either that or “What the Amish Can Teach You About Halloween Candies.”

By the way, that list would be short.

Photo by Yaroslav Shuraev on Pexels.com

The main purpose of today’s post is to find out what your favorite Halloween candy is. I can’t believe I haven’t addressed such an important topic in my 11 years of writing at Ye Grace Full Life.

I also can’t believe I talked about laxatives on this blog before Halloween candy.

It was a low point in my life. It was also sponsored. #ad

I was going to also list my least favorite Halloween candy, but I didn’t want to stir up any controversy in this space a week before All Hallows Eve. I believe that Halloween candy is associated with core childhood memories and I don’t want to taint them in any way.

Speaking of core memories, have any of you seen the movie Inside Out? The only animated film that made me cry.

Scratch that.

There were candies I looked forward to getting in my trick-or-treat bag, and then there were candies I craved on a regular basis. However, the two cannot be intertwined.

For example, I enjoy peanut M&M’s on a weekly basis, but if I found them in my trick-or-treat bag? Blech. So I’m not including peanut M&M’s on my Halloween candy list. To me, this makes perfect sense.

Another example: I was a big fan of green apple Jolly Ranchers when I was younger. I recall sucking on those things while roller skating around the neighborhood and listening to the Footloose soundtrack. I could be intertwining memories. The point is, I adored Jolly Ranchers very much, but had I received them in my pillowcase on Halloween? In the trash.

I don’t make the rules: they make themselves.

Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels.com

Here are my most favorite Halloween candies:

Reese’s peanut butter cups– When they are cold, they’re even better. I’m not a fan of a mushy peanut butter cup, so I’ll keep mine in the fridge.

Twix– With Twix, I’m the opposite. I like mine soft and mushy.

Kit Kat– I eat my Kit Kat’s like this: nibble on the outer edges first, then devour the rest.

Almond Joy– Why is this the fourth item on the list? This is a solid second place contender. I love a nutty, chocolate combination.

Chunky bar– These were only given out on rare occasions. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find one in the wild these days. If you do, please buy one for me.

Snickers– I only prefer the snack size version of a Snickers bar.

Blow pops- I need more gum in my blow pop than I’m getting. I should write a letter to the CEO.

Mr. Goodbar- These are vastly underappreciated.

100 Grand- I find that the snack size version is always stale.

Tootsie pop– Better than a blow pop. In the off season, I enjoy a Tootsie Roll or 20. Like potato chips, you can’t eat just one.

Baby Ruth– These are also vastly underappreciated.

PS- Whatchamacallit is my all-time favorite candy bar. There were no snack sized versions of this, so I didn’t get one in my trick-or-treat bag.

PPS- I never received full-sized candy bars in my trick-or-treat bag. If you did, tell us all about it in the comments.

Here are two fun articles I found:

New 2021 list reveals most popular Halloween candy in every state | Candy Industry

The official Halloween candy power rankings – Los Angeles Times

What is your favorite Halloween candy?

71 thoughts on “Halloween Candy Made Me a Better Person”

  2. This is so fun. I laughed at ‘that would be a short list’ regarding what we could learn from Amish about candy.

    love candy corn. There, I said it. I do not discriminate against a mushy peanut butter cup. I love a Three Musketeers. As a kid, I wasn’t into nuts (see Three Musketeers love fest above) so while I now like Snickers, especially in a Blizzard from Dairy Queen, I was only partially OK with them as a kid.

    Fun fact, my favorite uncle worked in a Baby Ruth /Butterfinger plant near O’Hare when I was a kid. He got us all sweatshirts that read BABY RUTH up the sleeve. I cannot stand Butterfingers.

    I vividly remember lining up all my Halloween candy on the floor across from my siblings. We had huge trading sessions, but first we had to count everything and brag about who got the most or the best, etc.

    Celiac disease has sort of messed with my Halloween candy enjoyment, but there are still options. I miss Crunch bars.

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    1. “There, I said it!” As if confessing a dark secret. If you couldn’t tell from my list, I’m not a fan of sweet/fruity candy and prefer chocolate.

      I didn’t like nuts as a kid, but I loved them as I got older. There’s a dirty joke somewhere in there.

      I like a Heath bar Blizzard, but a Snickers sounds delicious. I’ll have to try it the next time.

      Oh man, what a cool job. No wonder he was your favorite uncle!

      I loved Halloween candy trading sessions! So much fun.

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  4. Omg memories. I haven’t eaten candy in so long. And even when I was a kid, I was a laconic candy consumer. But I vividly remember the candy I *wanted* to find when I dumped out my Trick or Treat pillow case at the end of the night on Halloween. Number 1: Heath Bar. Hands down favorite. I still miss them but I swear they changed the recipe decades ago and, well, the magic is gone. Close second fav Halloween candy: Toblerone. I also liked: Nestle Crunch, Reese’s peanut butter cup, Rolos, Kit Kat, and M&Ms.

    I still remember the feeling of getting a full sized candy – like the “regular” Reese’s peanut butter cups (plural!). Even if it wasn’t a fav, it was like Snow Day Cancels School meets Cookies Warm Out of the Oven with a side of Horseback Riding in Fall thru Leaves. 🙂

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    1. Don’t you think that they’ve changed the recipe for a lot of candy? Most of it doesn’t taste as good as it used to. OR, are our taste buds deteriorating? LOL

      I love that you used to enjoy Toblerone as a child. I hadn’t had one until I was an adult. Side note-Toblerone always reminds me of Joey from Friends.

      Also, full size candy bars taste different (read: better) than snack size candy bars.

      Oh Maddie, that description is a perfect day. Both as a child and an adult. Ella would agree. 🙂

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  6. OMG Inside Out! BING BONG *cries forever*

    My number one favourite Halloween candy is Rockets, which I think you in America might know as Smarties (Smarties are different in Canada, they are chocolate with candy shell). Rockets, the chalky fruit-ish flavoured candy. I LOVE THEM WHOLEHEARTEDLY.

    I also love mini Wunderbars, Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups AND Reece’s Pieces, and Sour Patch Kids.

    I always wanted to be the house that gave out full-size chocolate bars and now I do that every Halloween. I AM A VERY FANCY LADY.

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    1. Yay, it’s my new blog friend!!

      Bing Bong, yes! Isn’t that movie the best??

      I only started loving sweet/sour candy THIS YEAR. Can you imagine? Nerds are what led me to the other side. Big Chewy Nerds, to be precise. Those are something I could eat in mass quantities.

      According to the link at the bottom of this post, Sour Patch Kids are the most popular candy in Illinois, where I live. I’ve never had a Sour Patch Kid before. I feel like I’d be doing a disservice to the state if I didn’t give one a try. So, I’ve set myself a task!

      You ARE a fancy lady! 🙂

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  7. Mounds followed by Almond Joy. Those were my favorites from Halloween Trick or Treating. They also were my mom’s all time favorite candy bars. Maybe I shared them with her? I have good memories of getting those.

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    1. Mounds is another good one! I just had Mounds for the first time in a long while on Saturday night, and it was delicious. I completely forgot they were dark chocolate. That is something else I could’ve mentioned in my post. Until I was in my 40s, I didn’t like dark chocolate.

      I love how candy can bring back memories. 🙂

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  8. I definitely think companies started changing recipes, substituting ingredients (like using corn syrup instead of cane sugar and palm oil instead of who knows what, etc) for loads of products- from Coca Cola to crackers to ice cream to candy. I’m sure my taste buds have changed too, but I remember foods tasting horrible (hello New Coke!) when I was an itty bitty kid. I guess I shouldn’t complain bc it removes all temptation to eat processed foods lol.

    Mostly I just feel sorry for the kids. They’ll never know how delicious *real* junk food used to be!
    There’s a Joey Toblerone link?!? I’m so googling this….

    Yes! Husband and I spent all of lunch discussing your blog and we both remember the diff taste between mini & regular size candy! What is that? Also much discussion about the endless ways to deconstruct (ie eat) Reese’s peanut butter cups, Twix, etc lol. This was a great post!

    Aw. Thank you for the kind words. Made me smile to read Ella would agree with my perfect day description. Horse girls have a bond. 🙂

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    1. When it comes to food, there are definitely days when I wish we could just close our eyes and look the other way. So it contains a bit of plastic? Battery acid? Eh! I kid! When I worked at McDonald’s in the late 80s, the fries tasted different. I believe it’s because they were fried in either peanut oil or animal fat. It changed several years ago, and they no longer taste the same. Progress is good, progress is good, progress is good.

      If you Google that, I believe you will wind up watching one of the best episodes. Chandler in a box? Also, a moment of silence for “Gunther” who died yesterday. 😦

      It makes me happy that you and your husband discuss my blog. Seriously. The past several days have been crummy, so this brightened my day. Also, maybe the difference is that they cut the joy in half?

      Horse girls will forever have a bond. 🙂

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      1. I was at an Amish market and they were selling freshly made donuts for 2 for $2 or something like that, so I got 2. They were huge and I ate both of them. Thirty minutes later I thought I was going into a diabetic episode and made my brother go into a store and get me some Turkey! I will never do that again.

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  11. My all time favorite treats to find in my stash when I got home were Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (cold or not), Milky Way, Rolos, Whoppers, Mounds (I didn’t care for nuts as a child – but now I do adore an Almond Joy and a Snickers)…and the list goes on. I’ve refrained from buying any candy yet because I don’t want the temptation in the house until it has to be. One thing that irritates me is that the mixed bags of candy don’t have more of a variety in them; so I usually end up buying to different bags…despite the fact that we usually don’t get many trick or treaters and then someone *has* to deal with the leftovers.

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    1. Rolo’s! Yes! Every Christmas, I make Rolo cookies, which are so yummy. I can’t believe I forgot Rolo’s!

      I also wait until the last minute to buy the Halloween candy. When there is candy in the house, I can’t stay away from it. 🙂

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  12. I remember getting a full sized chunky, chunky used to be quite huge. I hated Mary Janes or Bit of Honey, or those stupid flavored liquid in wax.
    I loved pixie sticks, and razzles, and bazooka Joe gum, dip n sticks, reases pb cups and mallow cups, three musketeers, Heath or skor…

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      1. I must’ve lived in an affluent neighborhood… because sometimes we also got coins and of all things dental floss. Whatchamacallits were good too. Mini boxes of goobers, milk duds and raisnets. I actually prefered blowpops I was big into chewing gum. Ugh more crap candy, those multicolored candy buttons on paper. Taking me down memory lane lol

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  15. Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Pops, and Blow Pops are regularly mom taxed out of my kids’ stashes. Trick or treating wasn’t allowed, but I regularly spent part of my allowance on York peppermint patties. So good.

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  17. First off, don’t you love that Portent Content Idea Generator? Thanks for mentioning me in relationship to it.

    About Halloween candy, I’m not much of a candy person and will only eat a few kinds. It’s not snobbery as much as I don’t like sweets enough to consume the calories of things I don’t like.

    I like: Twix, Almond Joy, and Payday. Also I try to eat one square of 70% dark chocolate each day ’cause I’m told it’s healthy. Maybe it is…

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    1. I love it! Thank you for suggesting it.

      I wish I didn’t like sweets so much. It’s definitely my downfall.

      Dark chocolate is very healthy. That’s probably something I should probably do, but I ruin it by adding caramel and nuts. 😉

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  18. Snickers, Reese’s (cups, not pieces), Milky Way, Three Musketeers, and M&Ms. (Yeah, I got a chocolate tooth.) Best treat ever? My babysitter asked me what kind of candy I liked best, and when I knocked on her door (she lived kitty-corner across from us), she put one of those big 1 lb. bags of M&Ms in my plastic pumpkin!

    Favorite Halloween memory aside from this, though, is watching my kids divvy up their haul at the end of the evening. My daughter couldn’t eat chocolate, so she’d trade all of her chocolate treats for her brother’s Sour Patch Kids, Nerds, Jolly Ranchers. There were some hard negotiations, but I loved that they did that.

    Thanks for the trip down memory lane. 🙂 Now I’m feeling I need to up my game as a treat giver. I usually just buy one of those mixed jumbo bags the day of, which means there isn’t much to choose from.

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    1. Your babysitter is the best kind of person.

      Aww, I love that your kids did that! And here’s yet another mention of Sour Patch Kids, so I’ll be having some this weekend while thinking of your daughter and my lovely readers. This is why I love blogging and the comments section so much.

      I’m also raising my game. I’m going to hand out Sour Patch Kids because reportedly a lot of kids in Illinois enjoy them. 🙂

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      2. Do you want to hear something interesting I just recently discovered? That sour candy can help you fight off a panic attack. I’ll include a link in the tater tot post next week, but I’d never heard of this before.

        Liked by 1 person

  19. I love this post! And I am with you 100% on the Snickers bars, and the fun size being the perfect Snickers size. I also have a soft spot for Milky Way Midnight and the miniature Heath bars. But I think my favorite candy is Sour Patch Kids. Yum!

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    1. I don’t believe I’ve ever tried the Milky Way Midnight, but I believe I should! I love a dark chocolate and caramel combo.
      This is the second time someone has mentioned Sour Patch Kids to me, so I’m going to give them a go this weekend. Thank you for the suggestion! 🙂

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  20. I did not see Inside Out, but if it made you cry, surely it would make me cry. Did you ever watch The Iron Giant? Animated and I cried.

    I forgot all about Whatchamacalit’s and I LOVED THEM. Did I ever blog about my deep, deep love of chocolate as a kid.
    I should write about that and also how I spent so much time getting fillings.
    Now I don’t eat that much candy, but if I do, I prefer a snack size as too much hurts my teeth. (see previous sentences)
    Almond Joy’s are the best. And if I have a kit kat, I actually pick off the outside chocolate parts and toss them, then enjoy the wafer with the little bit of chocolate.
    I don’t think I ever got a full-sized bar.
    The Coach will only eat Reese’s from the freezer. He has 3 bags in there right now from his birthday a few weeks ago and we’ve both resisted them because WEDDING. I foresee they might be gone next week.
    Laughing at your reasoning for tossing certain ones at Halloween when they are perfectly wonderful any other time. YOU ARE SPECIAL.

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    1. How did I not know about Iron Giant? I just looked it up and now I have to see it!

      You must blog about your deep, deep love of chocolate. Why are you and I so alike??

      I will take your KitKat outsides, thank you very much. That would be a fantastic gimmick. Bags of just the KitKat outsides. We can call them Kitties. HEY HERSHEY, I’D LIKE AN OFFICE WITH A WINDOW PLEASE.

      Ooh, Reese’s in the freezer?? What exactly is this sorcery?? Game. Changer.

      I am special, Suz. It’s about damn time someone noticed. 😉

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  21. Have never liked nuts in my desserts or candy and am allergic to coconut. This eliminates many options but Reese’s peanut butter cups in the freezer have always been the very best thing to eat at Halloween and year round! If memory serves the frozen peanut butter cup thing started for me in the summers at Clearfork pool when I was a kid. They put the chocolate in the fridge or freezer to keep it from melting in the heat of the snack shack. Thank you to them! 🥰 Am also a Milky Way Midnight fan. For some reason these are not a well known item so it was nice to find another reader that likes them too. Least favorite (besides the stuff mentioned above that was either disliked or would send me to the ER) has to be bit o honey and dots. Also, the LA article had it right….. despite the taste, the wax soda bottles and lips along with the candy bracelets and necklaces definitely had the highest trading value in our neighborhood.
    P.S. I also remember getting dental floss in my bag as a kid! Lol

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    1. That is so funny about the dental floss! I do think I remember someone told me they got toothbrushes and toothpaste because a dentist lived in their neighborhood, HA!

      A frozen peanut butter cup sounds delicious. That’s something I’m going to have to try.

      I’m also going to try the Milky Way Midnight. I’m having a great time learning all of these new ideas. Especially so close to Halloween. 🙂

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  22. Pingback: HallowWho? – Busy Bee Suz

  23. As a kid, pretty much any chocolate candy bar was welcome in my trick-or-treat bag, especially M&Ms and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Any kind of chewy candy got thrown out. As a teen (not trick-or-treating, just in general) I liked Pop Rocks and watermelon Jolly Ranchers.

    I hate to admit this but as a young mom, I was addicted to M&Ms and mini Reese Peanut Butter Cups. And I don’t say this lightly. I truly was addicted. It was the sugar. I kept a pound bag of M&Ms in my cabinet at all times. I easily went through that pound in one week. I also kept the peanut butter cups in my fridge (like you, I liked them cold) and would eat so many at one time, that I thought I’d puke. But yet I couldn’t stop eating them. Needless to say, I was very overweight at the time.

    I gave up sugar years ago and my cravings for it totally went away. I now sometimes indulge in a piece of dessert or some dark chocolate, but I find that if I eat too much, it makes me sick (horrible stomachache and headache), so it’s not worth it to me.

    It’s amazing how not only the sugar cravings go away, but how crappy you find the chocolate is in these candy bars once you stop eating it or are only used to quality dark chocolate. I have Halloween candy for the trick-or-treaters on Sunday and I tried both a Kit-Kat and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and threw both away after one bite.

    So if anyone wants to come trick-or-treating at my house on Sunday, I have lots of fun sized candy bars! 🙂

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    1. I completely forgot about watermelon Jolly Ranchers! Those were also delicious!

      Mini Reese’s are extremely addictive. Last winter, I went through the same thing with Peanut M&M’s. It was my pandemic coping mechanism.

      We haven’t even bought any candy yet, ha! We don’t keep it in the house because it would be too tempting. 😉

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      1. I used to eat a lot of (most of!) the Halloween candy before I could pass it out to trick-or-treaters. Now it doesn’t even tempt me anymore.

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  24. Quickly scrolled through the comments and only saw one direct mention of Hershey’s. It was yours and didn’t include any of the good old fashioned Hershey bars, plain or with almonds. I like a good snap, crackle, pop so I especially like Crunch bars. I fondly remember Sugar Babies and Sugar Daddies. I once pulled out a crown while trying to take a bite out of the latter.

    On a recent Costco trip I saw a bag of all mint flavored chocolate candies. I know I would not be able to consume it all because mint…

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    1. It’s strange because I’m not a big fan of plain Hershey bars, but I love ones with almonds in them. As a child, I enjoyed a trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania. The entire town smells like chocolate!

      Mint is one of my favorite flavors! But I can only eat it in modest amounts. Because mint…;)

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