October is a spooky month. It’s that time of year when everyone starts watching horror movies, playing scary games, decorating their houses with giant skeletons, and listening to “Monster Mash” a few too many times. But on Halloween night, we remember the real reason for the season: Candy. And lots of it.
But while any candy is better than no candy, not all of these delicious and sugary sweet treats are equal. In fact, some downright suck while others are heavenly pieces of joy wrapped and packaged in plastic. So fellow Kotaku writer Ethan Gach and I sat down and used a very complicated and scientific process, trust us, to rank 38 different candies to find out what is truly the best (and worst) Halloween treat around.
A small, hard candy that tastes vaguely like cinnamon and nothing else. Bleh. Pass. Toss it in the trash. -Zack Zwiezen
A brick of caramel shoved onto a stick and then wrapped up and sold as candy. It feels like something a kid in the great depression would suck on all day. -ZZ
What if an antacid had more sugar and broke your molars? Smarties delivers on both fronts. At least you can drop them into a glass of Sprite and pretend you’re a 50-year-old with heartburn. -Ethan Gach
The first time you enjoy some Pop Rocks, it’s a lot of fun! They fizz and pop in your mouth. Then you realize, wait, the candy sucks and it’s just the gimmick keeping this stuff around. -ZZ
Remove the stick from a Sugar Daddy, cut it up into a few pieces, and wrap it in some cheap paper. There you go. Enjoy! -ZZ
Pixy Stix are the cat-ear costume equivalent of Halloween candy. They require little effort and are only slightly more festive than wearing a hoodie. Sugar in a tube—what will they think of next?! -EG
I used to like Nerds, back when I was young and didn’t care about my teeth. Now eating these hard candy rocks feels like chewing on overly sweet cat litter. -ZZ
Pez with a dispenser? We’re cooking. Pez by itself in a standalone refill pack? Get the fuck out. -EG
If you put these in front of me I will keep eating them but not because I want to or am enjoying them. They are like the main character from the Christopher Nolan movie Memento who has the memory of a goldfish. The first crunch is somewhat satisfying and then it’s a weird briny puke party, but then you forget and eat another and go on the terrible ride all over again. -EG
Take that Sugar Daddy from before and shove some peanuts into it and you have the worst candy bar on our list. -ZZ
I have a sick soft spot for these bastardized licorice pieces encased in a pastel candy shell of doom. They make a lovely sound in the box. They almost convince you black licorice isn’t the devil’s mouthwash. -EG
Selling crappy Tootsie Rolls by smuggling them via fruity lollipops was a smart idea, even if most kids I knew chucked the thing once they reached the gross inner Tootise core. -ZZ
We’ve come to the first of the chocolate bars, an S-tier category of candy with 100 Grand bringing up the rear. The chocolate is fine but not great. The rice crispies are a nice touch but quickly overwhelmed by the caramel onslaught that will have you chewing for an uncomfortably long time until you finally decide to just swallow the 100 Grand whole. -EG
Mint chocolate is an acquired taste. If you’ve acquired it then the Peppermint Pattie is its Steak Tartare: rich, decadent, hard to finish, and way over the top. -EG
The Tootsie Pop concept, but improved greatly by replacing the core with cheap gum. The gum was bad, and barely lasted a few minutes, but at least it was better than eating a Tootsie Roll. -ZZ
Highly flavor dependent (banana, banana, banana), Laffy Taffy asks the bold question, “What if Tootsie Rolls didn’t suck?” -EG
Nice colors, decent chemical fruit flavors, and an oddly compelling texture. Mike and Ikes are too good to hate and too forgettable to go to the mat for. The first few are a nice nostalgic hit but any more than that and it starts to feel like eating powdered juice. -EG
Candy Corn is like the cilantro of the candy world. You either like it or you hate it. I love them but in careful moderation. Too many, too quickly, and you’ll remember they are mostly sugar, start to feel sick, and desperately want to chug a big glass of water. -ZZ
I actually hate Jolly Ranchers so I don’t know how these got here. I guess that’s the staying power of a ‘90s candy everyone remembers their teacher buying in bulk to try to incentivize order amid the large group chaos of adolescence. -EG
A Milk Dud is a caramel ball wrapped in chocolate and I think half the reason people like them is because they are fun to suck on during a movie. Or while trick or treating. -ZZ
Junior Mints are the Peppermint Patty condensed down into its platonic ideal, a perfect balance of light chocolate and sweet minty gel filling. Apologies to all the heathens who can’t appreciate the finer candies in life. -EG
Starburst leads the taffy category by sheer force of marketing and the fact that you can use waxy wrappers to make jewelry. It’s basically a Jolly Rancher you can actually enjoy. -EG
One of the best fruity treats on the list, Skittles offers a wide variety of juicy yet squishy wax-like candies that are fun to mix in your mouth. Oh, and if you want to really live, toss a few into a Sprite or Mountain Dew. -ZZ
The only candy bar named after a U.S. president’s daughter, Baby Ruth is old-school and uncompromising. Chocolate-covered peanuts don’t always hit but when those rich legume proteins mix with the Nestlé chocolate and light caramel, a special alchemy begins to unfold. -EG
What if corn syrup was colored with cancer-causing red dyes and extruded into a waxy whip-like shape? Twizzlers are like the “Trenton makes, the world takes” of candy: workmanlike, dependable, underappreciated, and a victim of decades of neoliberal deindustrialization propaganda. -EG
Nougat? Fucking nougat? You bet your fucking ass nougat. What is the 3 Musketeers worth? In the words of Saladin, “Nothing…everything.” -EG
Nestlé chocolate is way overrated. Crunch bars are not. It’s a 100 Grand without all the dumb caramel. Long live the Crunch. -EG
Cookies and cream is a great combo. So it makes sense that taking that flavor pairing and making it into a candy bar would be a creamy, not-too-sweet winner. -ZZ
Dots are the Starburst of the gummy world: light, delicate, and perfectly colored. They offer the indelible promise of sweet gel dreams with every chew. -EG
Dark chocolate shell. Sweet, shredded coconut filling. They took the best part of a box of chocolates and gave it its own wrapper. Contrary to the name, the one without the almonds is better. -EG
Chocolate caramel and cookie crunch are undefeated, except when you eat too many in a row and the cookie taste starts to turn into preservative paste. -EG
M&M’s are good, but if you can eat nuts, then the peanut variety is an enjoyable spin-off that gives you a bit more texture in each bite. Not quite better than the original, but a damn fine treat. -ZZ
Chocolate-covered Butterfinger candy bars are so good that people eat them despite the fact that, after eating a few of them, you feel like you have to surgically peel an uncomfortable amount of crunchy peanut butter filling from your enamel. -ZZ
When I worked at Blockbuster in college my lunch was a Diet Coke and a king-size Milky Way. I regret nothing. -ZZ
Peanut M&M’s taste better overall but the original M&M wins on texture. The curvature of the candy shell and the softness of the chocolate combine for the perfect chocolate chew. It’s like feeling little grains of sand beneath your feet pulled out by the tide if the entire beach was made of the most delicious substance on earth. -EG
The KitKat is just one of the best candies around. Light, sweet, a bit of crunch, some chocolate, but not too much, and easily shareable, there’s nothing to hate about a KitKat. -ZZ
A true classic. Small amount of chalky but tender peanut butter covered in chocolate and packaged in a fun little black wrapper. No notes. Amazing. -ZZ
And yet…the true king of Halloween is the Snickers. I feel like growing up I wasn’t a big fan of Snickers, but now that I’m an adult I’ve learned that the nougat and caramel mix perfectly with the crunchy peanuts. And it’s all wrapped in a not too thick, but not too thin milk chocolate shell. A perfect sweet and salty mix, a Snickers is truly a treasure to find in your Halloween trick-or-treat bag. -ZZ