After a long night of traveling up and down scarily-decorated streets, collecting Halloween candy door-to-door while dressed as a vampire, there were no greater joys to the grade school version of myself than digging to the bottom of my bucket of tricks and treats to find the sweets that most kids turned their noses up at.
While most families choose to hand trick-or-treaters the same fun-size brand name candies, namely your Reese’s Cups, M&M’s and Hershey’s bars, they are nowhere near the best option when it comes to Halloween candies. Instead, the clear champions of trick-or-treating are the classics – think candies like peanut butter kisses, butterscotch hard candies, Mellowcreme Pumpkins and Albert’s Fruit Chews.
I am not talking about those foil-wrapped strawberry hard candies, though. Those things suck, even to me.
There is something inherently lazy about giving out common chocolate bars and everyday candy brands to trick-or-treaters. Almost everyone is handing out the same selection of the basics. According to Candystore.com, Reese’s Cups and M&M’s are the No. 1 and 2 most popular Halloween candies respectively. Surely, throwing a handful of circus peanuts or Mary Janes in the mix could not hurt.
Halloween is a special event that only comes around once a year, and the specialty of the occasion should be reflected in the sweets being circulated.
Anyone can go into a store and purchase a Reese’s cup or Hershey’s bar on any given day. If you have ever tried to buy peanut butter kisses or Mellowcreme Pumpkins in March, you will know that it is next to impossible. I can attest to this, as every September I rush to the local Dollar General solely to pick up a few fresh bags of peanut butter kisses to start the fall season off right.
These old school candies receive unfair treatment from candy enjoyers all over the nation. Among Candystore.com’s list of the top 10 worst Halloween candies are circus peanuts, Tootsie Rolls, peanut butter kisses, Mary Janes and Bit-O-Honeys. These treats all rank within my personal top 10 best Halloween candies, so take that, Candystore.com.
The city government of High Point, North Carolina, even went as far as to jokingly ban peanut butter kisses in 2018 through a Facebook post. “No one likes them, don’t give them out,” the post read.
Though these sweets are often the butt of a joke, there is an indescribable joy that rushes over me when I see an unbranded candy in an orange or black wax wrapper. The endless sea of dark brown Hershey’s bars and blinding orange Reese’s Cups wrappers on Halloween is boring. I would much rather look into my bag of candy and pick out a wax-wrapped caramel or the translucent yellow wrapper of a butterscotch.
This Halloween, if you are handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, make the right choice, and introduce someone to a classic Halloween treat they may not have tried before. You could be the one to offer children a newfound love for butterscotch, popcorn balls, Mellowcreme Pumpkins or even peanut butter kisses.