Halloween Candy Season Is Already Underway. The Old Favorites Still Rule
Halloween may still be a month away, but you wouldn’t know it from walking into a store. The candy has been out for weeks, the orange and black displays are up and pumpkins are everywhere. By October 1, Halloween marketing isn’t beginning. It’s already well underway.
So I thought this was a good time to ask a different question: With all the choices consumers have today, what are we actually putting in our Halloween candy bowls?
I asked Truescope to look at the conversation around Halloween candy, including the brands and products that continue to show up in consumer preference rankings. The answer was surprisingly familiar.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups remain America’s top Halloween candy, according to DoorDash’s latest analysis, holding the No. 1 spot nationally for the third year in a row. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars and M&M’s followed, while other longtime favorites continue to compete with a growing appetite for sour, fruity and nostalgic candy.
That’s where this gets more interesting than another ranking of America’s favorite candy. These aren’t new brands fighting their way into our shopping carts. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have been around for nearly a century. Snickers arrived in 1930, and M&M’s followed in the 1940s.
Think about everything that has changed since then. We’ve gone from radio and newspapers to television, websites, social media, influencers, TikTok and now AI. Retail has changed, advertising has changed and consumer behavior has changed. Thousands of new products have competed for our attention.
Yet when Halloween rolls around, many of us still reach for the same candy. Why?
I think part of the answer is that Halloween candy isn’t simply something we buy. For many of us, it’s part of the memory of Halloween itself: coming home after trick-or-treating, dumping the bag onto the floor or kitchen table, finding the good stuff first, trading with friends, brothers or sisters, and inevitably ending up with a few pieces nobody seemed to want.
The brands were there, and that’s an extraordinary position for any company to occupy. Marketers spend enormous amounts of money trying to create an emotional connection between a product and a consumer, yet some candy brands have managed to become part of an experience that gets repeated from one generation to the next.
There’s also a wonderfully local side to all of this. National rankings only tell part of the story, and candy preferences vary considerably from state to state. Even some of America’s most familiar brands have very different relationships with consumers depending on where they live.
And then, of course, there’s candy corn. I’m not sure there is another candy that inspires quite so much debate while continuing to show up every October. Some people love it, while others won’t go near it.
You could argue that candy corn has accomplished something many brands would envy: It has become part of the conversation whether people like the product or not.
But there is a more serious issue sitting underneath all this nostalgia, and that’s price. The Truescope analysis also surfaced extensive coverage of rising Halloween costs, particularly for chocolate. Higher cocoa and other input costs in recent years have put pressure on candy prices, and consumers are paying attention.
That’s where this Halloween becomes an interesting test of brand loyalty. It’s one thing to say Reese’s is your favorite candy. It’s another when you’re standing in a store trying to fill a bowl for dozens of trick-or-treaters and looking at what that bag now costs.
Do consumers stay with the brands they know, buy less, switch to less expensive candy or mix the premium favorites with cheaper alternatives?
For communicators and marketers, that’s worth watching because brand loyalty is incredibly valuable, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Consumers can love a brand and still decide it’s too expensive. Nostalgia can influence a purchase, but so can the household budget.
That’s why I think Halloween candy is actually a pretty interesting little case study in brand equity. These brands have survived enormous changes in culture, media, marketing and retail, and some have become so connected to Halloween that it’s difficult to imagine the holiday without them.
But even the strongest emotional connection eventually meets the checkout line.
For all the changes in marketing, media and consumer behavior, there’s something remarkable about brands that can remain part of a tradition for generations. That’s a kind of brand equity that’s very difficult to buy.
As for candy corn, I suspect we’ll still be arguing about that on October 31.
Source note: CommPRO used Truescope to review media coverage and consumer preference data related to Halloween candy. The analysis surfaced reporting drawing on DoorDash and Instacart data, along with national and regional media coverage of candy preferences, pricing and consumer behavior. Because some of the preference data reflects prior Halloween purchasing periods, CommPRO has used it to examine longer-term brand and consumer patterns rather than characterize all findings as 2026 sales data.
