By Ben George ben@candystore.com

Preferences are changing all the time. Kid’s these days like all kinds of things we’ll never understand. Did you know TikTok is almost bigger than YouTube now? Gen Z is growing up fast. How’s a grown-up supposed to keep up with the latest trends in Halloween candy?

And I don’t know about you, but decision fatigue is real for me in 2021. Trying to see the signal through the noise of delta variants, masks, vaccines, back to school, politics. If you too are over trying to piece together what is reality, we’re here to at least make Halloween candy decisions easier.

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Here’s how we help you avoid disaster.

With so many candy ranking lists out there, it’s tough to get a handle on what’s what. So we took some age-old advice. Compile as much data as you can and methodically establish a ranking system to elucidate a mountain of data. You know that old saying, right? 😉

Twelve lists of best and worst candies were published on reputable websites. We grabbed the data there, added in our own CandyStore.com customer survey data (over 20,000 surveyed!) and mashed them all together into the ultimate list.

Next, we surveyed over 17,000 of our own customers. Then, we put the best and worst candies into a spreadsheet. In Column A we had a number value. We weighted each list, so a candy that got listed as the worst gets 10 points, while one that ranks 10th worst gets one point. Same idea goes for the best list. We then tallied up the points and created our list.

Got it? Good. Let’s go.

Oh and please keep in mind, the opinions expressed here are not those of CandyStore.com. They are inferred from the data by a mere candy blog writer.

Last year was a weird year for Halloween and trick-or-treating. No one was vaccinated and there was a fall surge in covid. The uncertainty was even greater then than now. But we do feel like this year Halloween will reach and maybe eclipse it’s former pre-pandemic peak.

Disclaimer: We at CandyStore.com recommend you monitor your local situation and follow health guidelines if you plan to trick-or-treat. Pay attention to local trends and do your own research.

Candy buying on the rise

According to the National Retail Federation, Halloween candy spending should hit a whopping $3Billion this year! That’s a 20% increase over last year and 10% over the previous all time high. That’s a big deal.

Overall Halloween spending is predicted to be over $10Billion. That’s up 26% over last year. Bring on Halloween!

The map above reveals the results of our annual data mining, the top 3 most popular Halloween candies in each state. Hover over your state to see the goods. (Apologies, it’s not interactive on mobile devices).

Last year we had a cyberpunk future theme, and this year we went a bit more topical with our prediction of the future. In honor of the simultaneous rise of Terminators from Cyberdine humanoid robots from Tesla and Bitcoin this year, our 2021 map design is something we think HAL 9000 would appreciate.

So, please enjoy the results in the fun map above. Do your state’s choices surprise you? The top Halloween candy in your state are not always what you think they were. Salt water taffy and Hot Tamales performed much better than some expected, for example.

For over 14 years, we’ve been delivering bulk candy around the country. As bulk candy retailers and distributors, we’ve got a lot of candy sales data to comb through. Including some we shipped to New York in recent years…

We have seen a lot of surprising favorites and least favorites over the years. That’s why working with unbiased data is so much fun. We looked at 14 years of sales data (2007-2021), looking in particular at the months leading up to Halloween. We sell nationwide (and to Canada) so we broke down our sales by state. We also have relationships with major candy manufacturers and distributors – all of whom contributed and helped us reach our conclusions.

Then we charted the best sellers in every state for Halloween. And we present it to you in the above futuristic interactive map of the most popular Halloween candy. If you’d like to see the nationwide winners, we made a graphic for that too: