Buzz
In late September, Candystore.com analyzed Halloween candy sales to identify the most popular choices. While the top 10 candies were predictable, the state-by-state preferences revealed some intriguing trends. For example, Ohio loves Blow Pops, Montana prefers Dubble Bubble Gum, Georgia favors Swedish Fish, and Louisiana leans toward Lemonheads. Surprisingly, none of these made the national top 10.
Below is the ranking of the top 10 candies, starting with the least popular, along with fascinating tidbits about their origins—some sweet, others surprising.
10. Candy Corn
Candy corn’s inclusion in the top 10 might raise eyebrows, but the numbers speak for themselves. The National Confectioners Association (NCA) reports that 35 million pounds of candy corn are sold during Halloween, totaling nine billion kernels. If lined up, they’d circle the Earth over four times.
Candy corn is arguably the most divisive treat on this list, sparking strong opinions—people either adore it or despise it, with the majority leaning toward the latter. Its enduring appeal might stem from its status as the oldest candy here. For 52% of people, candy corn is a Halloween tradition, with bowls set out for guests, often mixed with peanuts, only to be discarded by Thanksgiving.
In the late 1800s, buttercreams were popular candies, often shaped like agricultural or natural items such as clover, chestnuts, or turnips. These treats were designed to resonate with the farming communities of the time. Candy corn, with its vibrant layered colors, was a unique addition to this trend.
George Renninger, who spent 68 of his 87 years at Philip Wunderle Candy Company, is widely credited with inventing candy corn in the 1880s. His recipe involved melting corn syrup, fondant, vanilla, sugar, and marshmallow crème into a mixture, dividing it into yellow, orange, and white portions, and pouring them into triangular molds layer by layer. The process, originally done by hand by workers called stringers, remains largely the same today, though now automated.
A recent debate has emerged about the proper way to eat candy corn. According to the NCA, 47% of consumers eat it all at once, 43% nibble it layer by layer starting with the white tip, and only 10% begin with the yellow end.
9. Tootsie Pops
Tootsie Pops have long been shrouded in mystery. Beyond the famous question of how many licks it takes to reach the Tootsie Roll center, there’s the enigma of the Native American figure on some wrappers since the candy’s debut in 1931. Depicted with a traditional headdress, the figure aims a bow and arrow at a star, sparking curiosity for decades.
Snopes.com reports that only about 30% of Tootsie Pop wrappers feature this iconic image. Its scarcity has fueled rumors that these “special” wrappers can be exchanged for prizes. While some candy companies in the 1930s ran promotions where kids could mail in wrappers for rewards, Tootsie Pop’s creators—Sweets Company of America and later Tootsie Roll Industries (TRI)—never participated in such schemes.
TRI claims it still receives around 150 letters annually from children hoping to redeem these wrappers for prizes. Since 1982, the company has responded with a consolation letter and a whimsical tale about a Native American appearing to the candy’s inventor, offering the secret to creating a new lollipop shape. The story ends with the Native American shooting an arrow at a star, inspiring the round lollipop design. While charming, the tale doesn’t satisfy those expecting a prize. TRI’s other explanation—that the star symbolizes luck—fails to clarify the Native American’s significance. Perhaps the mystery itself is the point, as it keeps the brand in the spotlight.
TRI has a history of leveraging mystery for marketing. In 1970, a cartoon owl perched on a branch famously pondered the age-old question: “How many licks does it take to reach the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” Fifty years later, the answer remains elusive, despite numerous attempts to solve it.
Engineers at Purdue University designed a licking machine with a human-like tongue, determining it takes an average of 364 licks. Not to be outdone, a University of Michigan doctoral student created a similar machine and concluded it takes 411 licks. Other studies have produced results ranging from 144 to 2,500 licks. As the commercial’s narrator said, we may never know.
8. Snickers
Franklin C. Mars, the mind behind Snickers, contracted polio as a child and spent countless hours in his mother’s kitchen mastering the art of candy-making and hand-dipped chocolates. By 21, Frank was supporting his wife, Ethel, and son, Forrest, by selling Taylor’s Molasses Chips to local shops in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. However, the oversaturated market led to the failure of his venture. Ethel divorced him in 1910, took full custody of Forrest, and sent the 8-year-old to live with her parents in Saskatchewan, Canada. Frank rarely saw his son in the years that followed.
Seeking a fresh start, Frank remarried another woman named Ethel and moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he attempted to manufacture his own candy. When that failed, they returned to Minneapolis, where Frank launched a basket candies business featuring Patricia Chocolates, named after their daughter. Two years later, the business thrived, leading to the creation of the Mar-O-Bar.
In 1923, Forrest, working as a traveling salesman for Camel cigarettes, was arrested in Chicago for illegally posting cigarette ads. Frank bailed out his estranged son, and during a visit to a soda shop, Forrest suggested creating a chocolate-malted candy bar while enjoying a chocolate malt. This idea led to the birth of the Milky Way. Within a year, Frank’s Mar-O-Bar Company saw a 10-fold revenue increase to $800,000 (around $11 million today), and by 1928, their gross earnings reached $20 million ($273 million today).
With their newfound wealth, Frank and Ethel splurged on a 3,000-acre farm in Tennessee, where Ethel bred horses and named the farm Milky Way. After three years of experimentation, Frank introduced Snickers in 1930, naming it after Ethel’s beloved horse, which had recently passed away. Today, Snickers consistently ranks as one of the most popular candy bars in America and worldwide, though it briefly fell behind Hershey bars in 2020 sales ($394 million versus $381 million). Despite this, 15 million Snickers bars are produced daily.
7. Hershey Kisses
While many credit Milton Hershey with creating these iconic chocolate teardrops, they were actually inspired by Wilbur Buds, a similar confection introduced by Henry Oscar Wilbur in 1894. Wilbur Buds were made by pouring melted chocolate into tear-shaped molds, each stamped with “Wilbur” on the bottom.
Hershey, often called the Henry Ford of candy, had already automated his Hershey Bar production by 1900. He discovered that the teardrop shape could be achieved by extruding chocolate onto a flat surface. After their 1907 debut, Hershey’s version quickly outsold Wilbur Buds, leading to a failed lawsuit by Wilbur to halt production. Wilbur Buds are still sold online today.
For the first 14 years, Hershey Kisses were hand-wrapped in silver foil. Automation began in 1921, introducing the signature tissue paper plume. In 1962, Kisses became one of the first candies to feature holiday-themed packaging (red and green) for Christmas. The origin of the name “Kisses” remains unclear, but historians note that paper-wrapped candies with twisted ends were called “kisses” as early as the 1820s. The 1856 Webster’s Dictionary even defines a kiss as “a small piece of confectionery.” Hershey finally trademarked the name in 2001 after surveys confirmed that most people associated “Kisses” with their product.
6. Sour Patch Kids
If you can overlook the fact that you’re consuming candy shaped like human children, Sour Patch Kids (SPK) offer a unique flavor experience: first sour, then sweet. This is achieved through a gummy base coated with tartaric and citric acid. When saliva activates the acids, the tongue perceives a sharp sour taste. Once the coating dissolves, only the sugary gummy remains. However, the coating has made SPK a target for tampering, such as in 2015 when Florida drug dealers coated gummies with Flakka, a hallucinogenic drug, to mimic SPK.
Developed in the early 1970s by Frank Galatolie at Jaret International in Ontario, Canada, SPK was initially called Mars Men and shaped like Martians. In 1985, when the candy entered the U.S. market, it was rebranded as Sour Patch Kids to capitalize on the Cabbage Patch Kids trend. The shapes were changed to resemble children, and the packaging featured a blonde boy sticking out his tongue, modeled after Galatolie’s son, Scott.
SPK isn’t the only candy to inspire cereal, but it might be the only one that turns milk sour. It’s also been used to flavor ice cream and appears in video games. Uniquely, SPK has even found its way into beer, with Mob Craft Beer’s Sour Catch, a Belgian pale ale infused with SPK flavor.
5. Hot Tamales
Spicy candy like Hot Tamales isn’t for everyone, but it has a devoted fan base. Introduced in 1950 by Just Born, Inc., Hot Tamales are cinnamon-flavored candies that became a staple in movie theaters. While Hot Tamales have been around for over 80 years, they aren’t the first cinnamon-based candies. Cinnamon contains cinnamaldehyde, a compound that irritates the skin and creates a hot sensation on the tongue. Cinnamon has been referenced in the Bible, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Sanskrit texts. It became a popular flavoring for candy and medicine in the 19th century, with Red Hots, introduced 18 years before Hot Tamales, remaining its main competitor.
Lately, there's been a growing trend to create candies that are intensely spicy, even excruciatingly so, to the point where they could theoretically be measured on the Scoville Hotness Scale. This scale quantifies the capsaicin—a chemical irritant—found in foods, particularly peppers. For context, a bell pepper scores zero Scoville Heat Units (SHU), a jalapeno ranges from 2,500 to 8,000 SHUs, and U.S. Grade pepper spray can soar up to 5.3 million SHUs. Although Hot Tamales lack capsaicin, making them unmeasurable on the Scoville Scale, one blogger likened their heat to that of a Poblano Pepper, approximately 1,000 to 1,500 SHUs.
The same blogger noted that the newer Hot Tamales Fire variant matches the heat of a Serrano pepper, ranging from 10,000 to 23,000 SHUs. Atomic Fireballs, launched in 1954, do contain capsaicin and are rated at 3,500 SHUs. The title of the world's hottest candy goes to the Toe of Satan lollipop, infused with cinnamon and a chile extract that clocks in at a staggering nine million SHUs.
4. Starburst
In November 1938, Marcus Pfeffer, a Jewish doctor practicing from his home in Vienna, Austria, received a warning from a friend about an imminent one-night pogrom. Hitler’s SA paramilitary forces planned to attack and demolish synagogues and Jewish properties across Germany and Austria. This night, later called Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”), saw hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses burned or destroyed, with tens of thousands of men arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Jewish households, including Pfeffer’s, were looted, and valuables were stolen. Over the next two months, Marcus reached out to a relative in England to act as a sponsor for his family. Dr. Pfeffer, along with his wife Betty and their three-year-old son Peter, fled just hours before Marcus was to be arrested and sent to Dachau concentration camp. The family spent ten anxious days in Zurich, Switzerland, awaiting arrangements before they could fly to London. While living in London, their apartment building was destroyed during a German bombing raid, though they were away on holiday in Bansbury at the time. The Pfeffers chose to remain in Bansbury thereafter.
After the war, Peter pursued a career in journalism and later transitioned into advertising. In 1959, Mars, Inc. in England created small squares of soft, fruit-flavored taffy and organized a contest to name the new product. By then, Peter had adopted the surname Phillips and was working as a copywriter at the Masius Wynne-Williams ad agency. He entered the contest and emerged victorious.
His winning entry, Opal Fruits, earned him five pounds. The name remained popular in Europe for nearly three decades. However, when Mars introduced the candy to the American market, it was initially branded as M&M’s Fruit Chewies before being renamed Starburst a few years later. In 1998, Europe aligned with the U.S. by adopting the Starburst name, though Opal Fruits occasionally resurfaces as a nostalgic nod.
3. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
The story of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups begins with its creator, Harry Burnett (H.B.) Reese, and his large family. H.B. and his wife, Blanche Edna Hyson, had 16 children—eight boys and eight girls—with 13 surviving into adulthood. For the first 20 years of their marriage, H.B. struggled to find a fulfilling career while supporting his ever-growing family.
He worked tirelessly on farms, in fisheries, and at factories, often juggling two or three jobs to make ends meet, though financial stability remained elusive. While employed at one of Hershey Chocolate Company’s dairy farms, he observed the profitability of the candy industry. Inspired, he remarked, “If Hershey can sell a trainload of chocolate every day, I can at least make a living making candy.” This realization marked the beginning of his journey into candy-making.
In 1921, Blanche’s father purchased a larger house for the Reese family in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where H.B. took a job at the Hershey factory. Simultaneously, he began crafting and selling sweets from his basement. Starting modestly, he produced mints, hard candies, and chocolate-covered raisins and nuts, which he sold directly to department and drug stores. H.B. also created a chocolate-covered caramel and coconut candy, naming it the “Lizzie Bar” after his eldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth. She later recalled her father waking at 3 am to crack, peel, and grate coconuts in the basement. Another candy bar was named after her brother, Johnny.
By 1926, H.B.’s candy business had grown profitable enough for him to leave his job at Hershey’s and relocate operations from his basement to a dedicated factory. Two years later, he introduced peanut butter cups as part of an assortment that included coconut creams, caramel, honeydew, peppermint creams, chocolate jets, nougat, nuttees, and raisin clusters. Mary Elizabeth reminisced about hand-coating the candy centers with Hershey chocolate on marble slabs before placing them in paper cups to set. H.B. often set up coating stations in store windows to attract passersby and entice them to sample his creations.
By 1935, the peanut butter cup had gained such popularity that it was sold as a standalone product. During World War II, rationing constraints led H.B. to focus exclusively on producing Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. After H.B.’s sudden death from a heart attack in 1956, his sons sold the company to Hershey in 1963 for 5% of its stock, valued at approximately $2 million. Today, that stock is worth $1 billion, partly due to Reese’s frequent ranking as the most popular Halloween candy.
2. Skittles
Skittles share a similar shape and letter branding (an “S”) with M&M’s and are currently manufactured by the William Wrigley Jr. Company, a subsidiary of Mars, Inc., which also produces M&M’s. However, their flavors are distinctly different. Even when they venture into each other’s flavor territories—like the Chocolate Mix Skittles in 2007 and the recent Key Lime Pie M&M’s—they maintain their unique taste profiles.
The origins of Skittles remain somewhat mysterious, with only the knowledge that an unnamed British company first manufactured them in 1974. However, an internet legend claims that the inventor, referred to as “Mr. Skittles,” gazed at a rainbow and pondered its taste. Inspired, he spent three years experimenting to create a candy that captured the essence of a rainbow.
This tale, resembling the plot of an advertising campaign, actually stems from the 1994 “Taste the Rainbow” marketing initiative. The name Skittles likely derives from a European lawn or pub bowling game of the same name, where players use small, colorful balls. Americans were introduced to this rainbow-flavored treat in 1979.
1. M&M’s
We’ve previously discussed Frank and Forrest Mars. After Forrest conceived the idea for Milky Way, Frank began preparing his son to lead Mars Company. However, a dispute in 1932 led Frank to remove Forrest from the company, granting him $50,000 and foreign rights to Milky Way. Forrest relocated to Switzerland to study chocolate-making and worked across Europe for various chocolate firms. Meanwhile, Frank passed away from heart issues in 1934, leaving his wife Ethel to manage Mars, Inc., not Forrest.
By then, Forrest had moved to York, England, to work for H.I. Rowntree and Company, where he played a key role in launching Kit Kat bars. He also established his own factory in Slough, England, producing a sweeter version of Milky Way called the Mars Bar. While at Rowntree in 1937, the company began producing small, hard-shelled chocolate beads known as Smarties (distinct from today’s tart version) and included them in rations for British soldiers in the Spanish Civil War. The hard shell prevented melting in summer heat. Forrest recognized the potential of these portable candies, especially during warmer months when chocolate sales typically declined.
Forrest returned to the U.S. and secured a patent for his adapted idea in March 1941. Rather than seeking help from his widowed stepmother or Mars Company, he chose to establish his own business. When World War II began later that year, rationing was implemented, and Hershey’s Co. controlled all rationed chocolate in the country. Forrest partnered with Bruce Murrie, son of Hershey’s president William Murrie, to launch the Mars & Murrie Company, abbreviated as M&M. Their product used Hershey’s chocolate and was initially supplied exclusively to the U.S. Armed Forces. As veterans returned home, they spread the word about the candy, leading to a growing civilian market post-war. To this day, Mars continues to donate M&M’s to the U.S. military’s MRE program.
After the war, Bruce Murrie discovered what many others would later confirm: Forrest Mars was notoriously difficult to work with. Known for his explosive temper, Forrest would hurl candies at windows over minor imperfections like a mis-wrapped piece. He frequently embarrassed Murrie in front of staff, eventually prompting Murrie to sell his 20% stake for a mere $1 million. When Murrie attempted to rejoin Hershey’s, he was rejected due to his association with a rival company.
Forrest also sought control of his father’s company, but it wasn’t until his stepmother’s death in late 1945 that he inherited 50% of her stock and returned to Mars, Inc. He brought with him not only M&M’s but also his Mars Bar, which in the American version included almonds.
