All the best Halloween candy, according to us

It’s Halloween tomorrow, and you know what that means: National eat-all-the-candy day. Not that candy isn’t a part of our lives all year round, or that we can subsist on a candy-only diet, but there’s something about this season that brings us back to trick-or-treating and bartering back and forth with tiny Snickers bars and bags of Skittles. So we asked our editors and contributors about their very favorite Halloween treats, a sometimes controversial subject. 

The “you’re basically eating wax” candy

“It’s a tie between candy corn and those little pumpkin-shaped candies that I think are made out of the same thing as candy corn. I’ll also say that I prefer candy corn that is dark brown, orange and white to candy corn that is yellow, orange, and white even though everything I’m talking about here is made out of the same sugar/confectioner’s wax (I think the pumpkins might also have honey in them). But the candy corn color thing is a little ridiculous. It’s like M&Ms. How can you have a favorite color M&M? They’re all the same! The human brain is a strange place. Also, note, I never actually GOT my favorite Halloween candy trick-or-treating. I’m pretty sure this not-being-satisfied-with-my-Halloween-haul-until-I-had-ALSO-wheeled-and-dealed-my-parents-into-buying-bags-of-candy-corn/pumpkins is the origin story of my champagne and caviar taste that has haunted my bank account to this day. Although, come to think of it, I think we usually got those bags the day after Halloween when everything was on sale, so maybe it’s actually the origin story for my love of all things Ross, T.J. Maxx, and Marshalls.—Kit Steinkeller

“I’m fiercely pro candy corn. I know a lot of people hate it, but ever since I was little I’ve been in love with it. I think I was totally enchanted by the fact that there was a candy that was made specifically for Halloween and only showed up once a year, but regardless of why, it’s always been one of my favorites. I definitely can’t eat as much of it as I could in my younger years (small children
have iron, sugar-proof stomachs), but I still think it tastes like perfect buttery sugary goodness, and all the haters can leave it alone so I can have some more.”—Scarlet Meyer

The total throwback

“Mr. Goodbars! And Jolly Ranchers” — Gina Vaynshteyn

The “anything, as long as it’s chocolate”

“I am a chocolate fiend, but for a long time I wouldn’t eat chocolate with nuts in them — I used to dump out my trick or treating bucket and furtively select out all the somewhat “pure” chocolate candies (Crunch, Twix, M&M’s, those always dusty mini Hershey’s). Then, because I had/have no self control, I’d binge no them until the roof of my mouth became numbed from the sugar spike. The rest of the candies, I’d leave tucked away and forgotten for months, until my mom would inevitably add them to some master cache of unwanted candy to give to next year’s trick or treaters. Somewhat related, the one and only time I got detention in school was when my 7th grade science teacher caught me eating M&Ms during class. We weren’t doing a lab, but given that this was the same class and year when somebody went to the hospital for drinking copper sulfate (he thought it was Gatorade), I can understand Mr. Chesbro’s reticence to letting my infraction slide. However, because I was/am a goody two shoes, I was so visibly distraught upon getting detention that he later revoked it. I sometimes wonder/worry about the effects of the nutritional junk I inhaled during my candy-collecting years, but I can’t worry about it too much. And, given the chance to dig into some chocolate candies, I can’t say that my self-control has gotten any better. That isn’t to say that I’ve ever bought a bag of candies and picked out the chocolate ones . . . yet.” —Lillian Min

The “Reese’s cups for life”

“There is no chocolate I will not eat, but my favorite candy is and always has been Reese’s Cups. I cannot keep them in my apartment. Something about over-processed peanut butter mixed with chocolate that is more sugar than cocoa is just the jam. When dark-chocolate Reese’s Cups came out, I died a little. Bring on all types of Reese’s Cups.” —Jen Juneau

“My favorite Halloween candy is the ever-famous pumpkin shaped Reese’s! All throughout October, my mom would always have one waiting at home for me after rough days at school or as a reward when I was younger! Nothing was (and frankly is) more satisfying than unwrapping that little orange pumpkin-clad wrapper!” —Bailee MaCloud Perkins

The “give me a break”

“KIT KATS! I know it’s not the most exciting pick of the candy bunch, but it’s a tried-and-true classic and always way delish. The wafer is also a great palette cleanser after some of the more gooey caramel chocolate treats. And I LOVE the Halloween version they’ve done with the black cat they’re doing now.” —Emily Gagne

The “slightly chalky cousins to SweeTarts”

“Hands down, Dem Bones (pun intended). Sure they were the slightly chalky cousins to SweeTarts, but I would always collect as many mini bags as possible. I’d then dump them all out on the counter and soon be hard at work assembling the fullest skeleton possible with the pieces given. And then, after a few moments of admiration, we’d eat them in one fell swoop of a handful.” —Glenna Schubert

“Those cute little packets of Shocktarts always remind me vividly of Halloween. After an intense night of trick-or-treating, whenever my brother and I would eat them, we’d organize them by color first and figure out which colors were the sourest, because no matter what we dressed like, we were weird little nerds at heart.”—Sammy Nickalls

[Images via Shutterstock & iStock]