Here's Your Favorite Halloween Candy, by State
If you've been choosing what Halloween candy to pass out to your neighborhood's trick-or-treaters based on your own preferences—or what's on sale at the store—you've been doing it all wrong, according to online candy retailer CandyStore.com.
The retailer recently crunched its own candy numbers, analyzing the candy it mails out each year, and to where, to find out the most popular Halloween treats by state.
"We took 10 years of sales data, looking in particular at the months leading up to Halloween," the site says. "We sell to all 50 states—plus 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 verify that our data is on point."
With some $2.7 billion being spent this year on Halloween candy alone, let's just say it was a lot of data to go through, and some of the results might take you by surprise.
Take New York: this state is all about Sour Patch Kids, Candystore.com's data shows. In fact, this state eats more than 200,000 pounds of this candy at Halloween. (Wow.) But in New Jersey, New York's next door neighbor, people prefer Skittles. Sour Patch Kids don't even make this state's top-three list. Tootsie Pops and M&M's do though.
Down south, in Alabama, people are eating up Hershey's mini chocolate bars, but in Mississippi, candy lovers can't seem to get enough of 3 Musketeers or Snickers bars.
Out west, Californians eat more than 1.5 million pounds of M&M's at Halloween, and in Nevada, people are noshing on some 322,000 pounds of Hershey's Kisses. (Yum.)
If you're curious what your state's favorite candy is (plus it's second and third fave choices), Candystore.com has created an alphabetized chart as well as an interactive map you can use. You can view that map here. It could be smart to stock up on what you see your state loves—but also remember: no one has ever turned down candy.
