Last year, I unfortunately missed out on being able to sit out front and hand out candy, but I am making sure that I am out front this year, perhaps with Bailey, who will be dressed as The Goodest Girl oh WAIT that’s not a costume that’s who she is. I didn’t realize how much I’d like it, but there is a really simple joy to seeing a kid and parent just be super psyched that you gave them candy while they put on a fun outfit. If you’re a robber baron, of course the bowls left out with no one to guard them are prime, but as a kid, I really always liked actually getting a person when I walked up.
So, while we can all agree that dressing up and getting free candy is just A+, there is some disagreement regarding what candy is the best to receive in your bag. I’m here to lay the debate to rest for good.
IMPORTANT: these are ranked as if a child is receiving them, not me
I’m not gonna get turnt over Fun Dip now, even though that weird as hell candy was A+++ when I was a kid yes please give me powdered sugar on a stick and then let me eat the stick
ALSO IMPORTANT: for simplicity and fairness, I will be rating the “fun sized” version of each of these candies, especially since it was the most likely size you’d end up with
Full-sized candy was for rich kids and mini-sized candy is for white ladies to put on a coffee table during a dinner party
- Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – 8/10
- Just a really solid entry right out of the gate
- Peanut butter and chocolate are a tale as old as time, give me them they’re mine, lady and the cuuuuup sorry what no I wasn’t singing “Beauty and the Beast” shut up
- Can lose a point for sturdiness in your candy bag: the delicious smoothness of the peanut butter could sometimes just become Reese’s Peanut Butter Sad Pancake
- You’d still eat it because you were 8 but just not as good
- Can lose a point for sturdiness in your candy bag: the delicious smoothness of the peanut butter could sometimes just become Reese’s Peanut Butter Sad Pancake
- Also PA, my adopted state, I like you, I do, but you gotta stop saying it “ree-sees” it makes my brain explode
- Kit-Kats – 6/10
- As an adult, I’d rank these higher: I feel vaguely cultured when I snap a bar of these and crisp into it, like I can forget for a second that I’m about to frontload most of my day’s calories into candy
- As a kid, though? …eh
- They were fun to crunch, but they only came in that two-piece thingy, which seemed wrapped too tight around each individual Kit or Kat, and they were structurally unsound
- Plus “crisp wafers in milk chocolate” read to me as a kid “some bullshit taking up space that could belong to a better food…in milk chocolate”
- Which brings us to the reverse one
- Skittles – 9/10
- As an adult? Yeah, I’ll have ’em, but I kinda feel like I’m gargling sugar for the next hour or so, and the taste is both a lot and not enough? I am explaining this poorly I’m sorry ANYWAY
- As a kid, though? Helllllll yeah Skittles aw yes ’bout to make my mouth a horrific color while shoving fistfuls of these into my face
- Ideally you’d get a bunch of these and be able to pile like 20 Skittles in your gross little child hand and then just shove that handful into your cavernous mouth with no concern for your trachea or your bedtime or your parent’s familiarity with the Heimlich Maneuver
- As a kid, though? Helllllll yeah Skittles aw yes ’bout to make my mouth a horrific color while shoving fistfuls of these into my face
- As an adult? Yeah, I’ll have ’em, but I kinda feel like I’m gargling sugar for the next hour or so, and the taste is both a lot and not enough? I am explaining this poorly I’m sorry ANYWAY
- Sour Patch Kids – 10/10
- As a kid? The goddamn Holy Grail of candies to get
- …This might be just me let me roll with it okay
- You’d so rarely get these that it turned into like Pokemon Go, you’d find a house that had them and tell your friends
- They were brightly colored gummy sugar and they had that coating of sour stuff on them which is the key to a lot of good kids’ candies, you wanna make the kid feel like this candy could maybe kill him
- Plus if it was cold out and these got cold that was fine because that just meant you had to chew ’em longer and you’d take your time
- See also: Swedish Fish
- Protip from me to you do not ever eat a whole movie-theater-sized thing of Sour Patch Kids at once you will burn a shallow hole through your cheek
- You will feel metal af but eating will hurt for a week
- Protip from me to you do not ever eat a whole movie-theater-sized thing of Sour Patch Kids at once you will burn a shallow hole through your cheek
- See also: Swedish Fish
- As a kid? The goddamn Holy Grail of candies to get
- Tootsie Pops/Blow Pops – 4/10
- Tootsie Pops get a 4.5, Blow Pops get a 3.5
- Ugh, effort
- Generally fine, in that they were decently-sized lollipops, and all of the flavors were at worst tolerable, but ugh, these took so much work, guys
- You had to open the little twisty wrapper, which was annoying, and then just sit there and try not to drool everywhere while you’re eating it, and then you think you’re done BUT WAIT NOPE IT’S MORE EFFORT
- And if you had a Blow Pop, the gum lost flavor in like 8 seconds, and then you had to find a place to throw it out
- I never just threw gum on the ground because 1. that is gross and 2. I am so terrified of breaking any rule or law
- Charleston Chew/Double Bubble – 0/10
- Are these candies similar? No
- Do they suck the most? Yep
- Don’t buy these don’t hand them out don’t be that guy
- Butterfingers – 7/10
- Adult rating? 5 billion out of 10, I love these things so much I would marry one
- Kid rating? Gotta stick with 7/10
- The flavor was a little bit like “uh what” when you were a kid, so it wasn’t right-off-the-bat delicious
- And as a Halloween candy, these bad boys would crumble into dust faster than you can say “Mr. Stark I don’t want to go”
- I’m sorry for that line, it came to me and I had to say it because I’m a monster
- The dust was delicious, but they weren’t easy to eat
- Milky Way – 8/10
- When I was/ a young girl/ my mother
- Took me out trick or treating/ to get some Milky Ways
- She said “child when/ you grow up/ would you be
- Less wrong about some peanuts/ specifically in candy”
- SOMETIMES I GET THE FEELING
- THAT I WAS REALLY DUMB
- Less wrong about some peanuts/ specifically in candy”
- She said “child when/ you grow up/ would you be
- Took me out trick or treating/ to get some Milky Ways
- Okay sorry the point of this weird Black Parade cover is that I didn’t like whole peanuts in my candy forever because I am weird about textures and certain foods mixing and trust me I definitely know I was super wrong but that is why Milky Ways were ranked so high for me because I didn’t have to deal with peanuts and they were as popular as Snickers
- For regular human children, these were probably in the 6/10 range because why have just caramel when you can have caramel AND peanuts
- Hungry? Have the Wrong Thing™
- When I was/ a young girl/ my mother
- Snickers – objectively like 8/10
- I had to hit these bad boys with about a 5/10 because I’m a weirdo but yeah they’re now a solid 8/10
- A fun size version of these bad boys is substantial, I’m not a doofus about peanuts anymore, and there’s caramel and even if they get kinda cold you can still eat them and not break your teeth
- Twix – 10/10
- Borderline holy Grail candy
- Delicious, refreshing af, you could have a bunch and not feel like you were gonna die, wait all of these apply to me now, I have purchased a bag of fun-size Twix, this was a bad idea
- You may notice that the crispy stuff I maligned in the Kit-Kat is not true here, and you may be looking for an explanation
- I don’t have one
- I contain multitudes
- Goddamn Twix are so good tho
- I contain multitudes
- I don’t have one
- Starburst – 9/10
- These still rank pretty darn high in the adult world, but Starbursts as a kid was like the candy form of the Scholastic Book Fair
- Here, I am happy, and the world is still full of wonder and not pain
- I understand that there are fights about the best flavors of Starbursts, but I am genuinely pleased to have any and all Starbursts, because that is preferable to having no Starbursts
- This says wayyyy too much about me as a person and my standards
- *John Mulaney voice* you could pour soup in my lap and I’d probably apologize to you
- These lose a point because if it was cold out, they turned into tiny bricks
- Daenerys Starbust, Breaker of Teeth
- These still rank pretty darn high in the adult world, but Starbursts as a kid was like the candy form of the Scholastic Book Fair
- 3 Musketeers – 4/10
- …eh
- mmmmmehhhh
- Not garbage, but eating one of these feels like having a cheat day and choosing to eat a fruit and yogurt parfait
- Ron Swanson is disappointed in me
- They’re…fine, I guess, but as a kid it was kinda like “tf is this cloud bullshit gimme some real goddamn candy”
- y’know, how kids talk
- mmmmmehhhh
- …eh
- M&Ms, plain – 8/10
- Love these bad boys always have always will
- “But why not peanut higher?”
- See Snickers/Milky Way discussion above
- “But why not peanut higher?”
- I love being able to have many candies instead of one larger one, plus they are fun to jingle around, plus they only taste BETTER in the cold
- Refrigerate your M&Ms, improve your life
- Love these bad boys always have always will
- M&Ms, peanut – okay no I’m sorry I’m not gonna
- Again
- Delicious as heck now, I was an ignorant child
- Again
- Hershey Mini Bars – 5/10
- Okay?
- They’re small pieces of chocolate, so they can hang
- Especially if you had a Special Dark one
- Yeah, I was a young child willingly ingesting bitterness both because I liked it and in an attempt to be cool
- I have not changed on this front, just replace “dark chocolate” with “coffee”
- Yeah, I was a young child willingly ingesting bitterness both because I liked it and in an attempt to be cool
- The wrapper was also weirdly fun, I liked shiny, substantial paper, like the wrapper was one of Wonka’s golden tickets
- In that vein…
- Especially if you had a Special Dark one
- Hershey’s Kisses – 3/10
- Don’t… don’t do this
- I am definitely not sure that you didn’t just dump your glass bowl of 3-year-old Hershey Kisses into a different bowl and hand them out
- Plus, the metal twist wrapper would get messed up all the time
- Anyone else feel like these were just ripe to be poison?
- Just me?
- Anyone else feel like these were just ripe to be poison?
- Regardless, these are a lot of effort for not a lot of reward and have a bonus “is this how I die/ not with fire, but with subpar chocolate” aspect to them
- Don’t… don’t do this
- Mounds – 10/10
- These are SO GOSHDARN GOOD THO
- This rating applies now and it applied then
- Coconut always has a fancy, tropical element to it, like you’re eating something worth money
- These expensive/ these is red wrappers/ these is eaten first
- Another one that cold just improves
- And they usually don’t get crushed??? I don’t know what kinda magic they have in ’em but they are sturdy and dependable
- These are rare and special and good and I will sing their praises forever
- These are SO GOSHDARN GOOD THO
- Almond Joy – 8/10
- Why is there an almond and milk chocolate in my Mounds
- Still delicious but why did they mess with perfection
- Why is there an almond and milk chocolate in my Mounds
- 100 Grand – 9/10
- CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED
- Just delicious, the perfect amount of crunchy and caramel
- They take a while to chew which is great let’s stretch out the deliciousness
- Why isn’t like 15% of the candy in the world 100 Grand
- Also can I have a hundred grand
- and on that note
- CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED
- Loose change – 5/10
- Now? 10/10
- I ain’t too proud to beg and if every house was giving out a quarter I’d throw a sheet on my head and Boo up and down the lane
- “What are you dressed as?”
- “A low bank account and existential despair”
- Let’s get that bread, kids
- Now? 10/10
Once again, I don’t make the rules, I just report them
If I’ve forgotten your fave please share
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