A look inside Easter baskets: Top bunny and egg-shaped candies consumers love

The spring and Easter season is one of our favorite times of year — mostly because we get an excuse to eat more candy!

It’s impossible to walk into a grocery store and not see multiple different candies in fun Easter shapes. So we wanted to take a look at some of the top egg and bunny shaped candies to see which consumers liked best and what they liked about them. Let’s dive into it!  

1. Small, seasonally relevant enhancements are a path to success: Season after season, we see the most successful seasonal products are the ones that make minor tweaks to existing products. Brands that take an existing product that consumers already love and make a seasonally relevant change to its color, shape or packaging tend to see the best results.

2. It’s important to play in your lane: Candy plays a huge role at Easter, so consumers expect their favorite candy brands to offer dedicated Easter versions. While the two top products were seen as the most believable, respondents were not surprised by any of the brands offering an Easter innovation. We’ve seen in the past that other product categories, like cereal or soft drinks, can struggle with credibility for Easter innovation. 

3. There are still ways to deliver on distinctiveness and advantage in narrow product categories: All of the products we featured in this analysis were bunny or egg shaped, so you may think that it would be hard to differentiate from each other. But several of the products outperformed the average on advantage or distinctiveness, showing that it’s possible to stand out even when every brand has an egg or bunny shaped candy.

For this analysis, we looked at 10 Easter candies and chocolate in egg and bunny shapes: 

• Cadbury Creme Eggs

• Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs

• Dove Milk Chocolate Eggs

• Lindt Lindor Assorted Chocolate Candy Truffle Easter Eggs

• York Dark Chocolate Peppermint Eggs

• KitKat Bunnies

• Hershey’s Cookies N Cream Polka Dot Bunnies

• Peeps Marshmallow Bunnies

• Sour Patch Kids Bunnies

• Twizzlers Cherry Flavored Bunnies

In our ScreenIt solution we asked respondents to rank the candies according to which they would be most likely to purchase.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups ranked as the most preferred candy, with an incredible 42% of people selecting it as their top choice. KitKat Bunnies (newly launched this year in the US) ranked as the second most popular with 29% people selecting it as their first choice and Dove Milk Chocolate Eggs coming in third with 22% of first-choice votes. 

Twizzlers Cherry Flavored Bunnies (15%), Peeps Marshmallow Bunnies (13%) and Sour Patch Kids Bunnies (11%) received the lowest number of first choice votes.

Seasonal shapes

Each year in our seasonal analyses we find that seasonally relevant enhancements (like shapes and colors) to core products emerges as a key path to success. If a candy is very popular, consumers are very willing to try the seasonal shape as a novelty for a season or holiday — helping brands boost their short-term sales. 

These egg and bunny shapes were seen as fun and relevant for Easter and Spring. 

Respondents said things like: 

• "I love all KitKats. Didn’t know they did bunnies at Easter so I’m excited to find them. Love the chocolate and the wafers."

• "I love the flavor of cherry Twizzlers, and this is a fun thing for Easter."

• "They’re cute little bunnies. I like white chocolate cookies n cream."

• "I love this type of chocolate. I think it tastes wonderful!. I like that it's shaped as Easter eggs."

Family friendly

For many, Easter is a time for family — with many traditions that involve children enjoying candy. Many respondents brought up how their families liked the brands included in the analysis and they enjoyed eating them together, indicating that family-sized sharing packs for Easter candy might be a smart move. 

Respondents said things like: 

• "I love the fruit snack feel and sour tasting. They look cool as bunnies and my daughter would love it."

• "My family loves Reese's peanut butter. It's our all time favorite and it makes it better having it shaped as eggs for Easter."

• "I love Reese’s peanut butter cups and so does my family."

• "My family and I really love Lindt Lindor chocolates."

Nostalgia / classic / tradition

Many of these brands are those that respondents have been enjoying since they were children, so themes of nostalgia and tradition emerged. The brands and flavor combinations were cited as “classic.” 

The seasonal shapes were seen as fun takes on classic products, which was exciting to respondents. Brands shouldn’t be afraid to recycle their successful seasonal innovations — over time they may start to be seen as classic!

Respondents said things like: 

• "I’ve been eating them since I was a kid."

• "The classic taste that only Reese's delivers on: peanut butter and chocolate."

• "Easter themed, but also Twizzlers which are always great and a classic."

• "It's a classic indulgence I purchase every year."

• "It’s a classic creme egg that tastes good."

Chocolate

While some respondents were very excited about some of the non-chocolate options, all three of the candies that didn’t include chocolate (Sour Patch Kids, Twizzlers and Peeps) were ranked lowest among the products included in this analysis. 

Chocolate is heavily associated with Easter, and chocolate candies have a leg up on any other candy this time of year. It makes it harder for non-chocolate brands to innovate successfully for Easter.

But it’s certainly not impossible. The seasonal shapes of the non-chocolate candies were still appreciated — just not always as a top choice. They were especially praised by respondents who don’t enjoy chocolate. 

Respondents said things like: 

• “I’m in love with chocolate, it doesn’t matter what kind of chocolate.”

• "I love milk chocolate and Dove does it well."

• "I love Peppermint Patties and dark chocolate."

• "I like that it's chocolate and truffles."

• "I love the chocolate flavor."

• "I love milk chocolate."

• "Dove chocolate is so good."

We saw that Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs notably surpassed the average scores in the Advantage, Believability and Relevance, with a particularly strong showing in Believability (4.3). As Reese’s dominates every season with its fun shapes, consumers certainly believe the brand can deliver a great seasonal product. 

In our different seasonal analyses over the years, Reese’s peanut butter cup seasonal shapes always come out on top. Reese’s has clearly nailed the formula for seasonal candy, which we wrote about in last year’s Innovation Spotlight: Reese’s Medals. 

It’s worth noting that many people believe that the ratio of peanut butter to chocolate is different (and often preferable) in the seasonal shapes, which one respondent noted: "I like when Reese's changes the shape of their candies like this because it's the perfect amount of chocolate and peanut butter in my opinion."

Coming in second, KitKat Bunnies significantly outperformed the average in all categories. This is particularly impressive since it was just released in the US this year, while the other products are re-releases from previous years. Notably it did very well in Distinctiveness compared to most of the other products, likely driven by its novelty. 

Dove Milk Chocolate Eggs, ranked third, matched the averages in Advantage and Believability but surpassed in Relevance. 

Hershey’s Cookies N Cream Polka Dot Bunnies are also worth noting for surpassing the average in Distinctiveness, likely standing out due to its use of white chocolate and crunchy cookie pieces. Lindt Lindor Assorted Eggs surpassed the average in Advantage, likely standing out because it includes three types of chocolate eggs instead of one. 

Finally, let’s take a look at the attributes most associated with each of the brands. These are the products that scored highest across key attributes for the category: 

• Reese’s: Most “great tasting” (80%)

  • Runner up: Dove

• Lindt Lindor: Most “top quality” (55%)

  • Runner up: Reese’s

• Sour Patch Kids: Most “modern” (45%)

  • Runner up: Reese’s

• Peeps: Most “authentic” (42%)

  • Runner up: Cadbury

• KitKat: Most “innovative” (34%)

  • Runner up: Twizzlers

If it wasn’t already clear from Reese’s taking the top spot in our ranking, Reese’s is a fan favorite — it won or came in second in three of the five categories! 

And it’s nice to see that while all the chocolate candies are more generally preferred, the non-chocolate candies did stand out a bit from the group in attributes (Sour Patch Kids and Peeps won for “modern” and “authentic” respectively, and Twizzlers came in second place for “innovative”). 

And “authentic” went to two brands who are synonymous with the Easter holiday: Peeps and Cadbury. You can’t think about Easter and not think about those two brands! 

How did your favorite candy do in this ranking?

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