Trick or treat: Which Halloween candies are winning in 2025

We love the magic of Halloween candy. Each year our favorite brands roll out seasonal candy with packaging in traditional Halloween colors, and they play with fun, festive candy shapes like pumpkins, ghosts and monsters. 

For consumers, these limited-edition treats spark nostalgia, delight and a sense of occasion. For brands, they’re a way to stand out in a crowded candy aisle, tap into the excitement of the season and drive sales with products that feel too fun — and too fleeting — to pass up.

Some classic favorites come back year after year, and some new candies hit shelves too. Which ones are consumers reaching for this year? And what works best in Halloween candy? Let’s find out!

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. Chocolate reigns: While many respondents were enthusiastic about some of the non-chocolate candies — especially the new products released this year — the top half of our ranking is dominated by chocolate. It seems chocolate is more associated with Halloween than other types of candy, and chocolate is the more favored candy category in general. Reese’s Pumpkins in particular was the standout winner in many areas in our analysis. It ranked #1 overall — beating the second most popular by a wide margin. It outscored all other candies across multiple drivers of success including relevance, advantage and believability. And it won for attributes like best tasting, most festive and most authentic. We’re not surprised — we’ve seen Reese’s shapes do very well across seasons!  

3. October is still the peak time for buying Halloween candy: Halloween candy is available in stores as early as mid August in the US, but the majority of people (56%) claim to prefer to buy it in October. And a clever 5% only buy Halloween candy after the holiday is over!

Let’s begin with a quick look into when consumers start buying Halloween candy. We saw Halloween candy hit shelves in mid August this year, was anyone buying it that early? 

Nearly a quarter (23%) say they start buying Halloween candy as soon as they see it in stores, while another 12% start in September. 

But the majority of people (56%) don’t buy Halloween candy until October, with 27% buying it the first week in October, 25% buying it a week or two before Halloween and 4% waiting until Halloween day!

A few deal-conscious people (5%) only buy Halloween candy after Halloween ends. And 4% never buy it at all!

And consumers may end up buying more Halloween candy than they intended. 62% admit to having bought more Halloween candy because their family ate the original batch before Halloween night!

Now let’s see what consumers are shopping for this year. 

For our analysis, we looked at 12 Halloween candies: some classics that we’ve seen year after year, some repeats from the last few years, and some brand new this year: 

1. KitKat Counts

2. Twix Ghoulish Green

3. Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins

4. Twizzlers Cherry Ghosts

5. KitKat Witch’s Brew

6. Reese’s White Chocolate Ghosts

7. Sour Patch Kids Monster Heads

8. Jolly Ranchers Gummies Trickies

9. Skittles Shriekers

10. Brach’s Candy Corn

11. M&M’s Milk Chocolate Halloween Blend

12. Snickers Pumpkins

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

Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins emerged as the clear favorite, securing significantly more first-choice votes (42%) than the other candies. Newcomer this year KitKat Counts came in second with 27% of the first choice votes, while Reese’s White Chocolate Ghosts and Snickers Pumpkins tied for third (25%). 

We know candy corn is a polarizing candy that some people love while others strongly dislike, so we were curious to see how it did in the rankings. While it did rank as some people’s first or second option, candy corn had the highest number of last-choice rankings (48%) of any of the candies. 

Many of the non-chocolate options like Jolly Ranchers Gummies Trickies, Twizzlers Cherry Ghosts and Sour Patch Kids Monster Heads also ranked toward the bottom. 

Digging a little deeper, let’s take a look at the attributes most associated with the brands. These are the products that scored highest across key category attributes:

• Best tasting: Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins (67%)

  • Runner up: M&M’s Milk Chocolate Halloween Blend (57%) 

• Most fun: Sour Patch Kids Monster Heads (53%)

  • Runner up: M&M’s Milk Chocolate Halloween Blend (49%)

• Most festive: Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins (52%)

  • Runner up: KitKat Counts (46%)

• Most unique: Jolly Ranchers Gummies Trickies (42%)

  • Runner up: KitKat Counts (39%)

• Top quality: Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins (39%)

  • Runner up: Reese’s White Chocolate Ghosts (32%)

• Most authentic: Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins (37%)

  • Runner up: Snickers Pumpkins (26%)

• Most bold: Jolly Ranchers Gummies Trickies (31%)

  • Runner up: Sour Patch Kids Monster Heads (22%)

Reese’s Pumpkins cleaned up in the attribute awards! Across the seven attributes we looked at, it won first place in four of them (best tasting, most festive, top quality, most authentic). Reese’s Pumpkins were released in the early 90s so they’ve been around for over 30 years, and it’s clear that consumers associate them strongly with the season. We’re also not surprised that it won for best tasting and top quality, as the Reese’s brand comes out a clear favorite in these areas season after season.

We also saw good results for the newly released candy for 2025. 

Sour Patch Kids Monster Heads — larger than usual Sour Patch Kids candies with two different flavors — fell at the bottom of our overall ranking. Yet it placed first for “most fun” — possibly indicating that sour candy isn’t as universally loved as chocolate but that consumers still see it as a fun idea. 

Jolly Ranchers Gummies Trickies — gummies where the color doesn’t match the flavor — won first for most bold and most unique. They are certainly unlike any of the other candies we looked at!

KitKat Counts — KitKats shaped like Count Dracula — placed second for most festive and most unique. 

And finally, M&Ms Halloween Blend — M&Ms in orange and black — placed second in best tasting and most fun. 

Great results for candies that are newly on the market this year!

We also asked consumers to assess each candy on the key drivers of product success:

• Advantage: How much better each of the products is to other products already available 

• Distinctiveness: How different each of the products are from other products already available

• Relevance: How relevant each of the products is to the respondents

• Believability: How believable the claims of each product are to the respondents

Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins outperformed all other top candies, showing significantly higher scores on advantage, believability and relevance. This indicates strong perceived value and credibility, setting it apart as the overall leader of the pack!

KitKat Counts also exceeded the average on most drivers of product success, including advantage, believability and relevance — which suggests KitKat Counts are a strong newcomer to the Halloween candy lineup. 

Reese’s Peanut Butter White Chocolate Ghosts stood out for above average scores in distinctiveness, believability and relevance, highlighting a particularly strong presence in perceived uniqueness. It was the only white chocolate option included in our research, so it stands apart from the others.

And KitKat Witch’s Brew and Twix Ghoulish Green — the two green candies included in this analysis — stand out as distinctive. While the green color can be a little polarizing, it does certainly help the candies stand out!  

People responded most to trusted brands, familiar flavors and festive seasonal shapes and colors — with respondents especially valuing classic taste profiles with a fun Halloween twist.

Familiar & trusted brands

Many people noted that their interest in trying the seasonal candy comes from their love of the brand. They already know they like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or Twix, so they know they’ll like Reese’s in a pumpkin shape or Twix in green. 

People said things like: 

• “Kitkat is my favorite chocolate candy bar.”

• "I love Snickers candy and I’m sure these pumpkins will have the same great flavor."

• "I love Twizzlers already.”

• "I love Twix candy bars! I love these because they are Halloween themed and I think the green looks really neat."

Seasonal shapes & colors 

Each year when we look at seasonal innovation 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 on a regular day, consumers are very willing to try the seasonal shape or color as a novelty for a season or holiday — helping brands boost their short-term sales.

People said things like: 

• "Great taste but the pumpkin shape tastes even better than the original. Plus it is fun for the holiday."

• "They are delicious and are very cool to be shaped like Dracula."

• "I love the unique monster shapes and mixed color/flavor combinations"

• "I love the flavor of Snickers and the pumpkin shapes are very cute."

• "Chocolate and peanut butter in a fun Halloween shape."

• "I like the vibrant green color. It makes it seem spooky while keeping the originality of a Twix."

• "I love the Halloween theme color combination."

• "The seasonal colors and packaging make it eye-catching."

Chocolate

While many respondents were very excited about the non-chocolate options we looked at, all of the non-chocolate candies ended up in the bottom half of the rankings. That doesn’t mean consumers don’t like them or don’t find them appropriate for Halloween, but it does mean that, on average, consumers tend to rank chocolate candies above non-chocolate ones. 

Looking back at our category awards, however, we see that the non-chocolate options stood out from the pack in a few areas. Chocolate (specifically Reese’s pumpkins) won for best tasting, top quality, most authentic and most festive, but Sour Patch Kids Monster Heads won for most fun and Jolly Ranchers Gummies Trickies won for most unique and most bold. 

So while chocolate may come out on top in an overall ranking, consumers still see some of the non-chocolate options on the market as distinctive and fun.

How did your favorite Halloween candy do in this ranking? Have you tried any of these so far this Halloween season? 

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