Americans can’t get enough of Halloween candy. Halloween candy sales grew 14% between 2021 and 2022 and this year is on track to be the same. In 2022, US consumers dropped more than $3.7 billion on candy during the six-week period before the holiday. Consumers favorite candy? Chocolate, which Americans bought at almost a 2:1 ratio. And in the world of chocolate, milk chocolate is king: more people bought milk chocolate last Halloween season than all other non-chocolate candy combined.
“You can coat it with sugar, you can colorize that sugar, you can color the inside of it. You can make it into different shapes. There is a lot of flexibility that you can have with marshmallows.” Nostalgia, not taste “The flavor is very, very sweet,” said Susan Benjamin, a candy historian and president of the True Treats candy store in West Virginia. “But it’s not really describable sweetness. And often it sort of defies what it should look like.