Now that Halloween has come and gone, having fallen on the second most profitable day of the week for the candy industry (Friday Halloweens are best for candy sales because it is not a school night but it is a work day, so there are more office parties and workplace candy occasions), what's your feeling about size? Does size matter? Do you prefer full-size bars for their classic taste proportion of coating to filling? Or do you like the one-bite experience of minis and fun-size, despite the shift in ratio of inside to outside? (Perhaps you are one of those muffin top people.) Do please consider this handy chart against which to measure your own possibly misguided preferences.
Well, as we all know, the smaller an object's volume, the higher the ratio of surface to volume. So a bite size Milky Way Midnight has more chocolate coating vs. gooey inside than a full size bar, which is good by me. Science!
ReplyDeleteAlso, psychology: lower commitment, more freedom to flit from Milky Way to Snickers to Baby Ruth. Ooh la la, the life of the confection bachelorette.
I'm with you, chart be dammned. Unless we are dealing with supremely superior chocolate (which rarely ever happens at Halloween) I prefer the smaller versions of candy bars.
ReplyDeleteThere's less guilt on those days when I am trying to avoid sweets (it's so little!) and it's easier to be magnanimous and say 'please, help yourself' when you have a whole bag of small, individually wrapped bars. Because, really, I like you, but I want my whole candy bar for myself. I do.
Also, I think small children (who really are the most fun at Halloween) prefer to get three or four small bars than one large one because they haven't yet grasped the concept of volume. They are totally focused on numbers of things. Which is why you can get a three-year old to trade you a quarter for three nickles: now he has THREE and you only have ONE! I don't recommend trying this with five-year olds. Five-year olds are much savvier these days.
I'm not sure I buy the argument about the higher surface ratio of [bad] chocolate coating being a selling point. If I'm having a candy bar, I want to be able to really sink my teeth into it. The minis are a scourge! Plus think of all that packaging!
ReplyDeleteI am in the bigger-is-better camp. Plus the smaller ones get stale faster and also seem to bloom more quickly.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a taste-related opinion here (depends on the particular candy whether I prefer small or large. For Reese's Cups I prefer the mini ones; ditto mini Butterfingers; Snickers are better in the traditional big size) but I do find it easier to eat six minis without feeling guilty, whereas I rarely eat whole full-sized candy bars.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid trick-or-treating, I'd feel gypped by anything less than full-size candy bars, but that was back in the '60s when life was wild. These days, when it comes to chockies, I don't want anything more than a mouthful.
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