$1.9 BILLION DOLLARS for Halloween Candy?

According to Nielsen Research, America spent approximately $1.9 billion for candy this Halloween season. That's a lot of candy.

The most popular Halloween candy is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Offensive as this may be to some people, I must confess that I really dislike Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. The peanut butter always seems to me to be a terrible combination of stale, rancid, and sugary. I know that I am in a minority and we are a nation of Reese's lovers.


The Peanut Butter Cup was created by Harry Burnett (H.B.) Reese, who had worked for a while for Milton S. Hershey on the dairy side of the business. Reese's first candy bar attempts were Johnny Bars (molasses) and Lizzie Bars (coconut). Untasted, I would trade a PB Cup for a Lizzie Bar in a heartbeat. In True Confections, Alice Ziplinsky would have referenced the Johnny and Lizzie Bars if I had known about them before now.

Daylight Savings, Halloween, and the Candy Industry

During the Q & A at an event for True Confections yesterday afternoon, I was asked if I had a comment about the candy industry's efforts to have the end of Daylight Savings fall after Halloween, in order to preserve a valuable extra hour of daylight trick-or-treating. (There are also safety considerations; every year, children die in trafffic accidents on Halloween night.) This was the first I had heard about such lobbying efforts on the part of the confectionary establishment, but it makes perfect sense. DST was extended to November 1 starting in 2007, but I am not aware of any specific stats on a surge in candy sales in the last few years to match that extra hour. Alice would have had something to say about this, on page 170 of True Confections.

Does Size Matter?

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.

TRICK OR TREAT!

Happy Halloween! A non-Staircasey post for the candy-laden occasion:

According to one of the dodgier surveys I have seen (not that I would ever be the one to say there's anything wrong with making up facts to enhance a story, but something tells me this one was planted by Hershey), you can strategize and optimize your trick-or-treating if you bear in mind that:

Houses with black shutters are 77 percent more likely to hand out Kit Kats.

Trick-or-treaters have a 37 percent greater chance of receiving a Kit Kat from a ranch house.

Those who prefer Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups should focus on ringing the doorbells of two-story houses.

Knock on brown doors if seeking chocolate. Trick-or-treaters have a 32 percent greater chance of receiving a Hershey’s Bar from homes with brown doors.

Meanwhile, in Maryland, Indiana, Illinois, and Louisiana, along with countless cities, towns, and counties across the country, registered sex offenders are required to display a "NO CANDY HERE" sign on their doors on Halloween. In True Confections (pub date is now eight weeks away), when the main character, Alice Ziplinsky, is assigned to the distribution of those signs, she doesn't follow instructions at all.