Burning Question: What is the worst Halloween candy?

Set a bowl of candy corn on a table in the middle of a holiday party and all of that warm, fuzzy cheer will disappear—and quickly. Suddenly it will be the Sharks and Jets, circling the room taunting each other’s taste in Halloween treats, ready to rumble.

In a survey by The  Daily Meal, those little wedges of corn syrup and dye modeled on the despised Houston Astros uniforms of the ’70s somehow climbed to no. 6 on the list of trick or treat favorites. At the same time, however, candy corn ranked second on CandyStore’s count of the most reviled bucket stuffers.

And here I thought this week’s Burning Question would be a piece of cake.

If it seems odd that a candy could wind up as both a top 10 most loved and top five most despised of holiday treats, consider a few other divisive candies. Licorice, for example, eked in at no. 25 most popular. When it comes to most hated, however, the bitter black rubber landed in the eighth spot—with Good & Plenty filing in at no. 9. While Almond Joy found its way into the top 20 best candies, a quick, informal and reliable-enough-to-be-cited-on-Breitbart survey I conducted, the coconut bar plummeted to Milk Duds levels.

A sample: “Who wants that super gross mouthfeel?”—a comment regarding Milk Duds. “Mounds and Almond Joy are pretty  awful, too”—from someone rating candy corn as their least favorite. “Anything with coconut”—from a person who wanted all bases covered.

So how does one go about determining the worst Halloween candy?

Even tracking the most popular treats is rather iffy. While bulk candy distributors like CandyStore can offer some pretty weighty evidence—Skittles tops the best loved list on sales of almost 3.5 million pounds (that’s lbs) sold, far more than any other product—there is no confirmation that kids on the receiving end didn’t trade, dump or dare Mikey to try it.

Geez—3,487,101 pounds of Skittles exchanging hands? And 2,472,032 pounds of M&Ms?

“It’s like a summer day here for us,” says Monse Zepeda, manager of Cottage of Sweets in Carmel of the lead up to Halloween.

Indeed, the National Retail Federation believes shops will rack up $2.6 billion nationwide from candy sales this Halloween season. And doing the math so we don’t have to, Business Insider pegs that at $27 per person.

But there’s that dilemma again—which candies to spend it on?

The crew at Cottage of Sweets actually prepare trick or treat gift bags, so homeowners don’t have to struggle with the decision over Tootsie Rolls (generally hated) and Tootsie Pops (pretty much loved). And their offerings are more...well, truffles molded into pumpkin form should explain it.

Favorites vary not only person to person, but also state by state and year by year. In 1960, when trick or treating was only a couple of decades old and people still baked cookies or draped apples in caramel to hand to children peering out of eyeholes cut into bedsheets, a now forgotten candy—Swedish Fish—was one of the options. At the end of the decade the artificial fruit-flavored gum Fruit Stripes was coveted. By the mid-’70s Pop Rocks were exploding, as were myths about how the harmless effervescent flecks became lethal, military-grade weapons when mixed with…

Probably not a good idea to go any further with that.

Despite the disdain voiced for coconut candies, Almond Joy is the number one Halloween handout in Connecticut. Kids in Arizona and Florida prefer Snickers. Boxes of Hot Tamales are hits in Indiana, North Dakota and Virginia. Californians? We love Skittles, perhaps because they are gluten free and likely vegan. And Swedish Fish are still around—at least in Kentucky.

Believe it or not, candy corn is the favorite Halloween candy in seven states. That’s more states than any other candy by far. Skittles can claim only four (Hawaii, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in addition to California). Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups also cop four (Kansas, Oregon, Texas and Wyoming).

So what gives? Seven states? Alabama, Iowa, Idaho, Michigan...I’m sensing a theme here. Candy corn is orange, yellow and white.

Instead of candy corn being an easy pick for the worst Halloween treat, it’s just one of the most divisive. For the record, it contains a few more ingredients than corn syrup and dye. And the layered colors were not modeled on those hideous Astros jerseys. They were actually created in the late 1800s and apparently marketed as candy “Chicken Feed.”

Yep, Chicken Feed, because most Americans considered corn unworthy of the dinner table, at least according to Samira Kawash in an article published by The Atlantic titled “Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure.”

“There were no sweet hybrids in those days,” she wrote. “Corn was coarse and cheap and not very tasty: good food for pigs and chickens. It wasn’t until war-time wheat shortages in 1917 that any but the poorest Americans would have considered corn flour, corn meal or corn bread acceptable foodstuffs.”

C’mon, Alabama—can’t we just declare it the worst and be done?

Well, no. Jelly Belly Candy Company and others turn out close to 35 million pounds of candy corn every year. Clearly there are a lot of people who enjoy the sugary kernels.

“Candy corn is a retro candy,” Zepeda observes. “People who like candy corn grew up with it.”

Probably true. Different candies emerged with each generation. What else is there?

CandyStore’s survey is fairly comprehensive. They culled years of sales results, reached out to 40,000 of their customers and collated that information with other published lists then weighted the data with numerical values in a manner that seems far too scientific. They came up with such unfavorable names as Mary Janes, Bit-O-Honey, Smarties and Necco Wafers—which are really just pastel rounds of chalk, I think.

We came up with a few more here in swanky and luxurious Weekly newsroom, such “those giant, puffy marshmallow doorstop things” (photographer Nic Coury couldn’t be more specific) and Pixie Stix.

“They shouldn’t even be candy,” says arts writer Walter Ryce. “It’s sugar and food coloring. It’s a factory mishap that nobody caught, and became popular because it’s like kid cocaine.”

Yes, that does sound vile—and somewhat 1980s-ish.

But there is another candy that, when mentioned, caused contorted faces and gasps of revulsion, stirred long-suppressed and terrifying memories and in a few tragic cases triggered Halloween-gone-wrong PTSD symptoms.

Circus Peanuts.

Oh, and that was also the number one worst on CandyStore’s list. So that confirms the answer to this week’s Burning Question.

Well, except that publisher Erik Cushman heard about the topic and chimed in with one more.

“From a similar survey I did back in the day, apples with razor blades were universally thought of as the worst Halloween candy,” he points out.

So Circus Peanuts, followed by apples with razor blades. Maybe the other way around. Yeah, other way round. Either way, both are pretty nasty.