Big candy is the best candy

Catherine Maxwell | Senior Editor

Best

Whatever candy you buy, buy it big: full-sized Twizlers, standard Reeses’s Cups, sharing-size Snickers. If you’re not experiencing a sugar rush (or a sugar crash) by the end of the night, you’re doing it wrong.

Variety is also important. Packets of Sour Patch Kids or boxes of NERDS can balance out chocolate or make up for the lack of a giant Hershey bar. Options are better, but it doesn’t have to be perfect — there’s at least one person on campus who’ll eat that questionable Whopper.

Ultimately, be generous with the candy. No one wants to walk away from a front door or a party with a single piece of stale bubblegum. Shower your friends with sugar and let them figure out the rest.

Worst

When costumed children are doorknocking for Halloween treats, the worst trick to receive is a bite-sized candy bar.

There’s a time and place for the one cubic-inch Milky Way, but it’s not a pumpkin basket on Oct. 31. Tiny chocolates are perfect for a quick sugar spike or a sweet treat for the guilty-minded, but they’re an insult to the spirit of the evening.

This year, bite-sized candy should bite the dust.

Fake strawberry over fake chocolate

Alessia Sandala | City News Editor

Best

When Halloween rolls around each year, hundreds of types of candy come to mind. But one candy stands out from all the rest: the strawberry Laffy Taffy, the perfect mixture of delicious, artificial strawberry flavor and satisfying chewiness. A strawberry Laffy Taffy is a joyful experience, with its bright pink wrapper and iconic jokes under the flap on the wrapper. It’s an opportunity to set your siblings up for disappointment from a cheesy dad joke, while you struggle to eat the sticky candy without getting it stuck in your braces or getting a cavity. Each piece is wrapped in humor and brings laughter to a night meant for fear.

Worst

Then there’s the Hershey bar. It’s the king of Halloween, but still goes down as the worst candy. As a Pennsylvanian, even I am forced to admit Hershey bars are the most basic candy. Yes, they’re an American classic, but the overly sweet chocolate, with its unique tang that gives it a somewhat sour flavor, leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Hershey bars are the unsalted french fries of the trick-or-treating world. They’re chalky, dry, and lifeless. Hershey bars have remained the same for as long as anyone can remember, and when you reach into your candy bag only to find a Hershey bar, disappointment is the only proper reaction.

Candy is evil, with few exceptions

Lewis Thune | Assistant Editor

Best

There are two tests to consider with candy. The first: Can this wholly unreasonable dose of sugar justify itself with an interesting medium or flavor? The second: Is it honest about its answer to the first test? Very few Halloween candies in both the chocolate and non-chocolate categories can satisfactorily pass these tests. Thus, very few are worth your time and money. Chocolate candy greatly improves when frozen — especially 100 Grand, the most interesting, and M&M’s, the most honest. With non-chocolates, Lifesavers pass with flying colors. They are properly fruit-tasting and packaged conscious of the fact that they exist solely for a sugar hit. The same goes for Dum-Dums, an appropriately small sucker in many flavors.

Worst

No amount of freezing, however, can save the unappealing Heath bar — I hate toffee — or redeem the 3 MUSKETEERS bar, a compulsive liar among chocolates, which is little more than whipped sugar. Also steer clear of Laffy Taffy, which is an insult to both laughter and taffy. Many among us will extol Hi-Chews, Werther’s, and Swedish Fish. To this I respond: We’re college students, you aristocrats! Celebrate Halloween accordingly. Who can even afford those?