The Best Halloween Candy

Why Meiji Chocolate Is the Best Chocolate (Stefanie Chen)

When Halloween rolls around, you’ll congregate at a friend’s house, empty your pumpkin baskets on the floor, and commence a museum gallery of your candy. You’ll lay them out on display and begin a session of rapid Deal or No Deal. You’ll trade your Snickers for two Twizzlers, and your friend will want your Hershey Kisses for their M&M’s. But, of course, not all of your candies will be for trade. Your favorite ones will be hidden tidily in your pockets. While your friends look at the spectacle of American cavity wonders, you’ll be looking at the small piece of golden-wrapped, foreign chocolate in your hands: Meiji Chocolate.

Meiji is the best candy you can get on Halloween. It’s a rarity that you’d probably only find in your basket if the majority of your neighborhood is Asian. It’s decadent and looks luxurious, with the aesthetic rows of small chocolates in a box that slides open and closed. Meiji comes in variations: milk chocolate, black chocolate, white chocolate, in a bar, in a sliding box, strawberry-shaped and flavored, covering an almond, and even TicTac-shaped. If you’re feeling fun, sad, or like TicTacs but you don’t feel like eating fruity candy, Meiji has got just what you need. No matter the shape, each piece has an equally creamy and smooth taste that dissolves like butter on a sizzling steak. It’s not enough just to have delectable candy. The variation and aesthetic are just as important.

Twix Is the Number One Candy (Riya Sundaram)

Right off the bat, Twix has an excellent taste, with a proper blend of milk chocolate, delicious wafers, silky caramel, and just the slightest hint of salt. It also has the best blend of textures: the crunch of the cookie mixed with the soft chocolate and gooey caramel. The biscuit provides a special crunch that helps sell the simplicity of the candy as a whole, something nougat-based candies just can’t provide. It differentiates itself from other, weaker candies, like Milky Ways or Snickers, because of the way these textures come together. But what truly makes Twix the number one candy, especially for Halloween, is the experience it guarantees on a crisp Halloween night. The warm colors of the chocolate and caramel are classy and fit the fall color scheme to a tee. The size and color of the shiny candy wrapper fit neatly in trick-or-treat baskets, taking up just the right amount of space and promising plenty of deliciousness to go along. Twix is easily the best candy, offering perfect taste, texture, and the ultimate Halloween experience to boot.

The Chocolate of Class: Lindt Dark Chocolate Truffles (Sophia Dasser)

The delectability of the Lindt Dark Chocolate Truffles can be summed up in the proverb “The greater the effort, the greater the glory.” When you see a Lindt Chocolate truffle in your Halloween basket, you know that it’s from one of the fancy, non-organic townhomes in West Village or Cobble Hill. Your refined luxurious journey begins when you first open the truffle. Those who have true class twist the wrappings on both sides of the package simultaneously, leaving the perfect opening for the chocolate to be popped into your mouth—no need to dirty your hands with melted chocolate residue. At first, the truffle is encased with more bitter chocolate. The encasing is often somewhat harder than expected, and you feel inclined to bite into the shell, but if you truly want to work for the inner molten chocolate, then that’s not the best idea. True chocolatiers pop the sweet into their mouth. Once you bypass the tough shell of the truffle, you get to the ganache: the molten goodness, the velvet gold of chocolate. The Lindt truffle melts into your mouth, leaving nothing but an addiction for another. However, its class is reliant on its rarity. Normally, one would get one or two truffles max every Halloween, but it wouldn’t make the experience any less sweet or irresistible. No chocolate can contend with Lindt truffles, and only those who cannot work for reward are ignorant to that fact.

Skittles, the Colorful Delight (Savidya (Minadee) Kulawansa)

Last year, when I first truly saw the value of Skittles, I was in math class learning about statistics. For a class activity, we graphed out the colors and ate the sugary treats afterward. The Skittles were a perfect boost of sugar that made my mouth and my inner conscious happy as I ate them. The best part was that I didn’t have to worry about the mess involved with chocolate. People might try to argue the superiority of M&M’s, but must I point out the mess they create. M&M’s have an oddly textured, colored coating, with chocolate that makes a mess on your fingers if you hold them too long. Skittles, however, retain their texture, are hard on the outside but also chewable, and come in an overall better assortment of colors than M&M’s. In addition, Skittles are the best for those who do not eat chocolate for allergy reasons or mere preference.

To add on, Skittles come in multiple flavors. So while other candies market off of their singular taste, Skittles has a distinctive flavor for each of the colors that it comes in. With this variety come preferences, and with those come great conversation starters and opportunities to share your Skittles. Therefore, Skittles are not only delicious, colorful, and resistant to melting, but they also support society by opening more conversations and avenues of good.

There’s Nothing Better than Reese’s (Astrid Harrington)

For a long time, the “best Halloween candy” has been widely contested. Whenever the topic comes up, heated arguments begin, with different people arguing the various pros and cons of candies like Toblerone, chocolate truffles, and licorice. What they never realize is that the best Halloween candy is right in front of them: Reese’s. These peanut butter cups are obviously superior to all other types of candy, with their thin chocolate shell and rich peanut butter core. They are exactly the size of a few satisfying bites, are undeniably delicious, and have rough edges that melt wonderfully beneath your tongue. On top of all this, candies like Snickers can never really claim a superior role, because they will always be contested by similar chocolates like Milky Way, Twix, and 100 Grand. However, Reese’s peanut butter cups are unique. The only downside to this wonderful candy is the fact that it might kill your poor friend with a peanut allergy. How unfortunate!

We Only Need Yorks (Ushoshi Das)

I want to introduce the least luxurious candy of all: Yorks. We see them in stores, sometimes, but people seldom hand them out. But that’s part of the charm! Since Yorks are rare, they are especially enticing. You have to really search for them for the chance to stuff one into your pillowcase of candy. They teach you an important life lesson: you must work for your prizes! Another bonus: they’re flat, so they take up far less space than many other candies. In addition, the simplicity of Yorks makes them perfect—dare I say sublime? They pair chocolate, the staple flavor of Halloween, with mint. The combination is delightfully refreshing (yes, I am one of those people who like the taste of toothpaste). How can you go wrong? Twix, as well as many other candies mentioned, are busy with so many flavors. Yorks will keep you awake and trick-or-treating through the night!

Snickers: The Knight of All Candies (Khandaker Mushfikuzzaman)

Ah, the Snickers bar, the medieval knight of chocolatey delight. Like a good knight, Snickers are easily the heartiest of the candies: roasted peanuts with a nougat caramel top, all enrobed in the finest of milk chocolate. I bestow upon it the role of a knight, because the heavenly mixture of perfectly combined peanut and caramel pleasurably barges into your mouth with every bite. Snickers are definitely a worthy bar to have in your trick-or-treat pillow bag. The mini chocolates require just the right amount of chewing before they melt in your mouth. It can be argued that Twix, or perhaps even Milky Way, are of royal class in comparison to Snickers, but I object. Snickers have a more complex flavor, and their peanutty genius makes for a great textural element. Aside from being a champion Halloween treat, Snickers are also extremely versatile. They can be a quick dessert, energy bar, or movie snack. So dress up as a knight this Halloween, and collect the bar worthy of your costume.

Don’t Even Bother With Non-M&M’s This Halloween (Charlotte Peterson)

Small, colorful, smooth, but wonderfully sweet and rich, M&M’s have everything anyone could ever want in a chocolate candy. Aside from how delicious they are, M&M’s come in a wide variety, with over 50 unique flavors and six colors that appease even the most particular candy lover’s palate. The flavor of M&M’s is undoubtedly superior, but more importantly, so are their characters. M&M’s are the only candy to have ever been denounced on Fox News for reasons pertinent to sexual attractiveness. Specifically, on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Carlson slammed Mars for redesigning the green M&M and making her “less sexy” than he personally desired. If enraging Tucker Carlson isn’t a reason to love a candy, then nothing is. Altogether, M&M’s are the obvious choice for best Halloween candy.

Ferrero Rocher: The Halloween Treat of Choice (Gulam Monawarah)

She crashes into the party with a bang, a glorious being dressed in gold. She rarely attends these parties, too classy for the cheap $1 peasants vying for attention, but when she does, all eyes are on her. And no, she’s not Lady Gaga. In fact, she’s not a woman at all: she’s Ferrero Rocher.

She’s not like the OTHER chocolates that are limited to max three parts. No, Ferrero Rocher blesses our tongues with a majestic five! She introduces herself to us first with a layer of milk chocolate sprinkled with bits of hazelnut. The feeling is fleeting as your teeth strike another treasure: a crisp chocolate dome of utter magnificence. But unlike the nouveau-riche Lindt, embarrassing itself with two layers, Ferrero Rocher wows us with soft, melty milk chocolate as fourth. And at her core, a single hazelnut. What a spectacular performance!

As if her wondrous components aren’t enough, Ferrero Rocher takes care to present herself well. A golden foil coat sits atop a brown and gold cup. Buying Ferrero Rocher makes you feel special—they are always found in large trays of gold and textured, clear plastic—like when your boyfriend doesn’t forget your anniversary. The highlight of my childhood was when my father bought me two-packs to share with my brother. Oh, to be young and bougie!

Milky Way, Reese’s, M&M’s, and all the other girls that I can’t remember don’t stand a chance against Ferrero Rocher. In a pool of chocolates battling to be chosen, who do you think a slobbering child would pick first? A girl with plain plastic garb or the decadent, richly endowed Ferrero Rocher? The answer is obvious: FR for Queen of Halloween!