8 New Halloween Candies To Buy And 8 To Ignore In 2023

We've devoured our share of trick-or-treat hauls over the years. We dug through butterscotch hard candies, Fireballs, Pixy Stix, Good & Plenty, packets of instant oatmeal, raisins, and actual apples in order to find the good stuff. We tasted flavorless bubblegum wrapped in cartoons, and pried Sugar Babies out of our molars. We even tried to eat wax lips. Twice. This isn't just any time of year; it's Halloween. It's go time, people! We've got our game faces on and our sugar highs on lock. (Ooh. Looks like it's Pixy o'clock!)

Every major brand is clamoring for our attention in the candy aisle, luring us in with their ghoulish gimmicks. So which monster deserves to pry that cold hard cash out of our sticky little fingers? Wait a minute. Why are our fingers sticky? We didn't even start sampling anything yet.

Dive into the hugest unattended candy bowl with us as we stir up the most spectacular gummy ghosts and gooey goblins, in search of our favorite treats of the season. Of course, we also don't mind pointing out the losers along the way. Zombie brains to chocolate fangs, here's what to buy (and what to boo!) for Halloween this year!

This one's a 2020 release, back in rotation for the third year in a row. And while we were feeling the Halloween-ishness the first year, at this point, we're like, "Dear Kit Kat, save us, make something new." The brand's Witch's Brew seasonal flip is all about the spook ... until you take a bite.

It's just a regular Kit Kat, but with a white chocolate coating that tastes like marshmallow. We're not exactly angry about it, but we find the witchy theme a little misleading. The chocolate features a green tint, but that's pretty much the craftiest thing about it. Unless you've heard any scary stories involving witches roasting s'mores together at a relaxing girls' weekend retreat.

Part of us knows this is a brand with universal appeal, and one that isn't going to push it to the limit on flavor. But another part of us wants the Kit Kat to look bumpy like it had warts, or be packed with shredded wheat filling like the brush of a broom. Also with a green tint like that, it should most definitely glow in the dark. Sorry, Kit Kat. This year, it's not us, it's you.

Cranking out the familiar hits, but with vaguely seasonally-appropriate wrappers, we have Twix Cookies & Creme taking the lead. Openly committing one of the greatest sins against the hallowed Halloween candy aisle, Twix wrapped up something it first launched in the '90s as a festive new treat. Twix, you're better than this.

Upfront, we're totally down with Twix and the cookies and creme flavor combo. But we're not down with a rehashing of a candy that's 30 years old. And somebody should get a stern talking-to about this phoned-in packaging. With nothing new printed on the fun-size wrappers, we're left with the soulless and seemingly very hangry jack-o-lantern on the front of the main bag, along with a few bats, and some dead trees. (Hitting snooze.)

But the worst offense might be that they eliminated the best freakin' part of the Twix — the caramel — and instead, piped in cookies and cream ... on top of the Twix shortbread cookie. So, it's really cookies and cookies and cream. Maybe that's what's supposed to be scary. Too many cookies, and nothing that makes this worth buying.

Once a Peep, always a Peep. Okay-okay, yes, we like a Peep now and then when we're in the mood. Who can resist those sweet little marshmallow clouds with the delightfully granular sugar coating that's oddly fun to chew. But when we see Peeps marshmallow pumpkinsreturn to the shelves, we find ourselves wanting something a little more ... pumpkin-y.

Hold on — they feature three different jack-o-lantern faces, and we'll give them that. But with all the recent technological advances that have been made in the pumpkin spice sector, shouldn't these pumpkins taste like, oh, maybe pumpkin? The only variations in the Peeps Spooky Season lineup that actually should taste like Peeps brand marshmallows are the sugar skulls and ghosts. And somebody's gotta go back to the drawing board on the Frankenstein monster heads.

Another skeleton bone we have to pick: The Peeps peeps aren't afraid of introducing fans to wacky flavors. They've launched kettle corn, Dr. Pepper, Hot Tamales, coffee, birthday cake, and sour watermelon flavors in the past. They've even done pumpkin spice chick-shaped Peeps for Halloween! Peeps, why ya' holding out on the most fun holiday of the year? While we wait to hear back on that, we'll be strolling right by the adorable Peeps display, and on to a candy whose head is truly in it.

Hershey's Cookies 'N' Creme Fangs probably looked great on paper. But in reality, they fail to do the one thing that Halloween fangs should do. And that's stick onto your teeth like actual fangs. Even if it's just for a split second before the chocolate melts and we chomp our new chompers into smithereens, that is the assignment. There should be the mild threat of instant cavities, a killer photo op, possibly fake blood, and memories that last at least until the end of the night. Hershey's: Fail.

According to the packaging, we're supposed to settle for holding up the stamped, rectangular fangs in front of our mouths like a 1950s robot vampire that speaks through a voice box. And how the heck are we supposed to pretend to bite someone's neck like this? Hershey's suggests we carve out the fang shape with our own fang-less teeth — covering our cookies 'n' creme fangs in previously eaten cookies 'n' creme — and then go out into the night with half of a chocolate bar tucked into our upper lip? Also, hello, the cookie bits make it look like we have something stuck in our pearlescent vampire teeth.

Hershey's first launched these bars in 2020, and they've been a thing every year since. So it seems like somebody likes them. (Et tu, Lestat de Lioncourt?) Still, as far as we're concerned, these fangs put the "no" in Nosferatu.

In a world full of Franken-things, we don't need another edition of the Reese's Franken-cup. This is a painful stance to take, mostly due to the fact that the pure joy of the original Reese's peanut butter cup becomes tragically diminished as the Franken-version. We can feel our little peanut butter-loving hearts breaking into a million pieces.

Again, we witness a case of normal candy gone (slightly) spooky. We learn from the wrapper that our favorite peanut butter cup has been electrified, and has now turned half-green from the incident, a la Frankenstein. The filling is still peanut butter, but the bottom of the milk chocolate cup is now made of "green colored creme." Whatever that is, it's supposed to be exciting.

We can honestly say it's not Halloween without Reese's candy. The traditional peanut butter cup packaging is already orange, and Reese's Pieces — in their festive brown, orange, and yellow candy shells — almost seem like they were designed for Spooky Season right from the jump. As soon as Reese's Pieces appeared in "E.T." back in 1982, it was game over. Reese's for life. With all that big candy energy, the Franken-cup takes an icon off the high dive and belly-flops it into a basic Halloween-ish candy bowl.

All hail the king of candy flavored corn! But even though they've dominated the candy corn market since the 1950s, making 95% of the product that hits the shelves, they're not immune to debuting a dud or two. No offense to vegetable shaped candy, but Brach's Fall Festival Candy Corn is one of them.

They took a product that was already crushing the Halloween game, and gave it a "harvest" makeover that bumped it all the way into a different season of the year: Springtime. If pastel pinks, yellows, and teals are supposed to make us think of gourds, cinnamon-scented pinecones, and crisp Fall leaves ... that'll be a hard no, 'cuz they don't.

This isn't about the candy corn flavor war that's been buzzing since the beginning of time. We get it, either it tastes like sugar or candles. Agree to disagree. For us hard core fans, the brand even added new flavors to the seasonal upgrade: Caramel Apple, Kettle Corn, Strawberry Funnel Cake, Lemonade Shake-up, Lemon-Lime Snowcone, and Cotton Candy. Exqueeze us, but Lemon-Lime Snowcone isn't screaming Autumn. Even with a twee harvest scene on the packaging, we can't get past the flower blossom colors. Brach's, looks like you candy corn'd the bed on this one.

Here lies a grave disappointment: Opening the fun and festive Hershey's Kisses Monster Foils wrapper to find (violin sting!) the exact same Hershey's Kisses from the rest of the year ("Price Is Right" loser horn). Yes, they kind of give it away in the name. And yes, we were still hoping for more. Our thirst for ultimate candy awesomeness will never be quenched!

These designs are super cute. They feature the kind of monster imagery of a creature that you'd want to appear in your dark closet and then become your fun little best friend. Too many eyes, a big hairy eyebrow, and the iconic Kisses paper plumes printed with "CREEPY," "EEK," and "YIKES." We have to admit they would look great in a bowl for a costume party, where we would no doubt sample the wares.

And yet — okay, yes, it does come down to the details when you're sorting through the best ever candy for the candiest day of the year — they are still just regular ol' milk chocolate Hershey's Kisses. Is that bad? Not entirely. Is it as fun as it could possibly be? Of course not. Here's hoping that next year Hershey's Kisses step up their game.

Maybe it's worse if you know the haunted history of these jelly beans, but the Jelly Belly Pumpkin Pie flavor is back for Halloween. And it's better — or worse — than ever (depending on who you ask).

Jelly Belly hoped for a holiday hit when they launched the original pumpkin pie jelly bean way back in 1987. But thanks to its lackluster taste, it was canceled in a year. A decade later, they relaunched the bean with an upgraded formula that still didn't hit right with the masses. And after a second do-over, pumpkin pie Jelly Belly was back on the shelves in 2014. 

Fast forward to nearly 10 years after that, and here we are, still feeling "meh" about the offering. Some have said it was like eating pumpkin pie minus the crust. But who wants pumpkin pie without the best parts? We need our flaky crust, a dollop of whipped cream on top, and Aunt Edna talking about her cat Tiggy — who we all know died a long time ago, R.I.P. Tiggy — as she gently strokes the shaggy white throw pillow someone should have put away before she got here. You know, just for example.

If you love pumpkin pie, chances are you love everything about it — including its singular texture. The jelly bean version may vaguely allude to a slice of the real stuff, but nobody's gonna be sneaking into the kitchen at midnight to grab a handful of these things after everyone's gone to bed.