Halloween Candy Through the Years

The one thing that children look forward to the most is getting bagfuls of candy on Halloween. Both children and adults love to get dressed up in all kinds of costumes. My childhood favorite was a witch costume and that being the 1960s the popular costumes for children came packaged with plastic masks. As much as my mother wished I wanted to be a princess or a fairy year after year it was being a witch for me.

Baby Ruth became the most popular chocolate candy bar in the 1920s. The delectable candy bar with a mix of peanuts, caramel, and chocolate nougat. Other candies enjoyed that same year were Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Oh Henry! bars and Bit-O-Honey. An interesting thing about this candy bar is that it was mentioned in a song from 1956 "A Rose and a Baby Ruth."

Three Musketeers came along in 1932 and there were three flavors to choose from chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry and these choices inspired the name of this candy bar. Other popular trick or treat candies were Snickers, candy buttons and Boston Baked Beans.

M&Ms arrived in 1941 along with other popular treats like Bazooka Bubble Gum, Jolly Ranchers and Almond Joys. Along with these candies came fun for kids like blowing big pink bubbles with Bazooka and licking all the juicy flavors of Jolly Ranchers like sour apple, and cherry.

In the 1950s Red Hots became popular. These were hot and cinnamon-flavored candies, Others popular at this time were Necco Wafers, Satellite Wafers and black-licorice flavored treats.

In the 1960s for trick or treaters, there were SweeTARTS which were sweet and sour and had many different flavors. Other candies children enjoyed were Necco’s Banana Splits and Banana Slap Stix. Then there were more favorite the fruity candy Mike & Ike, Pixy Stix and Starburst. It was also the time children could still enjoy buying penny candies by the bagful.

A lot of delicious and fun candies came along in the 1970s with the popular candy being Laffy Taffy. Others were those fun popping rocks Pop Rock, fizzy ZotZ, Blow Pops a lolly and bubble gum combination and Fun Dip.

The popular candies Skittles came around in 1982 as well as Willie Wonka candies like Runts and Nerds. Then fruity, chewy candies like gummy bears and others like Ring Pops and Sour Patch Kids.

The 1990s brought along candy called AirHeads. Other popular brands were Baby Bottle Pops, Push Pops and Bubble Gum Jugs. For those who preferred really sour candy, you had WarHeads.

Let me tell you looking over this candy list boy, had times changed. I mean you can already see that we were all entering a completely different kind of world with candy that was called AirHeads and WarHeads.

The 2000s brought with them the popularity of the Harry Potter series Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. These were a kind of Harry Potter makeover of Jelly Beans. A box of Bertie Bott's included normal flavors like lemon, and disgusting flavors like vomit.Feb 13, 2021. Other popular choices were chocolate bars with cookies and cream flavors, Sour Patch Kids and Nerds Rope, a gummy string candy.

The 2010s arrived with some old candies becoming like-new favorites among them Reese's Peanut Butter cups, Hershey bars in candy corn flavor, Kit Kat Bars, Snickers, and even M&Ms. Some of these had also become favorites of grownups who remembered enjoying them as kids.

Time marches on and things change but Halloween is always a welcome holiday especially for kids and even grownups who love to party and dress up in costumes. These are the things that don't change as well as spooky tales and everyone's favorite Halloween monsters and movies.