Let’s face it—the best thing about Halloween is the candy. There is something special about a holiday dedicated to giving out sugary delights to absolute strangers. This unifying societal tradition is undermined as a child, though, by the ultimate polarizing question—what is the best Halloween candy? Dedicated to Spec Food’s favorite holiday: the best (and the worst) of trick-or-treat...

THE BEST: Twix

Twix: crunchy cookie goodness, draped in caramel, wrapped in chocolate. The best thing about Twix bars is that the chocolate is tempered to just the right effect with the cookie and the caramel. Frozen or just starting to melt, Twix bars are delicious no matter what. Caramel’s a different kind of sweetness, so you get the best of all candy worlds. Fun-size Twix bars are great in your Halloween candy basket, but they’re even better during the off-season. In high school, I kept an emergency stash near my bed, but when I came back to Columbia last year, I bought a box of 32 regular-sized Twix bars. Sometimes fun size just doesn’t cut it.

—Desiree Browne

THE BEST: Snickers

If scientists tried to engineer the perfect Halloween confection—sweet, rich, unrestrained—it’s likely that they would come up with something quite similar to a Snickers bar. Yes, Snickers have chocolate—absolutely crucial to any good Halloween candy (or, for that matter, any good candy, period)—but Snickers are so much more than chocolate. They contain nougat and caramel, two of the most highly effective sugar delivery systems known to man. The coup de grâce, of course, is the addition of peanuts, a brilliant move that keeps Snickers from imploding into a mess of high fructose corn syrup. Snickers bars aren’t refined, grown-up, or thought-provoking. In this day of organic this and locally-grown that, they’re probably not even politically correct. But Halloween isn’t about doing the right thing—it’s about candy. In recent years, Mars has rolled out Snickers Dark, Snickers Almond, and, bewilderingly, Snickers Rockin’ Nut Road. But these innovations are entirely unnecessary. A pillowcase full of classic miniature Snickers bars is all a kid—or a grown-up—could want on Halloween.
—Laura Anderson

THE BEST: King-Size Candy

There are always the people who give the pumpkin- and witch-shaped lollipops that come 50 per pack from the average drug store. Dum Dums and bubble gum are staples as well, but when the mega of all mega treats plunk themselves in that little plastic pumpkin container, you know you’ve really got the goods. Jumbo candy bars for Halloween is perhaps the best idea since huge chocolate bunnies for Easter, but it’s not often that we find such a cheerful giver. Granted, jumbo Snickers, Twix, Butterfingers, and the like all taste just like the miniature ones that are usually given out on this sugar rush of a holiday. But just the size of these chocolate delights are enough to make any trick-or-treat adventure well worth freezing in thin costumes for 30 minutes or more. Searching for the jackpot? Try that nice old lady down the street—they’re usually the most generous (at least to the less age-challenged trick-or-treaters).

—Kelicia Hollis

THE WORST: Toothbrushes

You’re six years old and you’re on a quest for anything chocolate, preferably Butterfingers or Crunch bars, Snickers or Reese’s. Your taste buds crave the mix of the salty sweet crafted confections wrapped in brightly colored plastic that Halloween brings every year, a candy rainbow. You’re sugar-crazed, greedy, and on a mission. You can’t wait to go home and organize your sugary treasure into their respective species and families, comparing and counting with your friends, who got the most, who got the best. Anxious and tripping over your costume, you see a big house with a long pathway to the front door. It might take a little longer, but from your experience the bigger the house, the bigger the bar, so your heart is racing. You abandon your parents, being sneaky, in for the win, rush up the pathway, squeeze under some big kids, and to the front of the line. A man opens the door. “Trick-or-treat!” You give him your biggest chipped tooth smile. He looks down and drops a heavy parcel in your pillowcase. Ecstatic, you race back down. What will it be? You reach in and look to see a pumpkin-adorned orange toothbrush. Four minutes in an hour-long free-for-all wasted. “What did you get there?” Your mother looks down and smiles, “Perfect! Just what you needed: a new toothbrush! Can take that one off the shopping list.” That’s why they call it trick or treat.

—Devin Briski

THE WORST: Mounds & Almond Joy

What kind of twisted, sadistic person would ever think to ruin sweet, melt-in-your-mouth milk chocolate with the likes of fake coconut? The chalky, almost sandy texture of the stringy bits of “candy” can take over an otherwise perfectly decent piece of Halloween candy and turn it into a fraction of the pleasurable commodity it once was—disastrous for a tender young heart searching for sugary delight. Whoever created Mounds and Almond Joy ruined many a Halloween for me. Perhaps the word “ruined” is a little strong—but pulling up to a perfectly respectable-looking tract home, making the effort to ring the doorbell, smile, belt out “trick-or-treat,” and pretend to appreciate the awful doorstep decorations, only to come away with a sickening, coconutty mess is a child’s version of a no-hitter ruined by some nobody in the bottom of the ninth. You win the game, but the magic is over.

—Shane Ferro

THE BEST: Nestle Crunch Crisp

The Nestlé Crunch Crisp bar drastically improves an old classic. Alone, the combination of milk chocolate and crispy rice just isn’t very exciting. But put it on top of three crispy wafers layered with chocolate creme, and you have a bigger, better, crunchier Kit Kat. An excellent choice for anyone who may not be crazy about nuts or caramel, but still wants a filling, chocolate-y candy bar. They come in both full and fun size bars, but don’t look for them at Morton Williams (you’ll look in vain). Instead, try the stand on the corner of 116th and Broadway, or better yet, go trick-or-treating this Halloween and hope someone picked up a bag of Crunch Crisps elsewhere. Even if they didn’t, dressing up and getting free candy will do some good “For the Kid in You.”

—Jessica McKenzie