If you’re prepared for Halloween, you’ve probably already stocked up on candy to pass out to the trick-or-treaters who will trek to your doorstep on Saturday night. If you’re not prepared—if, in fact, you’re still trying to locate your most comfortable pair of shoes for your last-minute Kim Davis costume—you will probably be making an urgent trip to your local grocery store to pick up several bags of fun-size candy in the near future.
I have one piece of advice before you go: Before you buy any candy variety for the first time, see if it’s been covered on Cybele May’s Candy Blog. May, who has been blogging for more than 10 years, is the foremost candy reviewer of our time, and she carefully critiques each candy she writes about in exquisite detail. You probably already know whether you like candy corn or M&Ms Pieces—but will you like sea salt chocolate candy corn or pumpkin spice latte M&Ms? Only May will give you the comprehensive description you’ll need to make a solid prediction. (If you enjoy “that feeling that you get when you go into the kitchen and realize that someone left a package of hot cocoa mix open” and don’t mind fake butter flavor, the sea salt chocolate candy corn might be for you!)
In addition to being a good source of information about candies you’re considering buying, Candy Blog is also an excellent chronicle of the trends that have afflicted Halloween candy over the past several years. Would you believe that candy manufacturers have put out 15 distinct caramel-apple-flavored candies and 10 distinct pumpkin-spice-flavored candies in recent years? And that’s not even getting into the candies that aren’t candy corn but are flavored to taste like candy corn (as May wrote about for Slate last year). As Halloween candy manufacturers come up with more unprecedentedly weird, confusing confections with every year that passes, it’s nice to know that explanations abound on the Candy Blog.
