What your Halloween candy says about you
by Jeffery Racheff
Halloween is a magical time of year, especially if you’re a kid. It’s the one time when you can act like a blood-crazed zombie ninja without someone prescribing you Ritalin for the rest of your youth. Most importantly, however, it’s when you get to eat buckets of candy. Sweet treats are the end-all-be-all of childhood, so Halloween is the day when a youngster’s dreams come true.
But as any kid will tell you, not all candy was created equal. And it appears parents would agree.
In a recent Nielsen analysis, it was found that folks aren’t skimping when it comes to the candy they dole out from their doorsteps. Sales of brand-name candy are up, showing that parents (and even that one creepy guy who turns off all his lights and puts a bowl full of Starbursts on his porch with a note that says “TAKE ONE,” but no one’s watching so of course you take two handfuls) are passing up the generic store-brands even in a down economy. On average the generics hold a larger share of the market year-round, but Halloween season is different.
It’s interesting to think about why people make these choices. After all, these are products that consumers are buying for complete strangers. So does that mean candy-buyers are just grabbing their own favorite brands and hoping for leftovers? Or are they aware of how they’re perceived when trick-or-treaters bring their offerings back to the neighborhood parents? I can’t help but picture little Johnny Spongebob Squarepants waddling up to the new family’s doorstep, gurgling out a “twick-er-tweet,” then scrambling back to mom who then inspects her child’s latest prize to see how cheap the Petersens are and whether or not she should invite Trisha to the women’s weekly Scrabble game. Or is that too Desperate Housewivesy?
Either way, the fear of being seen as cheap is definitely a big motivation. A shopper browsing the supermarket aisles for food will usually pick old favorites or whatever is on sale, but trick-or-treat candy is a serious purchase because it is going to potentially represent you to your community. That’s why folks looking to impress the neighborhood will hand out Toblerones. School teachers give out little boxes of Nerds in the hopes that they will encourage good study skills. Grandma’s dish out Werthers and Necco wafers because, well, they’re old.
For the big brands, A large reason why they’re more successful during the Halloween season is because of price reductions and sales—something that consumers tend to take advantage of. But the winners in this scenario, other than big candy brands, are the kids. If big brand candy is what they want, we should give it to them. The last thing we need right now is a nation full of disgruntled trick-or-treaters.
