Halloween Showdown: Fruity Candy vs. Chocolate

FRUITY CANDY:

As the leaves start to trickle down, something fierce begins to simmer beneath people’s skin as they reminisce on the euphoria of Halloween candy hitting their taste buds. With this unrelenting longing comes the timeless debate of chocolate vs. gummy candy, bringing unrest to all. 

No matter how often Willy Wonka’s pupils scream until they’re blue in the face, the answer to this discourse will never change. Gummy candy will always reign supreme because it offers what chocolate sorely lacks — an extensive and mouthwatering collection of distinct options. 

Chocolate lovers may try to dispute this by recalling the changing flavor and richness of their beloved sweet, but at the end of the day, it’s still simply chocolate. Sometimes, it’s not even that, but rather a white treat with the chocolate label slapped on despite its absence of cocoa solids, one of chocolate’s key ingredients.

Gummy candy, on the other hand, has a great variety.

Take Trolli, for instance. This sour candy brand has a broad assortment of sweet treats, ranging from gummy bears to worms to “weirdly awesome” configurations, such as animals, rings and even hands. These forms bring an array of diverse shapes along with various flavors in a single bag.

This ever-evolving pool of options is completely unlike a bag of chocolate where the only difference is the occasional change in filling. While some of these fillings can be quite good, such as the peanut butter in Reese’s Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Pumpkin, overall they still flop in comparison to gummy candy, which have unique fillings of their own. 

Additionally, there’s Haribo, the world’s first gummy bear, with over 1000 products worldwide full of different textures and flavors. These small gummy bears — or worms, snakes, letters, frogs, etc. — are the perfect candy for all moods, even if the mood involves eating miniature Coca-Cola bottles. 

Chocolate falls short of this mark. Even with its gradient of dark to white chocolate, its richness becomes too much after a few bites, leaving people with no other option but to turn to another snack. Just a few chocolates often leave many feeling like they just finished eating all of Miss Trunchbull’s infamous chocolate cake.  

Nerds are another classic example of how gummy candy surpasses chocolate. Nerds began as tiny, hard, tangy pebble-like candies and, like a caterpillar turned butterfly, metamorphosed into something otherworldly with the addition of a fruity-flavored gummy center. 

This transformation occurred all while chocolate stayed in its fixed, basic state. Its minor changes in shape — even if said shape is a jack-o’-lantern — will never mask it still being chocolate, especially if the interior remains hollow.

If chocolate wants any chance of competing with gummy candy this Halloween — or year round — it better get crafty and start diversifying its options.

CHOCOLATE:

On All Hallows Eve while other college students roam the streets like zombies dressed as meticulous Moo Dengs or charming Chapel Roans, I’ll be only half watching their wicked ways through the windows of my apartment, too busy being beguiled by my favorite sweet treat — chocolate. 

Whether filled with nutty nougat, sprawled with sticky-sweet caramel or just a simple, bite-sized square, chocolate halloween candy has never done me wrong. The wide variety of textures, colors and flavors which span this half of the sweets empire leave almost nothing to be desired and trump their fruity compatriots every time. 

Chocolate is — and always will be — better than fruity candy. 

While sour-gummy soldiers and noisy Nerds will shout fruity candy’s praises from the proverbial rooftops, this commotion is nothing more than contrarian hullabaloo. Chocolate, in its seemingly infamous forms, can be either the saccharine focal point of a dessert or an inspired accessory. 

In Halloween candies, for example, chocolate basks in the limelight with such timeless classics as Hershey’s bars, Milky Ways, Kit Kats and Twix bars. 

However, for fun-size treats like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, York Peppermint Patties, Almond Joys, Snickers and many more, chocolate serves as the bridge between a variety of complimentary ingredients, serving as a conduit for the Halloween celebrator’s titillating taste buds. 

More than this, chocolate can be transferred to desserts beyond Halloween candy, often appearing in ice cream, cakes, cookies and various dessert pastries. Even in the rare instances fruit-flavored sweets make an appearance in a heartier dessert, it’s almost always in addition to chocolate.  

Chocolate has expanded to every corner of the dessert kingdom, while fruity candy has been relegated to one night of the year. 

Fruity candy is also tedious to eat. A simple gummy requires what feels like eons of chewing, suffering through minutes of gelatinous mush before the abomination can finally be swallowed. Pebble-like fruit candies, such as Pop Rocks or Nerds, relentlessly get stuck between teeth, making these sugary nuisances a dentist’s worst nightmare. 

Furthermore, sour candies, such as Sour Patch Kids and WarHeads, are actually painful to eat, tricking treat-connoisseurs into acidic bites which — quite literally — can infuse the holiday with bitter memories. 

Why would anyone eat a candy that makes their mouth pucker and eyes water? All of this pain, for different shapes and colors of what is essentially the same piece of candy, over and over again. 

Chocolate’s superiority — on Halloween and every day — is impossible to overlook. Deep down, I believe individuals who boo and hiss about Big Hershey just haven’t explored every corner of the saccharine world. 

To these fruit candy champions too prideful for a PB Max bar, beware — for while your face is scrunched from the lemonhead you are working through, I will be scrounging in your trick-or-treat bucket, indulging in the Almond Joys you left behind.