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Is Candy Corn Really the Most Hated Halloween Candy? What the Polls Show

Candy corn is America's most divisive Halloween candy. Find out what the polls really say and why people either love or hate it.

By Written Facts StaffOctober 15, 20267 min read

Halloween is about three weeks away, and you're in the seasonal aisle looking at a bag of candy corn, wondering whether it will be the stuff that sits in the bowl until Thanksgiving. Its reputation says it will. And the reputation mostly holds up: candy corn comes in last in almost every "most hated Halloween candy" poll. But those polls are weaker than the headlines make them sound, and a sizable share of people really do love the stuff.

The short answer

In the polls that ask which Halloween candy people hate, candy corn usually comes out on top. A candy retailer's customer poll, a vending company's survey and a cosmetic dentistry brand's study all point the same way.

The catch is who runs these polls. None of them come from a neutral national pollster using a random sample. They come from retailers and marketing firms, and the results are released in October because candy rankings get clicks. Some draw only from a company's own customers. Others are online surveys of about a thousand people. That doesn't make them wrong, but each one is a rough signal, not an official count.

The better surveys show something more mixed. When pollsters ask about favorites, or ask how people feel about candy corn on its own, a real group of fans shows up. One online survey found more people saying they love it than saying they hate it.

So the fair answer is that candy corn is the most divisive Halloween candy, and it's the one people most like to complain about. Whether it's the most hated depends on which poll you believe.

What the polls say

Candystore.com, 2019. The online retailer polled more than 40,000 of its customers, and candy corn came out as the "most detested Halloween offering," according to The Daily Meal. It finished ahead of circus peanuts, peanut butter kisses and wax soda bottles. The sample is big, but it's made up of people who shop at a candy website, not a cross-section of the country.

The Vending Company, 2025. According to a report carried by AOL, this survey of 1,736 Americans found that 102 people liked candy corn and 158 disliked it, for a net score of -56. It was the only candy in the survey with a net negative score. Kit Kat, by comparison, had 251 likes against 162 dislikes. The report says candy corn was the least favorite candy in 17 states, including California, New York, Ohio and Oregon. Notice how small the counts are: only about 260 of the 1,736 respondents gave candy corn a rating either way.

Shiny Smiles Veneers, 2023. This survey of 1,002 Americans, taken on August 25, 2023, found that 36% hate getting candy corn, as NewsNation reported. Next came Hot Tamales at 26.1%, Atomic Fireballs at 23.9% and jawbreakers at 21.7%. The survey came from a veneers company and also asked about candy and teeth, so its main purpose was marketing.

All three polls agree on candy corn. All three also come from companies with something to sell, and none were designed to stand up as independent research.

The other side: people who like it

Ask a different question and you get a different result. In September 2019, Monmouth University, an established academic pollster, asked 1,161 adults to name their favorite Halloween candy. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups won with 36%, followed by Snickers at 18% and M&M's at 11%. Candy corn got 6%, Snack & Bakery reported. The poll's director said it was surprising to see it on the list at all. Six percent isn't much, but in a poll that offered every candy on the shelf, it means roughly one adult in seventeen picked candy corn over everything else.

A 2020 Harris Poll for Instacart, an online survey of 2,022 U.S. adults, asked about candy corn directly. Instacart reported that 42% said they "actually love it" and only 16% said they hate it. Forty percent of buyers said nostalgia was part of the reason they buy it. Not everyone was kind: 23% said it tastes like candle wax.

The National Confectioners Association, the candy industry's trade group, reports even warmer numbers. A 2020 NCA survey, as reported by Fox 5 New York, found that 58% of Gen X and 56% of Gen Z favor candy corn. The report doesn't give the question wording, and the industry group has an obvious stake in the answer, so treat those numbers carefully. The same Fox report also cites a 2022 NCA poll on how people eat it: 33% start with the white end, 16% with the yellow end, and 51% eat the whole piece at once.

Where it came from and why it's divisive

Candy corn is older than most of the candy it gets ranked against. George Renninger of the Wunderle Candy Company in Philadelphia invented it in the 1880s, and Wunderle started producing it in 1888, according to Wikipedia and Fox 5. In 1898 the Goelitz Confectionery Company, the company now known as Jelly Belly, began making it too.

It wasn't originally a Halloween candy. It was sold as "Chicken Feed," a nod to a time when many Americans lived on farms and fed corn to their chickens. According to Fox 5, it didn't become linked to Halloween until the 1950s. That's how a candy shaped like a farm crop ended up as the trick-or-treat candy.

The reasons people split on it aren't hard to find. Candy corn is mostly sugar, so it's very sweet, and it has no chocolate, peanuts or crunch to balance that. Its texture is soft and waxy, which explains the candle-wax comparison in the Instacart survey. Its ingredients also put some people off: Fox 5 notes that it contains confectioner's glaze, which comes from an insect secretion, and gelatin, which is made from animal hides and bones. That means it isn't vegetarian, which surprises many people.

Then there's nostalgia. To the people who grew up with it, candy corn tastes like every October they remember. Everyone else gets a sugary, waxy candy with little else going on. That's the kind of split that produces strong opinions on both sides.

Why it's still everywhere

If candy corn were as unpopular as its reputation, stores would have stopped stocking it long ago. They haven't. Manufacturers make more than 35 million pounds a year, nearly 9 billion pieces, according to a 2016 figure cited by Wikipedia and Fox 5.

Most of it comes from a single brand. Brach's, owned by Ferrara, makes about 7 billion pieces a year and holds about 85% of the Halloween candy corn market. Its candy corn sales reached $73 million in 2019, according to both sources.

That fits what the polls show when you read them together. Candy corn doesn't need everyone to like it. It needs a loyal minority, plus the people who buy a bag once a year for tradition or decorating. The Instacart survey found that 35% of buyers use it for "decorations, arts & crafts, and games." Disliked candy usually disappears from the shelves. Candy corn has stayed for well over a century.

For your candy bowl, a reasonable approach is to put it out alongside the chocolate, not instead of it. The people who want it will take it, and everyone else will grab a Reese's.

Sources (7)

Photo: candy corn squircle by Muffet, BY 2.0.