So back when we first moved into our neighborhood, the folks next door warned us that we needed to buy a lot of candy for Halloween, at least several hundred pieces.
When I went to the store I found that I had no idea what to buy. What kind of candy do kids even like? I bought a bunch of variety packs and brought them home. The day before Halloween I got the idea I should count the candy before and after, so I would know what kids actually wanted.
All the candy is in a bowl, kids get to pick “any one they want”, a phrase which also implied quantity that they get to pick. Periodically I’ll dump the bowl back into the collection of all the candy, stir it up and fill the bowl again to try and maintain availability of each type of candy for as long as possible. Sometime when the night starts to die down I do another recount of the candy, after that I give away generous amounts to roving bands of high schoolers.
The raw data is available here. Generally the big take away that I can discern is that kids love Skittles. It might have something to do with it’s relative rarity of non chocolatey candy in variety packs, which I think leads to relatively rarity in the neighborhood.
Skittles were the big winner, kids don’t generally choose chocolatey candy.
This year we did a prediction to see exactly how much candy we should stock but didn’t give ourselves any buffer, so we ended up almost completely running out! This left us with no good way to see preferences.
Chocolatey candy is slowly closing on the non chocolately candy, but Skittles continue to have a good run.
Lowest turnout year yet! I guess rainy Monday nights aren’t good for trick or treating. Interestingly chocolatey candy preference is slowly drawing even with non chocolatey.
The image for this post can be found here