Hey, what is your favorite Halloween candy? Not the one you love as an adult, but the one you were most excited to see in your bag as a kid and devoured before you got to everything else? I’m not going to tell you mine is candy corn, because my top-of-the-pops favorites are Twix followed by Starburst, but I am here to tell you that candy corn has been unfairly maligned and the haters should get over it.
There is a lot of joy to be found in the waxy little candy corn pumpkins that come out in the fall. I love to bite the green stems off the top, and then halve the pumpkin with my teeth. I feel like a giant in my most sophomoric moments. In these times, we have to find delight anywhere we can. I eat regular candy corn the same way, in small, color-coded bites of white, orange, and yellow — or whatever the trio of colors is; sometimes the off-brands substitute in black. As a loose candy, it’s not frequently given out to trick-or-treaters, although Brach’s has made individual bags for the youngsters to more easily mainline some sugar into their bodies on the most sugar-filled night of the year.
To me, candy corn is more reminiscent of Thanksgiving than Halloween, and so I tend to think of it as a fall treat more than a Halloween candy. Those corn shapes are straight out of whatever story about pilgrims eating what Indigenous people gave them in celebration (read: so they didn’t starve) of some great (bullshit) holiday. That it comes in all sorts of strange vegetable shapes — not just pumpkin but peas, carrots, various vegetables of the fall harvest variety — only makes it more strangely Thanksgiving-ish. And it's even more the odd man out on Halloween.
I think of candy corn as something that sits in little glass dishes around the house all fall, getting replenished as someone idly pecks away at it. Like a chicken? I mean, yes, kind of like a chicken eating corn bits in the food in their coop.
Candy corn started its confectionery journey as a year-round treat inspired by farmers, back in the late 19th century, when farmers made up 50 percent of the population, History.com reports. It was originally called “chicken feed” and was the brainchild of a gent called George Renninger at the Wunderlee Candy Company in Philadelphia, according to the National Confectioners Association. The trend, at the time, was making agricultural-themed candy for farmers’ kids. Renninger struck gold because of the tricolor thing — it was unusual and eye-catching in a world where making these heated sugar- and corn syrup-based candies was also incredibly popular, and there were many iterations of things like candy corn. It was funny to make a corn-shaped candy, though. As The Atlantic reports, until World War I, most Americans weren’t eating corn. It was chicken feed (pigs too) and considered too coarse for the dinner table. Wartime shortages put it in the pantries of some of the poorest Americans. So, these kids who were early candy corn fans were truly… eating like chickens.
Just before the turn of the century, the Goelitz Candy Company — possibly through some kind of licensing deal — started making candy corn also, shooting the treat’s popularity into the stratosphere. That company still exists, changing its name in 2001 to the Jelly Belly Candy Company. Candy corn evolved into a penny candy that early 20th-century kids would pick up a handful of at the general store, and marketing turned it into a Halloween candy in the 1950s.
At some point in the last 20 years, candy corn has become the focus of a lot of hate. Every article about it starts with something about how divisive candy corn is.
The debate is so mainstream that even Vogue wrote about it. Vogue. Wrote. About. Candy. Corn. You’ll never convince me that anyone at Condé Nast eats candy corn. Serious Eats says it tastes like “candle wax and sadness.” I say, that’s a lot of projecting. The hate is also partly down to the fact that it's made with added sugars and corn syrup, and one serving is nearly all of the daily recommended sugar intake for an adult. It’s also not vegetarian-friendly because it uses gelatin, so there’s a whole swath of people who automatically don’t like it (or have never tried it).
You don’t have to like the mouthfeel. You can want a more nuanced candy that has different flavor notes than sugar and sugar. But we’re talking about Halloween candy here, which is not exactly sophisticated stuff. If you love Hershey’s Kisses and hate candy corn, miss me with your opinions. I am not alone in enjoying the candy that has been around for over a century at this point. Somewhere between seven and nine billion pieces of candy corn are sold each year, and sales of the candy top over $70 million annually, Marketplace reports, with Brach’s as the distributor of 85 percent of all that chicken feed.
If it’s not for you, leave it on the shelf. Let the rest of us enjoy our weird sugar candy in non-judgmental peace. Or I am coming after your Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, which are objectively garbage after the recent recipe change. You’ve been warned.
Editor’s note: The views and opinions in this piece are those of the author and do not reflect the collective views and opinions of Ravenous LLC and the tastebuds of its remaining founder-owners.
Update: Someone took the word "billion" out after the number of pieces of candy corn sold per year. Obviously, this was sabotage, and it has been re-added.
