A timeline of Halloween treats

Tracking the spookiest holiday's signature candies from 1900 to 2000

Hello, Snackers. It’s almost All Hallows’ Eve, so let’s see what we would have been eating over the years.

Plenty of other publications have covered the history of trick-or-treating in great detail, so I won’t bother with that one. Instead, here’s an extremely unscientific investigation of what Halloween candy people were eating in each decade of the twentieth century, based on a random sample of print articles and ads.

1900s

Pittsburgh Press, 1905

Buttercups, molasses kisses, chocolate-covered marshmallows, Scotch kisses, peanut bars.

1910s

Minneapolis Journal, 1916

Chocolate Tinagling (??), nougats, butterscotch, marshmallows.

1920s

Baltimore Sun, 1924

Candy corn, candy witches, candy pumpkins, chocolate novelties, coconut strips.

1930s

Hartford Courant, 1932

Jelly drops, chocolate bon bons, novelties.

1940s

Kansas City Star, 1940

Jellies, burn peanuts, hard candies, novelty pumpkins.

1950s

LIFE, 1958

Individually-wrapped candy bars, candy corn, chocolate mints, lollipops. Incidentally, I did some quick searching around and 1958 appears to be the first year that plastic pumpkin buckets were in widespread production and use. Here’s an ad for the buckets from that year.

1960s

LIFE, 1962

Individually-wrapped candy bars, chewing gum, caramel rolls, lollipops.

1970s

Charlotte News, 1973

For reasons I don’t understand, hard candies dominated the Halloween candy ads in the publications for which there’s a digital archive. I presume consumers weren’t actually going back to the old-school candies in great numbers, but the available ads indicate that this is exactly what happened. [SHRUG EMOJI]

1980s

From Working Mother, 1986

Toffee, caramel, fudge (and plenty of mini candy bars, not pictured)

1990s

New York Magazine, 1996

Extra-novel novelties, including edible bubbles. Apparently.

Happy snacking!

—Doug

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