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The beauty of Halloween is that we buy idiotically large bags of candy and then, pretending to be sad about the chore, eat what the trick-or-treaters don't take. (Unless you're bad at math, there's always candy left.) We decided to figure out which candies have been the most popular over the last five years, because we are social scientists.

Here's what we did. The advent of Twitter allows us to see what people are saying about candy within discrete time periods. (And, yes, people talk about Halloween candy on Twitter. Increasingly, each year.) These likely aren't the toddlers who are getting candy in their bags, few of whom have active Twitter presences. Instead, it's teens and adults eating candy purloined from the bowl by the door.

We looked at Twitter mentions of candy for a variety of top brands for each of the past five Halloweens. We assessed two time periods: November 1st — the day after Halloween — and the first two weeks of the month, during which people are still working through their leftovers. (We used Topsy to pull the data.) Here's what we found.

The Day After

Reese's and Snickers are kings of the day after candy. The two candies have battled for the top spot over the past five years, with Reese's regaining the title in 2012. Or, tracking ranking year over year: