I’ve never really lived in a neighborhood that drew a lot of Trick-or-Treaters, but that doesn’t keep me from buying Halloween candy. Obviously, this is a task I take very seriously because, even if zero children visit my house, I want to get the as much delicious, seasonal sugar as I can for my money.


To answer this most burning of questions, I went a-sleuthin’ at Costco, Target, Big Lots, and a grocery store (Fred Meyer, which is part of the Kroger family) to find the sweetest deals. The findings may vary slightly depending on region, but this is what I found in my neck of the woods (Portland, Oregon). Also, for the sake of brevity, I’ve focused mostly on the good deals, not the crap ones; there were a lot of crap ones.

Best for Full-Size Chocolate Bars: Costco


Ah, full-size bars, the Holy Grail of Trick-or-Treating. They didn’t give those out in my neighborhood (Echo Park circa 1996), which is why my mom shuttled us over to Brentwood. There we would find at least one, if not more, homes of literal angels. These angels (who would usually answer the door in chic all-black ensembles with tasteful devil horns, wine glass in hand) would bestow upon us glorious, full-sized candy bars. You too can be an angel. You too can change a life.

I wasn’t super shocked that Costco had the best price for big candy bars, because...well, it’s Costco. Thanks to an instant manufacturer’s rebate, $12.99 will get you thirty full-sized “units” of candy, which breaks down to six Snickers bars, five Twix, four 3 Musketeers, and three Milky Ways. (That’s $0.43 per bar and $8.54 per kilogram of candy.) Focusing on just one kind of bar raises the price just a little; you can get forty eight Snickers for $27.99 ($0.58 per bar/$11.06 per kilogram) or thirty six Almond Joy for $21.39 ($0.59 per bar/$13.04 per kilogram).

Hershey’s will cost you more than Mars at Costco. In fact, each bar only ends up being a penny cheaper there than it is at Target. If you shop at Costco, the Hershey’s variety pack (which contains Hershey Bars, Hershey Bars with Almonds, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and Kit Kats) will cost you $17.59 for thirty ($0.59 per bar/$13.85 per kilogram), which isn’t that much cheaper than the 18-pack at Target (Hershey Bars, Kit Kats, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups) which costs $10.79 ($0.60 per bar/13.96 per kilogram).

Big Lots and The Dollar Tree were the worst places to purchase your angel supplies, with full-size candy bars costing $0.85 per bar and $1.00 per bar, respectively.


Best for “Snack-Size” and Mini Chocolate Bars: Target (But Just Barely)


When it comes to smaller bars, you’ll have to make some decisions. Is your priority a having a large number of individually wrapped pieces to dole out? Or are you more concerned with the mass of chocolate you’re getting for your hard-earned cash? Lucky for you, shifting your focus minimally affects the price.

If you expect a high-volume of Trick-or-Treaters, it may behoove you to focus on pure number of items, in which case Target is a pretty good bet. For $14.99, you get 245 individually-wrapped mini chocolates (Twix, Snickers, 3 Musketeers, Milky Way), which comes out to $0.06 per candy or $7.76 per kilogram of chocolate. If you value mass over number of handouts, Target has a Nestle variety pack (featuring two hundred Baby Ruths, Crunch Bars, Butterfingers) for $14.99 ($0.07 per candy/$6.94 per kilogram). The only problem: then you’d have two hundred Baby Ruths, Crunch Bars, and Butterfingers.


There’s no exact count on Costco’s $15.99, 5-lb “Kirkland Signature Chocolate Mini Favorites” (Snickers, Butterfingers, Milky Way, Milky Way Midnight, Baby Ruths, Kirkland Brand Peanut Butter Cups), but the price per kilogram ($7.04/kg) ain’t bad, and based on the weights of other, similar bags of chocolate, I would guess there are at least two hundred pieces in there (which, hypothetically, would come out to $0.08 per candy.

Best for “Not Chocolate”: Costco


This category is a little tricky, because it has a lot to do with whether or not you hate children. If you hate children, you can buy a bag of “candy” referred to as “Child’s Play” and call it a day. Child’s Play, which contains every single shape, size, and flavor of Tootsie Roll ever made, plus Dots, is pretty cheap everywhere you go. (And yes, I know that Tootsie Rolls are technically chocolate “flavored” but Tootsie Rolls are to real chocolate as dry hand jobs are to sex.)

Anyway, a 3 ½-lb bag of “Child’s Play” can be found at both Fred Meyer (a Kroger store) and Target for $7.99 ($5.03 per kilogram), but for just $0.33 more per kilo (so, $5.36 per kilogram), you can get Costco’s just-as-creepily-named bag of “Funhouse Treats,” which contains a wider variety of much better candy (count em: Skittles, Mike & Ike, Life Savers Gummies, Sour Patch Kids, Nerds, Starbursts, Hot Tamales, Twizzlers, Haribo Gummy Bears, Swedish Fish, and Everlasting Gobstoppers).


Best for Smarties: Don’t Buy Smarties, You Monster

I’m talking about those chalky American Smarties. The ones you get across the pond (or in Canada) are dope.


Best Place for Salty Snacks: Target


I’m assuming that if you’re giving out chips or the like, you are more concerned about the number of tiny bags you can purchase. If you were looking for the best value in terms of chip mass, you would just buy a giant bag of Doritos from Costco and live your best life. However, there is one product that manages to be priced well in terms of number of individual servings and mass, and that product is Utz pretzels.

Though they aren’t exactly chips, they are salty and crispy, and you can get fifty little bags of them at Target for $4.99 ($0.10 per bag/$8.80 per kilogram). Cheetos (crunchy) are the second best deal at Target, but are almost twice as much per package as the pretzels ($5.99 for 26, or $0.23 per bag/$12.50 per kilogram). The chips scene at Costco isn’t much better, with the best value being to 54-count “Lay’s Classic Mix” (Cheetos, Fritos, and Lay’s Potato chips in Classic, Sour Cream & Onion, and Barbeque) for $12.99 ($0.24 per bag/$8.49 per kilogram).


The Worst in All Categories: Big Lots

Okay, so that’s not completely fair. Big Lots has a decent price on those Caramel Apple pops, where you can get twenty of them for $2.95 ($0.15 per pop), but that’s not any better than Target’s eighteen for $2.69 (also $0.15 per pop). At the end of the day, Big Lots is pretty worthless for Halloween candy purposes.


And that, my friends, is where you should buy your Halloween bounty. Of course, if the candy is just for you, and not for the children of the world, just wait until the day after Halloween; everything will be even cheaper then.

Oh, and if you want to save on Christmas candy, just do what my mother did: steal your children’s’ Halloween stash and hide it in the freezer until late December; I’m sure they won’t notice the little bats on their stocking stuffers.

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