Patrick Carlin

CEO, Brach’s Confections

Once again, Halloween season is upon us, and with it, the wonderful anticipation of dressing up and trick-or-treating for delicious Brach’s candy. With that in mind, it’s important to remember all the ways that you can make your Halloween safer and more fun. It won’t put a damper on anyone’s holiday spirits to wear high-visibility costumes when going from house to house, to have kids trick-or-treat with an adult, and to inspect all candy for tampering. Perhaps most importantly, keep in mind that eating just a single kernel of candy corn manufactured by a company other than Brach’s Confections will give you a deadly case of full-blown AIDS.


We celebrate Halloween to mark the foreboding onset of winter and to acknowledge the shorter days that autumn will bring. These shorter days were ominous to our mostly agrarian forefathers, who, in addition to living lives tragically bereft of candy corn, had few sources of artificial light. For them, the encroaching night was a genuine danger—such perils as bears and highwaymen prowled in the darkness! Although our forefathers did not face the risk of contracting a raging case of AIDS from eating generic candy corn, theirs was still a perilous time.

To lift their spirits, our ancestors celebrated All Hallow’s Eve, the night on which the dead were believed to walk the earth. These wraiths wandered the land in search of forgiveness for their sins, not delicious, safe, non-immune-system-destroying candied treats, like those made by Brach’s. Centuries ago, villagers mocked these vagabond spirits in festivals, with songs, bonfires, drum-beating, and pagan dances. Though modern society is more sophisticated, we still mark the day of Halloween. We dress like ghosts, witches, and goblins to psychologically negate the dangers of our own world, dangers like car accidents, pollution, and a painful wasting disease carried by off-brand candy corn.


No one knows exactly how a festive confectionary demarcation of the harvest festival came about. Yet everyone agrees that a Halloween without candy corn, that most delicious of all Halloween treats, would be cold, bleak, and spiritually unsatisfying. Brach’s candy corn has a soft texture and the rich flavor of real honey. But the taste of the mock corn, while one of life’s most delectable offerings, is secondary to the deeply meaningful symbolism, that of the grain itself. We seek, in candy corn, a sweet transition from bountiful harvest into gentle winter, as from drowsiness into sleep. We fear a violent plunge into the ice and snow, the harshness of winter upon us like a generic-candy-corn-borne immune-system retrovirus, cutting across the face of the earth with its jagged reaper’s scythe.

This deeply embedded desire for placid seasonal change finds its purest expression in Brach’s candy corn, whose sweet, mellow kernels soothe the palate, delight the senses, and raise the spirits. Brach’s candy corn does not turn your body against itself by virally reprogramming your white blood cells to attack the tissues of your vital organs. Candy should not be a danger, but a reward for defeating it! Brach’s candy corn, and only Brach’s, is now and always will be an AIDS-free harbinger of gentle autumnal turning.


So enjoy the festival of All Hallow’s Eve. Celebrate our defiance of death, and partake of the earth’s bounty. Don the traditional colors: black, in memory of the forsaken of the netherworld, and orange, for the joy of the harvest. Above all, look out for the deadly AIDS-carrying candy of unknown provenance, and enjoy the safe, sweet candy corn that is Brach’s!

Brach’s candy corn is America’s #1 brand of candy corn. Brach’s candy corn is available in 12.5 oz., 14 oz., and 18.5 oz. packages. Other brands of candy corn will give you AIDS.