I think everyone should collectively decide to hold Halloween 2 days after Halloween so everyone can get in on that reduced price candy.

Takes the sting out of inflation a little bit and everyone still gets their good time in.

We stopped giving out candy and instead do chips, juice, gummies, cracker packs, etc. The cost is roughly the same, he kids send to love it, and we don't want to be stuck with a bunch of leftover candy.

All tricks no treats this year kiddos.

Tricks it is, then.

IKEA has full size bars for a dollar each. I think 30 of those would be better than a bag of small candies for $30

You don’t want to get known as the full bar house unless you wanna spend $500 bucks a year on candy at minimum
Mini bags at Costco tend to run $0.25 or less a piece

Buy your candy at the end of August like I do and they are half price or even lower. This is what happens when you wait until what you would think the opportune time to buy your Halloween candy is.

This can't be real. Someone please confirm?

-(sent from the UK)

Its real. Its price gouging as only walmart can do it.
Confirmed. Same price on my Walmart app.

American pricing be like.

What the hell is up with these prices?

It's just your typical Trump economy.
- but what about the price of 3ggs!
it's what happens when you elect economic geniuses

Odd that products made and packaged in the US, from government subsidized corn syrup, and not the most affected by tarrifs, still jump in price. Maybe inflation will be the scariest thing this Halloween

A majority of Hershey products have been made in Mexico for some time! It was "somehow" cheaper - possibly in part to tricklin' down trade agreements - to ship the ingredients there and then send the finished product back. As much a "fun" fact as the "fun-sized" candy. Even the JustBorne/The Peeps peoples of Pennsylvania manufacture a bunch in Canada.
- TIL, thx for insight

But what about Helloween? Heavy Metal Hamsters enter chat!

Entering on wheelchairs, no doubt. Not so glorious now, our future life.
- the rollerblade wheelchairs with reflector stripes for long exposure photography fancy.

Halloween just promotes socialism for children. If they want candy, get a job in the mine.

Wait, you don't just throw candy down the mine holes?
As a kid I yearned for the mines
And the ultra-wealthy yearn for the "mine!"
The stupid shit tho is five years ago the candy would go on sale the day after and it $4 a bag. The candy is not expensive and the candy is probably somehow circulating from 5 years ago. Is all supply and demand, fucking capitalism.
- Yeah that's what's so shocking about it, these bags would be $5 only a few years ago. And I remember how painfully impoverished large swaths of the country were then.
  I cannot imagine how the average American in the Midwest is surviving at the moment.

Get ready to see lots of posts marveling at how expensive common things are getting in the US

I checked Walmart on Ohio and the most expensive one is $19 for 2.5 lbs of mixed mini chocolate bars.

To be clear, a 2.5 lb bag is pretty damn big. $.47 per oz.

In the photo shown, its the one with the green witch face.

Prices are fine in Canada. Happy Halloween, ‘Murica.

I normally do full sized bars considering how many people we get on average. I normally buy them at Costco Business and it looks like they're still priced the same. Prices at regular Costco are similar to what I remember of last year too.
We probably make most of our chocolate here. In the area around where I work there are at least 4 Mondelez plants. I know Mars has a few plants in or around the GTA as well.
I mean.. Those look like normal Canadian prices.
However, contextually, that stuff in Canada is actually chocolate and many US versions have little to no cocoa, and oils instead of milk ingredients. So its a rip off because its not even chocolate.
Considering global coffee and chocolate prices, I'm surprised. Are sizes the same as last year?
- Just go for flour/sugar based snacks instead of chocolate then. Few packs of Aldi version of hobnobs, job done.

I'm a house that buys Full size Candy bars. We average 50 kids in our neighborhood, so generally 1 fundraiser box covers us.

I still have my 2024 screen shots and as you can see the price went up 31% I know it's not an exact comparison, but the box I gave away last year appears to have been discontinued. On lower count packs its gone up nearly 45%.

I was planning on doing Roasted Chestnuts and Apple cider for parents as a fun gag, but now I'm considering doing that exclusively.

I got excited at this idea until I remembered that American cider isn't alcoholic. Should make some proper scrumpy!
- I fully plan on making Adult Cider
¡Hecho en México!
Where do you get roasted chestnuts?
- You need to find an open fire
- Well first I have to pick them. I go here https://ohiochestnuts.com/#visit
  And then I plan on roasting them the day of, I've got an antique cast iron chestnut pan and a grill.

And it tastes worse than ever.

Is this USD or?

That was my same thought. I feel like this is maybe disingenuous.
- Other places that don't use USD can still complain about overpriced goods. Collapse already so the rest of the world can get on with our lives.

At that price, I think I'll just hand out dollar bills. Kids love money, right?

when I was a kid, people would give out pennies when they ran out of candy
We are doing stickers and glow sticks. Bought the "rave family special" online. It was still cheaper than candy.
Worst case Ontario - we now have emergency lightning, and an activity that will take hours for the kids.
- Worst case Ontario
  It's water under the fridge.
  Gnomewhatimsayin?
- We are doing the same. No candies. My partner will give out stickers, pencils, and some organic savoury puffs that she managed to snag somewhere in bulk.
I would have to assume that if you handed out single dollar bills, kids wouldn’t really know what to do with it.
- Pool it together and buy bags of candies at 70% off on November 1sr
- the stripper bar is only two blocks away....
🤣

Who else handing out cups of water this year??

Don't let Nestlé know you have water
Oranges are a traditional treat for Christmas. I reckon with its orange hue, it's gonna make a killing for Halloween this year!
Cups, in this economy?!?
- Just have them cup their hands, pour some water in, and then send them on their way. Fortunately, eggs and toilet paper are expensive as well, so you shouldn't have to worry about any repercussions.
Who's got cup money?!?
- Just have them drink from a giant hamster tube thing hanging outside your door.

At this point is cheaper to be the house with full candy bars /s

Looking at the prices of Snickers from CandyDirect.com you can get 15.8 lbs of fun sized (about 400+ pieces if my math is right with each bar at 17 grams) for $186. $0.46 each. Fuck what a scam.

Full bars are fucking $2.41 each in bulk. WTF

Also, some of these bags are huge. 350, 250, etc. pieces for $25, so 7¢ each. The top row center bags are 15¢ per piece. If you're not expecting a constant steam of kids, one of these might be all you need.

At this point is cheaper to be the house with full candy bars
Okay, complete tangent, but...
When my kid was still Trick-or-Treating age, I was walking around town with him and as it was getting a bit late, we came upon a house with a man sitting out front with a half-full box of full-size candy bars. He gave my kid one, and my kid asked if he could have another. Before I could scold him, the man said "Sure!" and gave him another, then followed up with "You can have the whole box, if you want..."
My kid was obviously ecstatic, and after a minute of chatting with him, it came out that his wife had told him he had to stay out there til they were all gone, and he wanted to go inside and watch whatever game was on.
So that's how my kid ended up having the best Halloween of his life.
- Similarly, my first Halloween at a new neighborhood. I go all out. I aspired to be the house my buddies and I would have talked about when we were kids. Decorations, sound effects, light show, etc… I run AV for a living, so it was all pretty basic for me. But with just some basic stuff, I had it looking really nice. This was my candy tray:
  I had two trick-or-treaters. Two. Turns out, there just weren’t that many kids in my new neighborhood. That second kid got the entire tray.
- Most wholesome diabetes origin story.
A lot of people with, ehem, special needs, buy a shit ton of candy for Halloween so that when there are pounds of it left over they can be like, 'Oh geeze, I guess Someone has to eat all this candy...'
- TIL I'm special needs

Learn how to bake the awesomest shortbread you can, & wrap some of that edible-gold up in wax-paper for each kid.

Flour, cornstarch, oats, butter, salt, do not add-up to the extortion-prices charged by the flavored-sugar-in-plastic-wrappers companies.

_ /\ _

Yeah I'm not trusting random bread from people especially during Covid season.
- But have you tried their sourdough? That starter is going to be the next generation's most valued inheritance.
- That's just paranoia tbh
Plus you can stick razorblades in them real easy if you bake them yourself.
- The sad part is this may be the first time in history that there are enough randomly psychotic and violent people on the loose in the US that this is something parents should suddenly have reasonable fear of.
  I'd be less afraid of razorblades and more afraid of my kid getting shot on some hick nazi's doorstep tbh. MAGA nuts have already gunned down kids on their front lawn for less.
hope you dont end up like the mom in freaks and geeks. that was a sad episode :(
OK that's actually a fantastic idea. Cookies it is. If parents have a problem with unwrapped corpo-candy then their kids don't have to eat them. I can spend a day banging out ten dozen cookies and not give the monthly-sugar-holiday any more money.

People who have afforded to buy their neighbors candy in the past have always been awesome people.

I am not one of those people.

I always take call on Halloween so my coworkers who have kids can go out and have fun with their family... This bums me out on their behalf.

Are prices at places like Costco still decent? Or those restaurant supply type stores? Or some mythical product that isn't candy and won't be soul-crushing to a kid expecting candy?

"Heres a baggie with a toothbrush, a travel size toothpastea box of raisins, 50 pennies, and an apple".
I've been a full size candy bar house for a while. Buying bulk candy bars spiked in 2021. Boxes usually average about $1.25 per bar, but you can find sales at Costco at $0.60 each if you aren't picky on exact candies.
Non-candy options I sprinkle in that are hits are rice krispy treats, bags of microwave popcorn (unpopped) and the packaged 2 pack of cookies.

I just bought 40 lbs (big neighborhood) at US$4.44 a lb for snack-size name-brand 'chocolate' at Costco

Nominal price for the past four years has been $5 a lb here. Given that's kirkland's packaging with mars/hersheys candy in it.

Looks like my local grocer is $24.99 for the 3.4lb bag which is over US$7 a lb so ... yikes.

I get about 50 kids in average every year.

So no matter the price (unless it gets any higher), I'll spend a couple hundred on candies. I'm not wealthy but I can afford it once a year .... I actually prefer spending more on this holiday than for Christmas.

Plus I loved this holiday when I was a kid. What other time or place do you have an opportunity to see a strangers house and get candy in a safe and public holiday? So I've made it a rule in my life that on Halloween when a kid comes to my door, they're getting a few handfuls of candy. I also don't care of the kids age ... they could be two or twenty (as long as they're polite and non aggressive) they're getting candy.

I once had a group of college kids who were Indian nationality who were just out having fun with some face paint and daring each other to visit houses .... I gave them a bunch of candy, told them which houses to go to and made them laugh.

A couple hundred on candies 😳 The US are crazy
- Spending money on stuff is the essence of American existence. When you stop doing it, America will die.
- I'm not American .... I'm in Canada in northern Ontario ... we don't have kids so I have a bit of extra cash, plus I grew up poor so I know what this holiday means to many kids, especially in my area where families don't have a lot, especially these days.

Oh, so that’s what it looks like inside a murican supermarket. That’s a metric shit ton of plastics from an UE pov.

I’ve never seen bags like that, some seems dumb with the numbers, 195 or 310 but why not plain and round 200?

I guess you’ve never seen the Asian fascination with putting everything in individual plastic wrappers. Definitely not just an “American” thing.
If you’re going to jump on the America Bad train, at least put some fucking effort into it. There’s plenty of non-hypocritical stuff to make fun of.
- You assumed that, the murican supermarket and the plastic quantity are two different sentences separated by a comma.
  And the murican supermarket is only because I’ve never been in one, nor seen candy packaging of that size.
I live in the EU and i've seen bags like that
- Where ? The biggest I’ve seen are 1Kg.
- The only bags like that I've seen are much smaller than these, and I'm also in EU
Definitely a US grocery store.
195 or 310 is piece count. The bags are usually sold by rounded weight (3 or 5lbs).
- Yes it’s written pieces next to the number, but I find it strange to have 195 snickers instead of 200. I didn’t think about the gross weight tho, it could be the reason yeah.
I refuse to believe Europe, broadly a consumer of the same products as the US and the rest of the world, has never seen individually bagged candy.
- I… was talking about the size dude.
- We call them sweets. I think some brands are changing to better packaging though. Large tub of celebrations should do, each kid gets a tiny chocolate bar
Imperial units.
Also shrinkflation.
TBF, it's a gum-candy display.
There's some 3 times more plastic than an equivalent display here in Brazil, but I don't think you can extrapolate anything from what gum-candy looks like. It's supposed to be shitty.

My wife bought rice krispie treats for super cheap, dumdums, some lesser known candy, little Halloween toys and stickers, and made goodie bags.

If you avoid the mainstream big name candy, it's not so bad.

What are you, some kind of socialist? But seriously, people always complain about how things are so expensive but keep buying the same overpriced trash.
- That overprized trash gets flung into everyone's faces with ads constantly and is placed at eye level in optimal shelf locations so you see it first and can grab it the easiest. It's placed at the counters when you have to wait (in overpriced small / singular packages), and if the advertising machine detects you might be perceptible to being convinced into buying it (e.g. through analysis of your previous purchases collected by the payback program or store itself together with your social media posts showing you're sad or depressed) you'll receive tailored ads at the right moment via Smartphone, websites, Music streaming service and (soon) car infotainment + "smart" camera-enabled digital ad screens in public.
  Don't blame people for being manipulated by the manipulation machine, none of us is safe against it. Our resources for full awareness are sucked dry and monetized until we're tired and defenseless; and at that point you can't blame anyone who just wants to buy something that makes them a littlr bit more happy and less tired. Of course everyone ultimately has free will, but in the dystopia we live in that free will requires phenomenal energy to truly act on.
  Smash the system, not everyone else's desire to feel happy. 🙂
- Expensive unhealthy shit to give away to some kids to keep them fat and addicted
Dumdums, sure, but where did you find rice krispie treats that are cheaper than this candy? Just spitballing, but 140 pieces for $20 works out to something like 8 cents per piece, while just a quick search shows prices for rice krispies to be way higher, up to 50 cents per, with a few options scattered that bring the prices close (I think I saw a 100 pack for $21, and a 45 pack for $9).

We’re doing no candy too. These little birth control advertisements running around leave trash around on purpose and destroy property repeatedly in my neighborhood.

Their neglectful parents can buy them candy.

you might as well go to WF and buy more 'cleaner" candy, also prime members get discounted on certain halloween candy.(i would still wait til your closer to halloween, since its not that much discounted right now), also employees get extra discounted on top of the prime ones(recent changes). funny thing its somewhat cheaper too.

Baking cookies from scratch is easy and cheap. Here's NASA's recipe: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/sunspot-cookies/en/
- It's cheap as long as you don't use chocolate chips or nuts.

We don't have enough kids in my neighborhood to justify buying candy

Neither do we, but I still buy it, pretend we do, then eat the bag over the night!
- Like a true American. I also want to lose weight so I keep stuff like this out of the house.

Exactly why I haven’t done it in a couple of years. I hate it, cause I love this holiday. But get fucked with these prices. Maybe this is all the winning.

should be plenty of clearance Nov 1st at least

Leave a note on Your porch saying "come back tomorrow".
That’s my favorite day for cheap candy

laughs in danish

To clarify; danish candy prices are fucking ridonkoulus.

Why so?
- Sugar tax? Though a quick look suggests that it will be repealed.

I'm putting out a bag of potatoes this year instead.

New Halloween: kids will trick or treat for fresh produce.
- That would scare some of them for real
At least we don't have to worry about getting our houses egged anymore.

fuck that

Is $0.12/piece a lot?

Considering it use to be like 0.05 cents a piece yes.
- I assume you mean 5 cents. When was the last time it was that cheap? I haven’t bought a bag of candy in like 150 years.

Always has been (in countries that do not celebrate Halloween). The prices of grave candles seem okay for now though.

Candy canes for my house again. They remain cheap. You just have to wait for this stuff to sell and they put out the Christmas stuff.

Do you get many trick-or-treaters in November?
- They sell it starting about October 29th. I’ve done it before.

And it's not just the candies either.