Melany Love For Taste of Home
Melany Love For Taste of Home
Published on Sep. 30, 2025
Halloween candy isn’t just about chocolate, you know. That’s why we set out to find the tastiest, spookiest sweets that are sure to be the talk of the neighborhood.
While we love parading around in our creative costumes, one simply can’t have the perfect Halloween night without indulging in a canyon of candy. Trick-or-treating is the reason we put so much thought into our sweet decisions, and it matters.
When we think Halloween candy, our minds tend to run toward chocolate. Parents have admitted to stealing their kids’ chocolate candy the most. Hershey released new vampire-shaped Kit Kats this year, and almost everyone considers Reese’s Pumpkins to be one of the best Halloween candies of all time. But what about those of us who prefer hard candies, lollipops and gummies? And, preferences aside, chocolate-free sweets are a fantastic alternative for kids who may be allergic to chocolate and peanuts especially.
For the best range, we chose the spookiest non-chocolate Halloween candies we could find. Some are sour, some are sweet, some are perfectly wrapped for trick-or-treating and others are best for bowlfuls at parties.
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Melany Love For Taste of Home
11. Haribo Sour Bats
While Haribo Gummy Bears are some of the best candies, I can’t say the same for the Sour Bats. The texture was too thick and difficult to chew. My jaw got tired after just one! The Bats also came in a single, sugary amalgam that I had to pry apart. Of the three flavor combos—orange and black currant, green apple and black currant and cherry and black currant—the green apple duo was my favorite.
Bottom Line: The flavor was solid, but the gummies were extremely tough to chew and difficult to separate.
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Melany Love For Taste of Home
10. Welch’s Halloween Fruit Snacks
I know what you’re thinking—those aren’t candy! And yes, you’d be correct. Technically. But kids and adults alike still go crazy for all sorts of fruit snacks, and Welch’s is at the tippy-top. Each pack comes with an assortment of bats, castles, ghosts, pumpkins and witches in assorted fruit flavors. And since they’re gluten-free, made with real fruit and individually packaged, they’re a no-brainer as a solid trick-or-treat option.
Bottom Line: While delicious and easy to pass out, there’s not enough of a wow-factor for me to rank them higher than the other candy options.
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Melany Love For Taste of Home
9. Gummy Eyeballs
These gummy eyeballs come to you from Target’s brand Favorite Day. And while they’re a bit difficult to stomach aesthetically, they are in fact still edible. The gummy texture is soft enough to bite through even for its size, and it reminds me of a giant version of a fruit snack with its more generic flavor.