Each year, candy manufacturers roll out fresh seasonal offerings and packaging for the Halloween holiday and during this year’s Countdown I’ve managed to cover a number of awesome examples. But with our 2016 Countdown To Halloween coming to a close, I wanted to praise a few awesome new pieces that I didn’t have a chance to cover already. So make the jump to check out the rest of the best of 2016’s newest Halloween candy!
Today is October 31st and that means it’s Halloween! Hooray! And while it is exciting, it is also bittersweet to finally be here at that Halloween holiday, because as the season hits its apex, that means it is also coming to an end.
As a candy historian and collector, the Halloween season presents as one of the most fun and most active, with groovy new seasonal releases peppering the shelves along with returning favorites. I selected five of my personal fave pieces from the many new offerings this year to showcase for today’s post. These being from the awesome new releases that I haven’t previously covered during this month’s Halloween Countdown coverage already. So let’s get to them.
One of the most striking Halloween pieces I’ve ever seen in this or any year, and one that I didn’t expect was Tootsie’s Spooky Edition Junior Mints – I was blown away when I encountered them on store shelves:
Tootsie Roll Industries – Junior Mints – Limited Spooky Edition – photo – October 2016
The packaging for these limited edition Halloween Junior Mints is bold, classic, and a bit retro – and it hits all of those notes so perfectly. I think I’d have to vote for this one as “Best in Season” above all others, or very close to it.
Tootsie Roll Industries – Junior Mints – Limited Spooky Edition – 3_5 oz Halloween candy package box – October 2016
Interestingly, if you put some of the actual candies in a bowl, you’d never know that they were different, as only the color of the centers was changed.
Next up in our look at the best of 2016 comes from Nestle. These were a product I knew about months ahead of time since they were previewed to the candy trade. But as soon as I saw that first preview, I knew that these would land on my “Best of” list because of how cool they were; here are the new Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cup Skulls!
Nestle – Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups Skulls photo – October 2016
The Peanut Butter Cup Skulls come in single and two-piece packs:
Nestle – Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups Skull – 1.2 oz Halloween candy package wrapper – October 2016
Nestle – Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups Skulls – 2-piece – 2.4 oz Halloween candy package wrapper – October 2016
Based on their Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups, a product still only a couple of years old itself, these represent a re-prioritizing for Butterfinger’s seasonal strategy. In recent years, they had utilized their standard Butterfinger offering in a chocolate Halloween Pumpkin-form, as you can see here:
Nestle – Butterfinger Pumpkin – 1.2 oz Halloween candy wrapper – 2010
Nestle – Butterfinger Pumpkin 2 Piece – 2.4 oz Halloween candy wrapper – 2011
Another new release that I was delighted to discover this year was for Halloween DOTS! In previous years, DOTS had a trio of Halloween offerings in a variety of flavors but they changed it up for 2016 with this more standard assortment in an appealing and colorful themed box:
_Tootsie Roll Industries – Halloween DOTS photo – October 2016
Tootsie Roll Industries – Halloween DOTS – 6.5 oz Halloween candy package box – October 2016
Another great release this year came from Haribo USA in the form of their “Ghostly Gummies”:
Haribo of America – Ghostly Gummies – photo – October 2016
I love the graphical treatment on this packaging:
Haribo of America – Ghostly Gummies – 4 oz Halloween gummi candy package – October 2016
Last but not least, I have one more piece to share. I had mentioned in my Kit Kat post earlier on in the Countdown that Hershey has really stepped it up in terms of their seasonal packaging design lately (and their packaging design in general). One of my favorite overlooked bits this year was the bag for their Heath Snack Size Halloween offering. It’s got a great little skeleton character on it that to me appears to be dancing in front of his coffin with his head in his own hands, and for that it makes my “Best Of” list. Here it is:
Hershey – Heath – Snack Size – 11.5 oz Halloween multi-pack packaging – October 2016
And that concludes my coverage of the Rest-of-the-Best for 2016. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you all have a great Halloween today with the Trick-or-Treat of it all, whether you are on the giving or receiving end of things. Be safe and have fun! I’ll see you next time!
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Today’s post has been part of CollectingCandy.com’s 2016 Countdown to Halloween. To check out other sites celebrating Halloween all month long, visit the official CountdownToHalloween site. For more of CollectingCandy.com’s CountdownToHalloween posts, just click here.
love the Skulls!
Awesome–especially the Junior Mints box design! Bummer, though, that the Dots are no different inside than the usual product. That’s strange that they didn’t make them orange, or give them a Halloween shape. ????