Tricks, Treats and Trends

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Hello everyone, it's Rachel. If you're not yet a Times subscriber, we have some news for you. You can enjoy full access to The Times without a paywall for 30 days. All you have to do is download the app to get your first month completely free. And if you're already a Times subscriber, thank you. Okay, here's today's show. From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily on Sunday. Back in the 19th century, when Halloween first caught on in America, it was popular to celebrate with a bonfire.

People met for seances and used various methods to try to predict the future. Kids would play pranks like tipping over outhouses or throwing bricks through windows. That real vandalism eventually evolved into trick or treating. Seances gave way to scary movie marathons, and ghosts in witch costumes became blow up dinosaurs and Pikachus. Halloween is proven to be a remarkably sturdy American tradition, in part because it changes over time. And so today, we're checking in on the state of Halloween in 2026.

First, the Times's food writer, Kim Severson, will lead me on a culinary journey through the latest and greatest in the world of candy. Then Louis Lucero II, an editor on our styles desk, will give us a rundown of the most distinctly 2026 costumes to look for on Halloween night. And finally, our reporter, Callie Holtermann and I will talk about Halloween decorations and why Americans spend billions of dollars on them. It's Sunday, October, I mean, October 25th.

Kim Severson, what a pleasure to have you back on the show here on the Sunday Daily.

Thanks so much, Rachel. It's great to talk with you again.

So Kim, you cover all things food for The Times, which today we are going to take to mean candy.

Yeah, so we are gonna go deep on Halloween candy, which I'm I'm a big fan of and very excited about. And I've been spending a lot of time kind of researching what's up with the candy this Halloween. Did you did you trick or treat as a child, Rachel?

And as an adult, yeah, no, I, uh, I

and so what did you love to get? And when you at the end of the night, when you went home and dumped out your candy, butterfinger, definitely uh, okay, butterfinger. well, the um, on one of the lists of popular candies this year, the butterfinger comes in number ten, just below the Hershey's minibar. There's a company called The Candy Store, which ships bulk candy all around the country, and they've been for 19 years crunching their data. And this year they have

No pun intended.

MMs as the oh, there Hey, you go. Yeah, two shows a night. Um, they have MMs as their number one Halloween candy this year, and fascinating Sour Patch Kids coming in at number two. So you're seeing the rise of Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Hot Tamales, those kind of candies in in your Halloween candy bowl.

we're doing a lot of talking about candy, but I wish to do more eating of candy. So Kim, you're not in the same room as I am. You're in Atlanta, I'm in New York, but you have very kindly curated a little spooky Halloween candy tasting for me. So I've got a few little bowls in front of me of candy. Tell me, what am I looking at and why am I about to eat them?

Yes, I picked four candies that people who study the food markets say are the real up-and-comers or have hit some level of popularity that has surprised or shocked the candy industry. So these are kind of the Cinderella stories, the big stars, things that represent new flavor and texture profiles that the kids are loving. Wonderful. So the candy you're tasting, they are not chocolate Halloween candy. And That's right, there's no although,

chocolate in here.

right, so, you know, forever and ever, the mini Snickers and the mini Milky Way bars were the top selling candies. But increasingly, non-chocolate candies are are rising up, and particularly among Gen Zers who have really specific candy tastes. And it's much more about acid, sweet, sour, bitter, like these mashups of flavors. The the food marketers have deemed them the swangy and suvery generations,

swangy and suvery.

so swangy, you know, sweet and tangy, and suvery, sweet and savory. So I don't make those up, I'm just reporting. But, uh, because I think those are are horrendous descriptors. However, this idea of a mashup of flavors is really big, also a lot of fruit flavors and sour. The internet is rife with people having sour candy contests, and there's, uh, something called sour tape, which is like a long piece of a candy tape that is like a Sour Patch Kid.

And they see how fast people can eat it, that's the the Sour Tape Challenge.

Well, I don't know if I'm ready for the Sour Tape Challenge, but I definitely wanna eat some of this candy.

This is good for I really appreciate you expanding, you know, your food horizon, because, you know, candy is fun, it's delicious, and I find it kind of fascinating. So we're gonna, I think we'll start out with the candy that has been like the Cinderella story of candy recently. It just had a viral growth on TikTok. Kylie Jenner in 2021 posted about this candy and it just

say no more.

shot to the top, and it's called the Nerds Gummy Cluster.

The union of fruity, sweet, gummy and tangy, crunchy nerds.

Should I describe this thing? It's a cluster. It it's like a squishy cluster covered in different color tiny nerds. So I see like yellow, green, orange.

So, nerds, for your listeners who aren't familiar, are a bit like a sweet tart. It's kind of that crunchy, can be slightly sour, but it's got that kind of a fruity, crunchy vibe going to it. So they're little tiny nerd pieces all over, What's what's the thing and you'll be

inside of it? She asks

like a squish it a little. cluelessly. It's no, you'll be fine. Uh, real trust me, I'm a professional, you'll be okay. Uh, it's a gummy inside there. So I want you to just keep an open mind, pop one of these in your mouth, let's see what you think. Enjoy the chew. enjoy. And you notice you get that sour, crunchy little nerd bit, and then it gives way to that fruity, gummy, sweeter interior. It's that contrast, that sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, right?

So, yeah, does it make you wanna have another one? Okay, well,

it's, it's not. I like nerds. I think I wanna either have the nerd or have the gummy. I don't think I want these two things smushed together with some sort of it. I don't even know what the adhesive is, probably another type of sugar.

hm, so Rachel, you're a purist, is what you're telling

I'm a purist.

me?

You gummy or die.

All right, well, just let's move on. You wanna move on to another one? I would love to Um,

move on.

and this is another, uh, one that I kind of think is fascinating. Hm, hm. The Skittles pop, crunch the rainbow, taste the rainbow. So you see them, they take a skittle and through the magic of food science, pop them, and so you see the little shell of the skittle on the outside,

Yeah, it looks like a skittle that sort of exploded in a microwave. Or I'm probably like, Oh my god,

right. I sort of like these, cause you can kind of pop them in your mouth pretty easily and then you get like that satisfying crunch in there. Every, uh, every candy brand is looking at a way to do a popped or a freeze-dried version. This is a Mars Wriggly product.

like, what was wrong with the original skittle?

uh, there's nothing, there's room for both, but I the original Skittle is kind is kind of a great, perfect little crunchy, chewy bite. But, you know, innovation, obviously, if you're selling candy year after year, innovation is really what drives the, uh, the industry, right? And so you're selling, you're selling sugar to America, and they wanna do it in different ways each year. I This is for see,

the Gen Z. Lexi. I feel like I'm a thousand years old. I just can't. I don't understand

it's okay. anything. Okay, granny, just take another Skittles pop, you'll be fine.

I just wanna make it clear to our audience. I love candy, but I don't. I do not understand this.

You're n- you're not meant to understand it.

I love, uh, I, you know, I, I used to. I was big on warheads when I was a kid, the really super, super sour candy. I love any kind of chocolate, peanut butter candy. Um,

okay. Well, uh, I don't know in the 90s if you remember this brand called Crybaby, which was like one of the first crazy sour brands. And so a lot of the millennials who are now having kids are having these nostalgia moments for their candy. Because, you know, suddenly they're adulting and it's scary and they wanna go back to childhood, so they go back to their childhood candy. And Crybaby was a big brand in the 90s. It's owned by the Tootsie Roll Industries.

Very tart, lots of citric and tartaric acid. And there's also some, um, uh, academics who will argue that a lot of the Gen Zers love sour flavors because it helps with their anxiety. That idea that it kind of shocks gives you something you. to focus on, bes- right, besides your anxiety.

hm, that's so interesting.

So anyway, but this is a bubblegum, because bubblegum's also kind of having a little bit of a moment, so I have Crybaby bubblegum.

We're gonna be doing the

Bravo, baby challenge.

So I have, uh, these individually wrapped balls, different colors. I'm gonna choose a blue one. gumballs, okay, I'm gonna choose a Trisha and and I hope Payton.

Rachel, I'm no mathematician, but I hope I can make you cry with how solid these are. Um, well, um, I, okay,

uh, let's see. Okay, so this okay, so so is okay.

let's just go for it. Crybaby extra sour

Oh my god. bubblegum. Oh, really sour. Oh, not real Oh my, bad. oh, I can't. ah, Hm. I kinda like them. No, it's good. No, I'm good. I don't think this is sour enough to get me out of a panic attack.

wow, that was a lot for you. You just did that. I'm You just

built like, uh, cause they named a tank after me, Kim.

wow, I can't believe you just raw dogged that. Wow, that's intense.

Okay, not to be a bit of a buzzkill here, but let's talk about the cost of all of this for a second. Because I was just in a Duane Reade the other day and I was amazed at how much a bag of, like, mixed chocolate and other sort of candies were it. I think it was something like 16, and it just struck me as, like, much more expensive than that amount of candy has been in recent years.

So everything that I just ate, Kim, how much would all of that cost me? Tell me a little bit about the economics of the candy business right now.

Sure, um, and of course, like everything, the cost has gone up, although candy has gone up at a rate greater than inflation. I think, um, the year over year right now is it's gone up roughly eight. Uh, so it's like, what's that? More than twice the price of inflation? Um, so you're really seeing a big increase. And the thing driving all of this is the chocolate sector, right? So chocolate prices have been up 15, 20, depending on who you talk to.

But bad weather is a big issue, heat waves, and there have been a bunch of crop diseases in West Africa, where about 60 of the world's cacao is harvested. So that's really damaged yields. The chocolate companies are scrambling to get the supply up, but that's gonna take a long time, right? So used to be you might hold the bowl out and let the child grab a couple of whatever they wanted, Yeah, and some children you know,

are gonna grab a fistful, of course.

right? And you're like, Oh, that's cute, ha ha. This year, I think people are gonna be maybe more carefully putting one piece of candy in each bag, so the little fistful of candy moment may be over. In this economy, I don't know, I'm just predicting it.

Well, Kim Severson, you're never wrong. That's why we have you on the show. Ugh, Thank you so much for your time.

Oh, thanks, Rachel. This is great. And listen, I want you to stay open, stay open to the candy, Here, okay?

huh? hm. delicious. thank you. When we come back, we're talking costumes with my colleague from the styles desk after the break.

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Louis Lucero, welcome to the Daily, the Sunday Daily. We're so happy to have you here. You are an editor on the styles desk. I am so excited to talk to you about my favorite type of fashion, which is Halloween fashion, Fashion for everybody fashion for everybody. Are you? Are you a costume guy?

I am. I. I like a sort of creative, crafty thing, um, that speaks to a certain amount of cleverness, a certain amount of, like, cultural awareness. Um, I would say, like, my favorite costumes, though, the primary medium is always gonna be drugstore poster board. It's not gonna run me more than ten.

Okay, so just a white p white poster board that you draw something I've I've on.

turned it into so many things. One time I was an iPod mini, which was a big iPod, but I had mini ears, my mini at mouse ears. That get a lot of a lot more wear out of them than you would think for a You do man of 30. have to think about Yeah,

that for a moment.

iPod mini. I was a Tamagotchi. I free-handed the little screen. Basically, I'm just drawing on different colored cardboard.

You wanna know what I am for Halloween? What are you gonna Like every

be?

well, okay. The last couple years, I have worn an inflatable Mr. Peanut costume, and I love it because the reactions I get just from walking around the city wearing this thing are just so. People are just so delighted. ugh, It's just so fun to walk around, cause it's just so unexpected. I've, they're I've never s

starstruck for starters. They only know him from these canisters of work. It's very, very impressive. It has a monocle and everything.

yeah, it has a monocle.

Oh, wow, and inflatable. Inflatable, yeah, I think there's a confidence in picking your uniform, just kind of a declaration of who you are. That's one definition of an icon is you can see them in your mind's eye so clearly. Frida Kahlo with her unibrow, you can imagine Ariana Grande's ponytail. There's just so many people who are their one look, and that's fine. It's flattening, but it also it's immortal, you know? And that is Rachel Abrams

what?

as Mr. Peanut.

oh my god, I wait. Okay, so I'm so I feel. First of all, I feel extremely validated, so thank you so much, Louis. You. We can just end this interview now. But um, but no, I have more to ask you about, including what are you expecting people to be dressed as this year?

the fun thing about Halloween is it sort of deputizes everyone as this sort of amateur cultural anthropologist. Everyone gets to look back at the year that was and say what mattered. What do I think people will remember from February, from mid-March or something? A reference that can spark joy, that can trigger a a bit of a glimmer of recognition. So, in a way, it's like a first draft of meme history. You really have to think what will still make sense in late October.

Um, I think we're going to be drowning in heated rivalry. Boys, that feels like a given.

Great pass, great goal.

How? How would you imagine people to dress as the heated rivalry boys in a way that anybody would recognize?

I think if you see two men in hockey jerseys holding hands, making out, these are three incredibly good signs. I would say you could put some money on that one

Okay, I don't know why I asked that question. Next,

next. Um, so I was thinking we could try a little game here. I'm going to describe a costume to you, as if you were just seeing the person or people who are wearing this costume. Some of them are gonna be group costumes. All of these are what I would call a very 2026 costume, and I want you to tell me what the costume is. Does that sound good?

Oh my god, I'm gonna embarrass myself. Yes, go for it. I'm, I'm, I'm thrilled.

We'll war, we will warm up with an easy one.

Okay, oh, good.

Um, this is a couple's costume. One partner is wearing a blonde wig and a little black dress, Blonde. Wait, wait, and

wait. So one partner is in a blonde wig and a little black dress.

the biggest diamond ring you've ever seen. The other partner, second half of this couple's costume, is wearing a Kansas City Chiefs jersey.

Okay, okay, t Taylor Swift, Yes, correct, Taylor Swift and one of correct, the Kelchies. I can't remember which

I looked at it. I one. was like, Wee, that's what this dude is,

the that's what it does when you're on the stage and you perform in Arrowhead, that's what it did.

this dude didn't get a meet and greet. He's making it everyone's problem. That's what I thought very when I read this. good.

Oh my god, okay, good, good, Taylor Swift and okay, Travis Kelce. Um, nailed it.

so this person, no. Second person is wearing a long, center-parted wig with blonde streaks. Center-parted They've got

wig with blonde. St- streaks. Okay,

They got aviator glasses on, a mini skirt with sort of chunky, hip-slung belt.

Gloria Steinem. Gloria Steinem. Yes, Ah,

things are all equal, and we can dispense with the labels of gender and class and race and begin to realize our unique individuality. Uh, And so I think post feminism. Halloween Halloween is also a good opportunity to pay tribute to those we've lost. This has been a year heavy with losses, and disproportionately, they are pretty iconic, many of them. So I think we're gonna see a few ghosts trick or treating this year.

I have a feeling I know what's coming. Go on,

this is another couple's costume. One partner is wearing a salt and pepper wig and has a pair of headphones around his neck. The other partner has a blonde wig and piercing blue contact lenses and is carrying a baby. And when you ask what their costume is, they get their faces really close together and peer into each other's eyes uncomfortably.

Give me a hint. I'm stumped.

Okay, it's for a long time. All we had to go off was a movie trailer, and there was an indelible image of two people

Oh my god, I know.

uncomfortably close.

Oh my god. Okay, so this is Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes.

perfect, nailed it.

why would I deceive you? There's no there's no reason for me to do that. Okay,

All right, what else? What else is on this quiz?

So, um, okay. So this person shows up to a Halloween party without a costume. They go around taking parts of other people's costumes and making it their own. They also consume a tremendous amount of water. AI? Wow, Yes,

that is, that's a real a conceptual heady. one. Yes, that's Wow,

one where there's always a way to talk your way out of having expended no effort at all. You just say, Oh, I'm a reluctant party guest, you know, that'll that'll do it. Technically, here's another person you might encounter on the street. This person has a blonde wig tied back in a ponytail. They are wearing a black tracksuit. Over one shoulder is the biggest tote bag you've ever seen in your life, and in the opposite hand, a stuffed raccoon.

What could this be? Can you give me another hint?

The summer was an exciting time for this person visiting the United States for what you could describe as a work obligation.

What you could describe? Okay, so the could here makes me think that there was something scandalous about this person's visit.

Uh, this work obligation was the World Cup.

The World Cup. Okay, okay. One more hint, and then I give up.

Um, I'll give you a hint. The person's first name is Erling, and the person's last name is Haaland. Norwegian soccer player Erling Haaland is showing fans that some keepsakes can be just as eye-catching as the FIFA World Cup trophy.

Wait, what was the raccoon The thing? I missed this?

raccoon, I believe it was when his team was playing in Texas. I think he stopped by some sort of Western-themed store. There was a taxidermy raccoon,

Holland returned home with his own trophy of sorts. What's he that? bought it, I do remember

and there was a really this. indelible image of him leaving his airplane with his taxidermy raccoon.

Posted his own picture on social media with the caption It followed me home.

And so this final, this final costume, this is a person wearing an enormous blonde wig.

Dolly Parton. Well, Louis, this has been a lot of fun. Uh, I really appreciate you being here. I feel like if I wasn't gonna go as Mr. Peanut, I would have a lot of other ideas.

But you are locked in, and that's the way it should be. Thank you so much for having Thank me.

you. We'll be right back.

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When it comes to decorating for Halloween, you have a lot of options.

That, um, Pirate tip is super cool, and a mermaid. Oh, there is the clown over there that's eating a baby in an ice cream cone. That is in- Oh, Beetlejuice and all the slime coming out of his head. Yeah,

There's also a sign that says, Born in Children left on your own will be sold into servitude.

But if you're looking for the Halloween decoration, the King of the Hill, the cream of the crop, you are looking for one very specific thing.

My favorite are the skeletons. my favorite My favorite one is a skeleton. And I'm not I afraid of do. the skeletons.

A few years ago, my colleague Callie Holtermann did what turned out to be some genre-defining reporting on one particular Halloween decoration. And I have asked her to come here and update us, you, the listener, on the latest Halloween decoration news. Callie Holtermann, welcome to the Daily.

Thank you for having me. Um, I come bearing gifts.

You come bearing gifts. Oh my

These are for you.

god, are these vampire fangs?

These are a runner. They're sort of hard to talk with, but

Should we do the whole interview wearing these? I think ideally, yeah, This is so great. Thank you so much. This will. Well, I'm so glad you brought a prop because that's actually one of the reasons why you're here, because we wanted to talk to you about Halloween decorations. And a a couple years ago, you wrote a very memorable article about, and I wanna make sure I just get the name of this thing right. The home accents holiday 12 giant skeleton with life eyes, LCD eyes

Go big this year with the 12 giant skeleton with yeah, and I'd life falls love for you

off the tongue.

to to just use the full name every this time if you can. Um, but colloquially, giant skeleton with his name is Skelly,

life eyes is a showstopper.

or you might hear him And called the 12 Skeleton. an Again, I just we care honorable about accuracy here at mention the New York Times. Skelly is 11 foot.

and thanks to its weather-resistant frame, it'll loom over guests for years to come. This And this is 12

a gigantic skeleton decoration that kind of, like, took the world by storm when it was to explain released in 2020.

standing at 12 feet tall, these skeletons are everything this Halloween. Home Depot started carrying them in August. They are long gone now,

What do you think it

sold out for months.

was about Skelly that made Skelly such a viral hit?

Skelly was this really potent meme format, if that makes sense. It was sort of a gigantic plastic visual bit that you could project whatever you wanted to on it.

Uh, this is me turning a 12 Home Depot skeleton into a giant puppet.

Today starts my journey to grow a 12 skeleton. Sheep. The interest, I'm making oh,

a giant puking skeleton. He's huge, but he still looks unfinished. Let's give him a pirate upgrade. It's lightweight, so it just needs

like, there was just this idea that Skelly was sort of the setup of a joke and that you could use it to pull off whatever punchline that you wanted.

growing a 12 skeleton from seed. Today on Gardener's World, Skelly It was

came out in 2020 when the world kinda needed jokes, perhaps, and this was one that you could make at a distance.

it was like the ultimate social distancing Halloween

Once you've planted your baby decoration. You know, skull, water you can be and tend the so, so weeds around it, and far away, in no time, and you could have you'll have a

COVID and be coughing up a showstopper of storm, but you could

an autumn display.

still enjoy that person's skeleton. Um, Follow along and

And how much do these skeletons cost?

299.

Oh my god. And do we know how much, how many of them sell every year? Do we have any way way of s quantifying how big this is?

I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I've asked Home Depot this question over the course of four years, and they will they're so e- not tell me.

Yeah, there's sometimes, imagine there's not eager to tell you that.

Um, but I can tell you that they really routinely were selling out. I reported this story in 2022 by I sort of just camped out at a Home Depot in Brick, New Jersey, New Jersey Shore. And I stood there all day and talked to every single person who bought a giant skeleton or was trying to buy a giant skeleton. I was there in September. Some of the people I talked to had been looking, like, since July.

One woman that I interviewed who got a skeleton that day, it all worked out. But she said she'd visited 15 Home Depots or so and had called about 50 oh my trying to get her hands on one. god. I wrote the story in 2022. Consumer spending on Halloween that year was 10.6 billion. It's continued going up. This year, it's projected to be 13.5 billion,

why do you think that the highest ever is

for Americans. Those numbers are from the National Retail Federation. I should say Halloween, I think a lot of retailers has seized on. It's not a blue state or a red state thing. It is not celebrated as a religious holiday. It is not known for people getting into arguments like Thanksgiving. It doesn't involve a bunch of stressful travel, like some of the winter holidays. I think it's seen as this holiday that comes with a lot less baggage, I think, than some others.

Retailers have have sort of seized upon that, and it's an opportunity for those retailers to sell things, but it's also an opportunity, I think, for the people who like celebrating it. To use their imaginations a little bit, which other, uh, other holidays don't entirely allow you to do. And I think Skelly has been a little bit of a a canvas for that imagination that people have going on. I'm wondering before So we wrap up, I I

am curious, you if there have been any advances in Skelly science since Skelly came out.

I've been closely monitoring advancements in skeleton technology since 2022. Um,

Very good.

last week, I I chatted with, um, Aubrey Horowitz, who's the merchant of decorative holiday at Home Depot. She's someone who

She's the what?

the merchant of decorative holiday

That's her actual title?

that is her job title.

Wow, that's a great title.

But she said Home Depot has been like, thinking really hard about W- What do you do when you have this thing? That's kind of a viral sensation for a year or two? How do you keep that momentum up? I was really curious about that. Um, we introduced, we call him Servo Skelly a few years ago, and he had a servo motor in his head that allowed him to move. And then this year, our new app Skelly is Bluetooth enabled.

Where customers can update his lighting, his movement, they can change his different eye functionality, pre-record messages, or speak into him live. So They've been making it's a really

rapid advancements in skeleton technology. Um, this what a year's 12-foot phrase. skeleton. You can live speak through Skelly, so if someone walks up in a pirate costume, you could make a sort of like, Ahoy matey type pirate observation.

I mean, I, I guess that could be really cute, but I could also imagine many, many tiny children being totally terrified by this. I'm happy Halloween, like, That's the point, Rachel.

beware, he will spot you the moment you step too close. Behave, my tiny mortals. I'm always watching.

I really appreciate knowing so much more about this 12-foot skeleton. I'm sorry, 8 11-foot 8-inch skeleton. Yeah, um, well, Callie Holtermann, I am the merchant of H holiday podcasts, and I wanna thank you for being here with us today. Happy Halloween. This episode was produced by Alex Barron with help from Lena Richards and Alyssa Dudley. It was edited by Wendy Door and contains music from Dan Powell and Alicia Bae Etooke. It had production assistance from Dahlia Hadad and was engineered by Sophia Lanman.

That's it for the Sunday Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

This podcast is supported by Chevron. We rely on energy every day, but have you ever wondered what it takes to make sure it's there when we need it? I'm Tanner Faust, and the energy tailgate is back with straight talk about the energy our world depends on.