This Iconic Halloween Candy Sells 9 Billion Pieces Annually

Everyone loves Halloween traditions. Attending costume parties and bonfires remains fun for many. Others enjoy counting trick-or-treaters and passing out candy at the front door.

Halloween fun includes haunted houses, playing pranks, scary stories, and watching horror movies and lots of candy. Lots and lots of candy.

What candy best symbolizes Halloween than the tri-colored confection known as Candy Corn? According to the National Confectioners Association (NCA), candy corn is Americans' second most popular Halloween treat. However, most reports find the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup the #1 Halloween candy choice.

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Legend has it that a Wunderlee Candy Company employee named George Renninger invented the corny confection in the 1880s. As a result, a prodigious 35 million pounds gets made annually, amounting to nearly 9 billion candy corn pieces.

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Nobody will make any health food claims soon as the famous confection is a concoction of sugar, corn syrup, confectioner wax, artificial coloring, and binders. There's also dextrose, gelatin, artificial flavoring, and colors to make Candy Corn's yellow, orange, and white to represent the fall harvest colors.

In 1904, Emil J. Brach opened a storefront candy store on North Avenue and Towne Street in Chicago. By 1923, there were four factories in operation when. Mr. Brach then expanded to a single new factory to produce 127 different varieties of candy, with a production capacity of 2,225,000 pounds per year.

After World War II, trick-or-treating became popularized in the U.S., and Brach's began promoting its fall-themed candies such as Candy Corn.

Candy Corn was initially called Chicken Feed. It was designed to look like feed and for a time when half of Americans worked on farms. The boxes were illustrated with a colorful rooster logo and a tagline: "Something worth crowing for."

The original factory and family connection are long gone. Today, the BRACH'S brand remains the top-selling candy corn product in the United States. Primarily associated with Halloween, National Candy Corn Day is also celebrated on October 30.

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In 2021, BRACH'S released its list of the top states where candy corn is purchased most by a loyal fan base. The list makes sense when you factor in the large populations of the top ten states, such as Illinois coming in at #6.

However, despite its relatively small population of 3.1 million, Iowans love all things corn, even candy corn. So the state barely missed the Top Ten coming in a #11.

The Top Ten States Purchasing the Most BRACH'S Candy Corn Annually: