The Candy Hierarchy for 2016: Halloween's best and worst treats

David Ng and Ben Cohen

6:13 am Mon, Oct 31, 2016

Click to view the below full-size; or download as a a high-quality digital poster (4MB) for detailed scrutiny; or proceed for the plain text, abstract and analysis…

The Candy Hierarchy (2016)

TOP LAYER

Any full-sized candy bar

Cash, or other forms of legal tender

Kit Kat

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

Twix

Snickers

Tolberone something or other

Lindt Truffle

Peanut M&M’s

Milky Way

Nestle Crunch

POST TERTIARY LAYER

Butterfinger

Rolos

Dove Bars

Regular M&Ms

Mars

Hershey’s Dark Chocolate

Reese’s Pieces

Chardonnay

York Peppermint Patties

Three Musketeers

Heath Bar

100 Grand Bar

Junior Mints

Caramellos

Skittles

Mr. Goodbar

Hershey’s Milk Chocolate

Hershey’s Kisses

Mint Juleps

Starburst

Milk Duds

Nerds

Whatchamacallit Bars

Sweet Tarts

Jolly Ranchers (good flavor)

Cadbury Creme Eggs

Smarties (American)

Glow sticks

Swedish Fish

Gummy Bears straight up

LemonHeads

Sourpatch Kids (i.e. abominations of nature)

Smarties (Commonwealth)

Mint Kisses

Vicodin

Licorice (not black)

Pixy Stix

Minibags of chips

LOWER TIER

Mike and Ike

Bottle Caps

Coffee Crisp

Lollipops

LaffyTaffy

Kinder Happy Hippo

Goo Goo Clusters

Candy Corn

Now’n’Laters

Reggie Jackson Bar

Licorice (yes black)

Good N’ Plenty

Fuzzy Peaches

Mary Janes

Bonkers (the board game)

Hard Candy

Dots

Bonkers (the candy)

Chick-o-Sticks (we don’t know what that is)

Necco Wafers

LOWEST TIER

Hugs (actual physical hugs)

Trail Mix

Tic Tacs

Healthy Fruit

Maynards

Chiclets

Sweetums (a friend to diabetes)

Black Jacks

Senior Mints

Person of Interest Season 3 DVD Box Set (not including Disc 4 with hilarious outtakes)

TIER SO LOW IT DOES NOT REGISTER ON OUR EQUIPMENT

Pencils

Peeps

JoyJoy (Mit Iodine!)

Generic Acetaminophen

Spotted Dick

Vials of pure high fructose corn syrup, for main-lining into your vein

Jolly Rancher (bad flavor)

Box’o’Raisins

Creepy Religious comics/Chick Tracts

Those odd marshmallow circus peanut things

Anonymous brown globs that come in black and orange wrappers

Whole Wheat anything

Dental paraphenalia

Candy that is clearly just the stuff given out for free at restaurants

Kale smoothie

Gum from baseball cards

White Bread

Broken glow stick

“What’s going on with Kit Kats Dave?”

ABSTRACT

Candy candy candy. Co-principle investigators (PIs) Cohen and Ng again report on new findings. From 2006 to 2013, the PIs conducted a longitudinal study guided by PI expertise and cloaked pseudo-corporate sponsorship. Yet, lo, and thine PIs were so moved by the yearly outpouring of commentary that they opened up the study to additional data sources, namely people. The 2014 Candy Hierarchy resulted from survey data in the thousands; the 2015 Candy Hierarchy was based on 518,605 data points obtained from 5459 individuals. It also opened up a new flank in the survey beyond candy that the PIs continued this year. The secondary study sought to understand the character of the survey takers. It was also used to force an agenda that an area podcast won’t shut up about, like preferred days of the week and proper apple eating and now here we are with about 1275 respondents and 120,000 results and a real swell hierarchy. Just real swell.

TRANSCRIPTION OF THIS MORNING’S CONFERENCE PROCEEDING DISCUSSION, WITH COHEN AND NG.

BC: What’s going on with Kit Kats Dave?

DN: I was about to ask you the same.

BC: Something’s going on with Kit-Kats.

DN: But what?

BC: That’s what I asked you.

DN: Something weird, that’s all I know.

BC: Because we have to start accepting a consensus result. Not counting the full-sized candy bars or hard cash—which are gimmes, we don’t even need to ask that—the year-after-year consensus has a pretty stable top 4.

DN: Kit Kat, Peanut Butter Cups, Twix, Snickers.

BC: Huge news there—Kit Kats put Peanut Butter cups in their place, kicking them down a notch.

DN: I’m sure that pleases you. So we can talk your peanut butter thing now.

BC: My Big Peanut Butter thing. I see two problems with Big PB, neither of them acceptable to me.

DN: You haven’t shut up about this for about five years. You’re about to go into your Mint ra—

BC: CHOCOLATE-MINT COMBOS ARE SUPERIOR TO ALL OTHER CHOCOLATE COMBOS, PB included.

DN: Thank you for screaming. And notice there is not one choc-mint combo in the top 20.

BC: I wasn’t listening, what?

DN:

BC: Doesn’t matter. I have other concerns. Like allergies.

DN: Medical science. You’ re trying to get us legitimacy?

BC: Yeah. We’ve come up to speed in most public eating forums on peanut allergies. But not Halloween. What gives?

DN: I have no reply to that.

BC: What’s the other big news this year?

DN: Yeah, let’s pivot.

BC: We have some good health news. People prefer “whole wheat anything” to “white bread.”

DN: Maybe. But people would also prefer Person of Interest Season 3 Box Set to a Box of Raisins.

BC: It’s not even their best season.

DN: You’re preaching to the choir.

BC: Bonkers the Board Game is preferable to Bonkers the candy.

DN: Most Just Born brand candies are mid-tier—

BC: Your Mike and Ikes, your Hot Tamales, your Peeps, right.

DN: Actually, Peeps didn’t fare well, and we forgot Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews (though someone wrote it in).

BC: And I just realized we didn’t put Hot Tamales on there.

DN: Political results were interesting.

BC: Do tell.

DN: I don’t think we’re telling tales out of school to announce that people prefer Blue M&Ms to Red M&Ms by a 2-to-1 margin. Although to be fair, most folks didn’t seem to care one way or another.

BC: I don’t think we’re telling tales out of school to say that Red folks preferred Skittles more than Blue did.

OUR POLITICAL PROXY

In this year’s Candy survey we included a politics proxy matrix, polling for JOY versus DESPAIR in Blue versus Red versus Third Party M&M’s. Although most respondents didn’t get it (or did they?), we devised an algorithm to parse out Democratic versus Republican leaning survey takers. For transparency’s sake, this algorithm looked a little like this:

Notable observations include the following:

1. Strongly leaning Republicans (red JOY versus blue DESPAIR) appear to prefer Skittles over strongly leaning Democrats (blue JOY versus red DESPAIR). Here Republicans had a +7 JOY rating (from n=11 respondents), and Democrats had a +6 JOY rating (from n=22 respondents).

2. Democrat leaning participants had Cash at the number one rank, possibly supporting the view that Halloween hauls are a means of social support for “the 99%.” Cash did not make the top 10 for Red-state respondents. Coffers already full?

3. The statistics involved in this statement need to be fact checked (seriously).

DN: You’re really extrapolating beyond statistical validity, I fear.

BC: I like how now you act like that’s a concern.

DN: Speaking more scientifically, people who chose the “Yahoo! Finance” headlines at the bottom preferred cash too. That makes sense.

BC: Plus, BoingBoing readers are overwhelmingly scientifically curious (choice of “Science” in the last question, n=983 out of 1232). That’s hopeful.

DN: Yeah, you don’t get that scientific anchoring in those off-brand polls, like the Influenster one I saw last week. Besides, I think they invalidate their own survey since Candy Corn was highest rated with their metrics.

CANDY CORN AGAIN

We wish to address the elephant in the room. That is, the “scientific survey” conducted by Influenster, reported on by ABC News. This apparently places Candy Corn at the top of their hierarchy. To be blunt, we found this to be statistically invalid, as Candy Corn in our total rankings, as well in every demographic (except one) consistently placed Candy corn in a MEH to slight DESPAIR rating. Furthermore, last year’s data would further support our findings, so basically LONGITUDINAL DATA BITCHES! Note that the one exception were those respondents who preferred the “YAHOO! Finance” choice in the last question – read into that as you will.

BC: Speaking of scientific legitimacy, I can’t believe we haven’t talked about the results that are already shocking the world.

DN: You’re talking about the Friday/Sunday question, I assume.

BC: Of course, Dave, yes, I’m talking about the Friday/Sunday question. Last year we had a near perfect 67:33 ratio of a Friday-to-Sunday preference.

DN: But something happened, because this year we had a sea change, to 65:35 Fri:Sun.

BC: I don’t even know what’s real anymore. We’ve continued that survey at Various Breads and Butters for a year now, with lock-tight 2:1 results.

The Platinum Ratio, as people call it now.

DN: It could be bad data. Or campaign fatigue.

BC: Would explain why people are definitely poll-weary, that’s something.

OUTLIERS

Although for the following observations we did not specifically calculate p-values, and we shuddered at idea of degrees of freedom, the most striking preferences exhibited in our demographic data appeared to surface in three places:

1. The Betty versus Veronica divide. First, it should be noted that almost identical numbers of respondents chose Betty (n=509) versus Veronica (n=500, what is wrong with you people?). Although there are minor preferences shown in various candies, there was a very observable difference in preferences for Sour Patch Kids. Veronica folks strongly favored these candies, whereas Betty folks did not.

2. Males have overall JOY for Vicodin, whereas Females have overall DESPAIR.

3. Those who see a White and Gold dress overwhelmingly exhibit more JOY for Licorice (that is not black), than Blue and Black folks (here, it is close to an overall MEH rating). We posit that this is a colour thing. Maybe folks see red licorice differently – next year, we will need to include CT scans in the proceedings.

DN: Good point. We only had about a fourth the respondents as last year, at close to 1300. It’s the political season. People are done with it.

BC: They’re done with apple questions too.

DN: Yeah, I’m still struggling to figure out what that East-West apple-eating question is.

BC: Most people are. It just shows that you eat apples from side to side, not bottom to top (core and all).

DN: Why is that even a question?

BC: There’s some freak in my hometown that does it that freak way, and then some guy in Northern Virginia. Outliers.

DN: Tell them to eat apples 10,000 times, they’ll learn.

BC: Donny P said “I hope they print my manifesto about the correct way to eat an apple,” but nimelennar knew the sticking point “I doubt they will. The apple lobby is dominated by in-ciders.” This entire line of reasoning has been redacted.

BC: Any other insights to offer.

DN: Not really, but how about lots of graphs.

BC: And more footnotes?

DN: Yes, footnotes galore.

BC: I can’t go on like this.

DN: Well? Shall we go?

BC: What?

DN: Shall we go?

BC: Yes, let’s go.

They do not move. Cos of the candy? Sugar crash.

FOR DATA GEEKS

For you viewing pleasure, we have released the raw data for this year’s candy hierarchy, which can be found here. Furthermore, don’t forget that last year’s raw data can also be obtained from this link. Finally, if you like graphs, there are lots to be found at the above link – mostly candy hierarchies of the various demographics. Seriously now, if anyone wants to do a proper statistical look at the data, then please contact the authors. This sort of stuff might be perfect for a predatory journal or two. Oh yes, and we’ll also leave the survey open for a while, in case people want to add to it, post-Halloween.

FOOTNOTES

1. As before, in which NF = |JC – DC| denotes the difference between the empirical measurement of joy versus despair. Hence the term: Net Feelies.

2. Beschizza Bars, they call them (Beschizza, 2010)

3. Look: Kit Kats. They’re up a spot. The Kit-Kat v. Peanut Butter Cup battle is the Yale v Harvard of candy. Or Kanye v. Taylor. Or Bojack Horseman v Mr. Peanutbutter.

4. Two years in a row, we remembered to include Butterfinger (2015)

5. People keep forgetting, but these may be rolled to a friend.

6. Not to be confused with soap.

7. Yes, God’s Candy

8. Like Peeps (lower on the tier), CCE’s are this weird seasonal dissonance as an Easter not Halloween candy. Appropriate ranking may depend entirely on date of purchase versus date of opening. Experts in this field often refer to this dichotomy as “fresh CCE” versus “stale CCE,” or FCCE versus SCCE (Beschizza, 2011). Note that its interior has also been described as “pustulent.” (Petersen, 2010)

9. We now accept that these and chalk are one and the same (Gadgetgirl, 2010). Also known as Rockets in Canada and the UK. Though rockets are known as bookmarks in the US. And bookmarks are known as Drop Love licorice in The Netherlands, a popular sugar-free laxative.

10. This does not refer to herring.

11. So this is interesting. Folks who like reading ESPN seem to have a problem with mint kisses (Nf of -16, compared to Nf of +83 for Science readers). This trend doesn’t seem to happen with any other mint related candies, and so we are left to assume that folks that enjoy ESPN have a problem with kisses.

12. Given the political season, it kind makes sense that Vicodin moved up a few spots in the rankings,

13. In 2014, Joy and Despair mostly cancelled each other out. Hence the great “Licorice Root Beer Debate of 2014.” This year and last, however, we split it between black and non-black licorice. You all can fight this out. Note the NSFE, or Not Suitable for Europeans label (jhbadger, popobawa4u, chgoliz, SpunkyTWS, Donald_Petersen, Ambiguity, bobsyeruncle666, SuprWittySmitty, SteampunkBanana, SARSaparilla, SmashMartian, daneel 2014)

14. Or did we mean bags of minichips? This may be a typo. We had copyediting outsourced.

15. This is from EU pressure, known in diplomatic circles as the “Hornby Concession” (see his many footnotes from the 2012 version). Also cf. Mister44, 2016 [https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/tell-us-about-your-halloween-candy-preferences-and-other-things-besides/88024/5].

16. Yeah, this candy corn thing. There was that one weird poll from Influenster that claimed candy corn was the top choice in all U.S. states. As dutiful readers know, Candy Corn remained unclassified in 2006, was tentatively placed in the Upper Chewy/Upper Devonian in 2007, fell away in 2008, regained its footing in 2009, found a spot somewhere in the middle in 2010, and has wavered just below the Petersen Influx ever since in the Marcellus Wallace Cusp. We’re waiting for D. Petersen to tell us how it sits near the Petersen Influx. We’re waiting. Tick tock.

17. Thanks, Obama.

18. No comment. Not even to Access Hollywood.

19. But not erasers (N. Johnson, 1977).

20. Placed solely to acknowledge, make fun of, and possibly undermine British opinions. Google it, but be careful (2012).

21. These things keep coming up. Stop it.

22. You’re welcome, America.

23. Whoppers still blow. QED.

24. Look at you, Helvetica, holding strong against Times New Roman as a top-tier font. We’ll hand those out next year with the Kit Kats.