Tricks, Treats and Trends

Hello everyone, it's Rachel. If you're not yet a time 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 time 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 which costumes became blow-up dinosaurs and Pikachu's. 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 as food writer Kim Severson will leave me on a culinary journey through the latest and greatest in the world of candy. And Luis Lacerra, the second, and 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, Kelly Holderman 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 going to go deep on Halloween candy, which I'm a big fan of and very excited about. And I've been spending a lot of time researching what's up with the candy this Halloween. Did you trick or treat as a child, Rachel? And as an adult. Yeah. No. Okay. 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 butter finger, definitely butter finger. Okay. Well, the on one of the lists of popular candies this year, the butter finger comes in number 10 just below the Hershey's mini bar. 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. They have 10, oh, yeah, two shows a night. They have M&M's 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 your Halloween candy bowl. We're doing a lot of talking about candy, but I wish to do more eating of candy. So can you not in the same room as I am? You're in Atlanta. I'm in New York. I've 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 market 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 that candy you're tasting, they are not chocolate Halloween candy and all of them. That's where there's no 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 rising up and particularly among Gen Zers who have really specific candy taste and it's much more about acid, sweet, sour, bitter, like these mashups of flavors. The food marketers have deemed them the swangie and swavory generation. Swangie and swavory. So swangie, you know, sweet and tangy and swavory, sweet and savory. So I don't make those up. I'm just reporting. Obviously, I think those 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 something called sour tape, which is like a long piece of candy tape that is like a sour patch kid and they see how fast people can eat it. It's the sour tape challenge. Well, I don't know if I'm ready for the sour tape challenge, but I definitely want to eat some of this candy. This is good for me. 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 going to, 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 they know more shot to the top and it's called the nerds gummy cluster. The union of crudey sweet gummy and tangy crunchy nerds. Should I describe this thing? It's a cluster. 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, a bit like a sweet tarp. It's kind of that crunchy can be slightly sour, but it's got that kind of a fruity, and she vibe going to it. So they're little tiny nerd pieces all over. What's the thing inside of it? She asked a social little, it's, no, you'll be fine. Real trust me. I'm a professional. You'll be okay. It's a gummy inside there. Okay. 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. Look at that sour, crunchy little nerd bit, and it gives way to that fruity, gummy, sweeter interior. It's that contrast, that sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Does it make you want to have another one? No. Okay. No. It's not, I like nerds. I think I want to either have the nerd or have the gummy. I don't think I want these two things smushed together with some sort of, I don't even know what they adhesive is, it's probably another type of sugar. So Rachel, you're a purist, is what you're telling me? I'm a purist. Gummy or die. All right. Well, just let's move on. You want to move on to another one? I would love to move on. And this is another one that I kind of think is fascinating. This Skittles popped. Crunch the rainbow, taste the rainbow. So you see them. Like 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's sort of exploded in a microwave. Right. Mm-hmm. All right. Oh my god. Right? I sort of like these because you can kind of pop them in your mouth pretty easily. And then you get like that satisfying crunch in there. Every candy brand is looking at a way to do a popter, a freeze-dried version. This is a Mars Riggly product. Like, what was that with the original Skittle? There's nothing. There's room for both. But the original Skittle 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 industry, right? And so you're selling sugar to America, and they want to do it in different ways each year. This would be the Gen Z likes. I feel like I'm 1,000 years old. I just can't. I don't understand. It's okay. I mean, just take another Skittles pop. You'll be fine. I just want to make it clear to our audience. I love candy. But I don't, I do not understand this. You're not meant to understand them. I love, you know, 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. Okay. Well, I don't know in the 90s if you remember this brand called Crybaby, which is 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 want to go back to childhood. So they go back to their childhood candy. Okay. And Crybaby was a big brand in the 90s, it's owned by the Tootsie World Industries. Very tart, lots of citric and tarp trick acid. And there's also some academics who will argue that a lot of the Gen Zers loves sour flavors because it helps with their anxiety, that idea that it kind of gives you something to focus on. Yeah. Right. Besides your anxiety. That's so interesting. So anyway, but this is a bubble gum because bubblegum's also kind of having a little bit of a moment. So I have Crybaby bubblegum. We're going to be doing these. Crybaby gum. So I have a individually wrapped balls, different colors. I'm going to choose a blue one. And I hope, Rachel, I'm no mathematician, but I hope I can make you cry with how solid these are. Oh. Oh, well, um, let's see. Okay. So let's just go for it. Crybaby, extra sour. Oh, really sour. Oh, I can't. Ah. I don't like it. Oh, I can't, oh, I don't like 'em. 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 just like, oh, 'cause they named it tank after me, Kim. Wow. I can't believe you just raw dogged that. Wow. I shouldn't tense. 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 Dwayne read the other day and I was amazed at how much a bag of mixed chocolate and other sort of candies were. I think it was something like $16 and it just struck me as much more expensive than that amount of candy has been in recent years. So everything that I just ate, Kim, how much did all of that cost me? Tell me a little bit about the economics of the candy business right now. Sure. Of course, like everything, the cost has gone up, although candy has gone up at a rate greater than inflation. I think the year over year right now is it's gone up roughly 8%, so it's like, what's that more than twice the price of inflation. So you're really seeing a big increase. And yes, the thing driving all of this is the chocolate sector, right? So chocolate prices have been up 15, 20%, depending on, you talked 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 going to 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. You know, some children are going to grab a fistful, of course. All right. And you'd like, oh, that's cute. Ha ha. This year, I think people are going to 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 Suverson, you're never wrong. That's why we have you on the show. Ah. 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. Delicious. Okay. Thank you. When we come back, we're talking costumes from my colleague from the styles desk after break. Lewis Acero. Welcome to the daily, the Sunday daily or 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. Are you a costume guy? I am. I like a sort of creative crafty thing that speaks to a certain amount of cleverness, a certain amount of like cultural awareness. I would say like my favorite costumes though. The primary medium is always going to be drugstore, poster board. It's not going to run me more than $10. Okay. So this is the white poster board that you draw? I've turned it into so many things. One time I was an iPod mini, which was a big iPod, but I had many ears, my mini at mouse ears that get a lot of, a lot more wear out of them than you would think for a man of 30. Do you have to think about that for a moment? Yeah. iPod mini. I was a Tomagotchi, a free hand at the little screen, basically I'm just drawing on different colored cardboard. You want to know what I am for Halloween? What are you going to be? Well, okay. The last couple of years, I have worn an inflatable Mr. Peanut Coster 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. It's just so fun to walk around because it's just so unexpected. I have never. Starstruck for starters. They only know him from these canisters of work. It's very, very impressive. It has the monocle and everything. Yeah, I know. Wow. And 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 eyes so clearly. Frieda Kahlo with her Unabrow. 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 also it's immortal, you know, and that is Rachel Abrams as Mr. Peanut. Oh my God. Okay. So I feel, first of all, I feel extremely validated. So thank you so much, Lewis. We just end this interview now, but no, I have more to ask you about. 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 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. I think we're going to be drowning in heated rivalry boys. That feels like a given. Great pass. That's where I go. 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 ask that question. Next. Next. 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 going to 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 going to embarrass myself. Yes, go for it. I'm thrilled. We will warm up with an easy one. This is a couple's costume. One partner is wearing a blonde wig and a little black dress. Blonde wig. 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 Chief's jersey. Okay. Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift and one of the Kelchies. I can remember which one. Really? That's what it does when you're on the stage and you perform an 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 good. Oh my god. Okay, good. Taylor Swift. Okay. And Travis Kelsey. Nailed it. So, this person, the second person, is wearing a long center-parted wig with blonde streaks. Center-parted wig with blonde streaks. Okay. We've got aviator glasses on. A mini skirt with sort of chunky hips lung belt. Gloria Steinem. Gloria Steinem. Yes. And we can dispense with the labels of gender and class and race and begin to realize our unique individuality. And so I think Halloween is also 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. We're going to 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. Okay. The other partner has a blonde wig and piercing blue contact lenses and is carrying a baby. Uh-huh. And when you ask what their costume is, they get their faces really close together and peer into each other's eyes uncomfortably. Come here. 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 on a comfortably close. Oh my God. Okay. So this is Nathan Fielder, and Elizabeth Holmes. Perfect. Nailed it. Why would I deceive you? There's no reason for me to do that. Okay. All right. What else? What else is on this quiz? 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. Yes. Wow. That is a real heavy. A conceptual one. Yes. Wow. That's one where there's always a way to talk your way out of having expended no effort at all. And say, oh, I'm a reluctant party guest. That'll do it. Exactly. 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 trax suit. 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. This work obligation was the World Cup. World Cup. Okay. Okay. One more hint. And then I give up. I'll give you a hint. The person's first name is Erling. And the last name is Holland. Norwegian soccer player Erling Holland is showing fans that some keep-sakes can be just as eye-catching as the FIFA World Cup trophy. What was the raccoon thing? I miss this. I believe it was when his team was playing in Texas. I think he stopped by some sort of western theory. store. There was a taxidermy raccoon. Haaland returned home with his own trophy of sorts. He bought it, and there is a really indelible image of him leaving his airplane with his taxidermy raccoon. He posted his own picture on social media with the caption, "It followed me home." And so this final costume, this is a person wearing an enormous blonde wig. Dollyheart. Well Lewis, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate being here. I feel like if I wasn't going to 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 me. Thank you. We'll be right back. [Music] I think that's a mummy. Yeah, and she's got a head in her hands. When it comes to decorating for Halloween, you have a lot of options. The piracy for super cool and a mermaid. Oh, there is the clown over there that's eating a baby in a nice group. That is it. Oh, Beetle chasing all the slime coming out of his head. There's also a sign that says "Porn it." Children left unwrap it while the souls are serious. But if you're looking for the Halloween decoration, the king of the hill, the queen of the crop, you are looking for one very specific thing. My favorite are the skeletons. My favorite one is a skeleton. And then not to upgrade or look skeleton. A few years ago, my colleague, Kelly Holderman, 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. Kelly Holderman, welcome to the daily. Thank you for having me. I come there in gifts. You come there in gifts? Oh, my God. These are for you. Are these vampire things? Those are the rariner, they're sort of hard to talk with. Should we do the whole interview wearing these? I think ideally. Yeah. This is so great. Thank you so much. This little, 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 couple years ago, you wrote a very memorable article about, and I want to make sure to just get the name of this thing right. The home accents holiday 12 foot giant skeleton with life eyes, LCD eyes. Go big this year with the 12 foot giant skeleton. Yeah. And I love talking to you to just use the full name every time if you can. But colloquially, his name is Skelly. His name is Skelly. Okay. This 12 foot giant skeleton with life eyes is a showstopper. Or you might hear him call the 12 foot skeleton. Again, I just we care about accuracy here at the New York Times. Absolutely. Skelly is 11 foot eight. And thanks to its weather resistant frame, it'll loom over guests for years to come. And this is a gigantic skeleton decoration that kind of like took the world by storm when it was 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 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. This is me turning a 12 foot home Depot skeleton into a giant puppet. Today starts my journey to grill a 12 foot skeleton. She a pet. I'm making a giant puking skeleton. I'm just huge, but he still looks unfinished. Let's give him a pirate upgrade. It's lightweight, so it just needs to go through. 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 foot skeleton from seed, today on Garden as well. Skelly came out in 2020 when the world kind of needed jokes perhaps and this was one that you could make at a distance. Once you've planted your baby skull, water, and tender weeds around it. And in no time, you'll have a showstopper of an autumn display. Follow along. It was like the ultimate social distancing Halloween decoration. You know, you can be so, so far away and you could have COVID and be coughing up a storm, but you could still enjoy that person's skeleton. And how much do these skeletons cost? $299. Oh my god. And do we know how many of them sell every year? How many of it we have 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 not tell me. Yeah, they're trying to imagine they're not eager to tell you that. But I can't 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 Depot's or so and had called about 50, trying to get her hands on one. I wrote the story in 2022. A 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 highest ever for Americans? Those numbers are from the National Retail Federation, I should say. Halloween, I think a lot of retailers have 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. Sure. 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 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 other holidays don't entirely allow to you to do. And I think Skelly has been a little bit of a canvas for that imagination that people have going on. Welcome back to part three of me turning my Home Depot 12 foot skeleton into an alien for our area 51 theme this year for our Halloween yard. I'm wondering. Before we wrap up, I'm curious. I'm curious if there have been any advances in Skelly science since Skelly came out. I've been closely monitoring advancements and skeleton technology since 2022. Very good. Last week I chatted with 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. Wow, that's a great title. But she said Home Depot has been like thinking really hard about 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. We introduced, we called him Servo Skelly a few years ago and he had a servo motor in his head that allowed him to move. And 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 second-hand live. They've been making rapid advancements in Skelly technology. This year's 12 foot Skelly, you can live speak through Skelly. So if someone walks up in a pirate costume, you could make a sort of, like, a Hoi Mady-type pirate observation. I mean, 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. That's the point, Rachel. Beware. He will spot you the moment you step too close. Behave my tiny morphine. I always watch him. I really appreciate knowing so much more about this 12 foot Skelly. I'm sorry, 11 foot, 8 inch Skellyton. Well, Kelly Holderman, I am the merchant of holiday podcasts and I want to 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, who was edited by Wendy Door and contains music from Dan Powell and Alicia Bae YouTube. It had production assistance from Dahlia Hadad, and was engineered by Sophia Landman. That's it for the Sunday Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow. [Music]