Yes, Halloween candy is expensive this year — but some sweets are scarier than others

A haunted house, but it's just your grocery bill after buying Halloween candy this year.

If you're feeling spooked stocking up for trick-or-treaters, you're not alone. The price of confectionery, which includes candy, has climbed steadily over the past six years, according to Statistics Canada monthly inflation numbers, rising 28 per cent since January 2020.

That's about four percentage points higher than the overall inflation rate for all consumer items during that time period. And while confectionery prices last month did dip slightly compared to September 2025, overall, some Canadian consumers are still experiencing sticker shock.

"Apparently Halloween candy is nearly $30 per box this year??" one person wrote on X last week, along with a photo of a store display of packages of 100 candy bars that were on sale for $13.99, but that are regularly $27.99 — a price CBC News confirmed at several Canadian retail locations, including Calgary Co-op and Save-On-Foods.

"I'm in Canada, and normally you could find a sale where the 100 packs of mini chocolates would go on sale for $10. The cheapest I found was $12," another consumer posted on Reddit Tuesday.

"Given the prices of the traditional Halloween candy, I went full size."

Still, some treats are trickier than others. And new data from the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax suggests that the treat with the biggest price hike this year isn't actually sweet, but salty.

The average price of chips and savoury snacks in October jumped about 18 per cent compared to last year, the data states. A pack of 40 small bags cost, on average, between $12.97 and $12.99 — about $2 more compared to 2025.

The October data provided to CBC News out of Dalhousie comes from the lab's review of grocery and pharmacy flyers in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax, supplemented by online retail listings. It doesn't include tax or loyalty rewards.

September confectionery data from Statistics Canada — the most recent available — shows that even though prices have increased steadily since 2020, they are down 2.9 per cent this year, relative to September last year.

"Last year, we had the impact of the tariffs on sugar and confectionery, which is a big part of the reason prices were up dramatically [in 2025]," Michael von Massow, a food agriculture professor at Ontario's University of Guelph, told CBC News.

"Except for things like potato chips, which have no sugar or chocolate."

Chocolate levels out, thanks to sales

According to the Agri-Food Analytics Lab's October data, gummy candies (like Sour Patch Kids) were next on the list of price increases, with the price of a box of 90 sweets up 8.4 per cent compared to last October, followed by packs of chewy candies (like Skittles and Starburst), up about 6.5 per cent.

On the bright side, the price of pressed-sugar candies like Rockets was essentially unchanged.

The same went for boxes of chocolate treats, which had jumped as much as 30 per cent earlier in October, but have since levelled back out thanks to last-minute flyer sales, notes Sylvain Charlebois, the director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab.

Cocoa prices have more than doubled over the past few years due to poor weather and disease in West Africa, which supplies more than 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa, according to The Associated Press.

• Inflation rises to 3.1% in September, as fuel prices push higher: StatsCan

• Are you being tricked by your treats? Some Halloween candy multipacks have shrunk in size, but not in price

A quick search of Toronto stores on Thursday showed a pack of 100 Nestlé assorted mini bars and candies on sale for $13.99 at Food Basics, Metro and Shoppers Drug Mart, and $15 at Loblaws — overall savings of about $9.

In Montreal, a bag of 100 Hershey assorted mini chocolate bars was on sale for $15.99 at Metro, down from $21.99. In Vancouver, the same bag was on sale for $11 at Loblaws, down from $20. No Frills in Dartmouth, N.S., had the item for $12.99, down from $18.99.

In other words, you can breathe a sigh of relief if you're just here for the peanut butter cups.

Still, watch out for shrinkflation, cautions Charlebois.

The tactic where companies quietly reduce the weight or volume of a product, but not the price, affected Halloween candy last year, when CBC News discovered two major candy makers had reduced the weight of several Halloween chocolate bar variety packs by as much as almost 17 per cent. 

"Package size matters as much as the sticker price. A cheaper bag isn't necessarily a better deal if it contains fewer treats," he told CBC News.

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Is it the candy, or everything else?

A few new reports from the U.S. also show rising Halloween candy prices — and sluggish sales.

U.S. candy prices have been climbing faster than inflation for several years. As of September, candy and gum prices were up 44 per cent over a five-year period, according to government data reported by The Associated Press.

In the U.S., the items that saw the biggest price increases compared to 2025 were Mondelez sour gummy candy variety packs (up about 40 per cent), followed by five different types of Hershey variety packs, including both chocolate and non-chocolate bundles, according to an analysis by Groundwork Collaborative.

Halloween candy is displayed for sale at a Giant grocery store on Oct. 22 in Dundalk, Md. (Stephanie Scarbrough/The Associated Press)

And U.S. Halloween candy sales fell 6.7 per cent in the month ended Oct. 17 compared to the same period last year, according to NielsenIQ, a market research firm. That wasn't necessarily because candy is more expensive, but because, well, everything is.

"I think what you're seeing now is a consumer that's spending so much additional money on fuel and housing and clothing and food," Chris Costagli, a vice-president of food thought leadership at NielsenIQ, told The Associated Press.

On Thursday, chocolate maker Hershey also warned that the rising cost of living might be spooking U.S. customers, rather than candy prices themselves.

That sentiment was echoed by some Canadian consumers on Reddit. Some posted in a Halifax subreddit that they didn't think candy prices were actually that bad this year.

"It's not the candy for us, it's everything else," one person commented.

"Sale prices are actually the best I've seen in a while," another person wrote in a subreddit for Burlington, Ont., last week.

"Regular price, the candy is absolutely ridiculous, I agree. But I've managed to buy about 300 pieces plus probably 40-50 full sized bars for, spitballing, around $100? I think even a little under that."

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