All Hallows Eve in 2020 was a memorable one. I had decided to make a theme in keeping with the day (Saturday) and year. I live in South Carolina and College Football Saturdays down South are practically a secular religion.
The tailgate theme matched the local university hosting the BC Eagles earlier that day: “The Clemson Tiger Kings vs. the Boston Murder Hornets"
It hit me that in order to handle the trick or treaters with the responsible amount of social distancing, I would need about 30 feet of schedule 40 four inch PVC pipe to deliver my candy and drinks from my front porch. A leaf blower assisted getting the treats airborne. If you want to see it in action, Kevin, a town neighbor, made this nice video.
Setup
To display the candy options, I brought my “I don’t care if it breaks" 32 inch television out and hooked it up to my laptop. I made a Microsoft Access database with buttons featuring the drinks (Coca Cola, Sprite, Yoo-hoo, Perrier, Orange and Grape soda) and the full size candy (Skittles, Starburst, Kit Kat, Crunch, Snickers, Twix, Toblerone, Hershey, and Reese’s) that when clicked would reduce the “number remaining" counter by one.
To ensure there was not a positioning bias, I displayed the candy options in descending order of availability where the most remaining was at the top and the least remaining was on the bottom.
I also created a transaction log that recorded what was requested, at what time, and how many were left; I’m a data nerd. What I found was different than 538’s more robust head-to-head analysis.
The Results
I handed out 206 pieces of candy which is slightly below the average for non-Covid years.
Skittles, which started with 31 packs, was out first at 7:00p. Kit-Kats (starting with 33) went second at 7:54p. Reese’s (started with 39) were out by 8:42p and we ran out of Hershey by 9:07p. Everything else survived the night.
The survivors in order popularity:
Twix
Starburst
Snickers
Crunch
Toblerone
Despite my favorite, Toblerone, being dead last, I definitely had some kids order it first. I also had some adults push for that for their kids to varying degrees of success; the parent tax is real!
The drinks went quickly (I had fewer of them, and some parents that didn't want alcohol requested a soft drink)
My 25 Cokes ran out at 6:33p then got replenished with another case that ran out at 8p. Maybe the caffeine wasn’t an issue on a Saturday night?
My 70 Sprites held out until 8:07p and 36 Sunkists ran out at 8:38p. Yoo-hoo followed a minute later. The only drinks left were Perrier original / L’Orange (which some kids actually requested).
The adult menu consisted of Bud Light, Founder’s All Day IPA, Yuengling, and Truly Hard Seltzer, all of them started at 24 except for Founder’s which started at 30 and all survived the night.
So why did Skittles and Kit Kat dominate over Reese’s and Snickers, like 538 would have predicted? Smaller sample size? Sure, maybe. But I’ll mostly attribute it to the participants for 538 being adults.
Kids, especially the younger ones, have a stronger fruit candy preference. Lesson learned for my Coco themed setup for 2021.
A parent brought up an interesting point: many kids have never had candy with peanuts because so many schools are nut allergy sensitive.
My very distinctive looking home has a reputation for the last five Hallowe’ens.
My biggest takeaway, because a line had to form, was how many kids childhood memories I have impacted over the years.
I had a 7th grader tell me how famous my house was at the local middle school. Parents from church told me that their kids went from being crushed that they could only visit homes with social distanced setups to being “completely fine with it" once they learned my place was still on the acceptable list. A group of high schoolers decided to embrace their childhood and get dressed up just to make one stop.
I spend hundreds of dollars on Hallowe’en each year but I see it as an absolute bargain. I can not make memories for two hundred people this inexpensively at any other time. Hopefully this inspires some of these future homeowners to do the same for the next generation the same way my childhood neighbors did for me.
