In wonderful news for dentists remodeling their second summer home, the American candy diet has never been more varied. TikTok has introduced new vehicles for sweetness, prompting confectionery crazes from bougie Dubai chocolate to lip-shaped Swedish gummies.

The app that functions like candy for your brain is filled with influencers unboxing and tasting candy, mixing it into sugary “salads,” or chewing it loudly for ASMR. And since TikTok rewards on-camera spectacle above all else, the algorithm promotes the most satisfyingly textured, vibrantly colored, and funkily shaped confections—which many sweet tooths then buy straight from the app.

Sweet smorgasbord

CandyTok is obsessed with the sugary heritage of Sweden, where kids are taken to pick-and-mix candy shops every Saturday in a decades-old tradition called lördagsgodis. But, in recent years, Americans—not just children and not only on Saturday—have also packed into Swedish candy shops to hunt for fruity marshmallows and gummies.

The Swedish candy chain BonBon has opened four new locations in New York City and one on Long Island since 2023, with customers lining up for fish gummies infused with Scandinavian flavors like sour wild strawberry and sour elderflower.

Beyond Nordic forest flavors, there’s a sweet sea of wacky taste and texture:

• Freeze-dried candy has popped off. Confectionery giant Mars Wrigley hopped on the trend by releasing an astronaut version of Skittles. Hershey dropped freeze-dried Jolly Ranchers. The market for crackly candy is projected to more than double from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $3.1 billion in 2034, according to Market.us.
• Pistachio paste-filled chocolate bars, dubbed “Dubai chocolate,” are now the UAE’s most recognizable cultural export, inspiring spinoff products like Dubai sundaes and cotton candy. Its popularity pushed the price of the nut—grown primarily in the US and Iran—up by 35% in the year leading up to fall 2025.
• Just like with everything on social media, there’s a tendency toward extremes that make you wince, with the world’s hottest gummy bear and eye-wateringly sour candy among TikTok’s bestsellers.
• If extreme sour balls go hard enough, there’s a popular DIY option for you: chamoy-seasoned pickles stuffed with hot candy strips and Takis, wrapped in a Fruit Roll-Up. Various online marketplaces sell kits containing all the ingredients.

But there’s nothing sweeter than nostalgia…with Americans reliving their childhood sugar rush with TikTok-viral classics like Ring Pops or Retro Sours, made by vintage confections company Iconic Candy to mimic the discontinued Altoid Sours from the 1990s. So, don’t be surprised in 20 years when you see grown men and women stuffing candy into a pickle.—SK

Simple, sweet, and never leaving. These three candy-themed properties have stood the test of time and are here to stay.

Candy Crush

This addictive game is the newest candy-coated product on our list, but it’s a dinosaur in the staring-at-your-phone category. Swedish game developer King rolled out Candy Crush, a match-three puzzle game where players try to advance to the next level, in 2012 on Facebook and as a standalone mobile game later that same year:

• The game popularized the “freemium” model, in which users can play for free or make in-game purchases on things like extra moves for one of the 17,000+ (and growing) levels.
• It hit its peak in 2015, garnering around 327 million monthly players. In 2016, Activision Blizzard bought the company behind the game for $5.9 billion.

And while those jackpot-esque pings aren’t as popular as they once were on your morning commute, roughly 180 million players were still swiping in 2024, with many fans clocking in every single day, according to the company. (A spokesperson for King declined to provide Morning Brew with 2025 user figures.)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Despite it being a cult classic, the first cinematic adaptation of Dahl’s novel—which was renamed for the eponymous candymaker and released in 1971 starring Gene Wilder—was a box-office flop, earning a little over $4 million on a $2.9 million budget:

• The Tim Burton-directed remake in 2005 starring Johnny Depp as the eccentric factory owner fared better, snagging $475 million on a $150 million budget.
• The 2023 prequel Wonka and its six original songs divided critics, with some saying Timothée Chalamet earned his place in the pantheon of Wonkas and others calling the story “hollow as a chocolate egg.” It earned $635 million with a $125 million budget.

And it’s not just a hit at the movies: The story has been relentlessly spoofed by most adult cartoons, including The Simpsons, Rick and Morty, South Park, Family Guy, and, most iconically, Futurama. There have been stage adaptations, video games, and even…an infamous “experience.”

Candy Land

Retired schoolteacher Eleanor Abbott invented the original game in 1948 while recovering from polio, with children being treated for the same disease in mind. Its bright colors and simple gameplay meant kids could enjoy it even with limited mobility:

• Toy manufacturer Milton Bradley bought the game and officially published it in 1949. The company took out references to its inspiration, like removing the leg braces from one of the characters on the original board.
• Hasbro acquired the toymaker in 1984 and tried to add a storyline to the game, but it didn’t really stick.

Despite swapping in and out characters, the classic, luck-based game has remained one of the most popular board games, selling an average of 1 million copies a year. There were even brief (but ultimately shelved) talks about an Adam Sandler-led movie adaptation.—MM

There’s a company that makes candy bars. There’s a company that runs veterinary clinics. Somehow, this is the same company. Thanks to one savvy pivot nearly a century ago, Mars has become a $137 billion business that sells both candy bars and pet food.

While it seems counterintuitive that one company manufactures Snickers and Pedigree, Mars, which started selling confectionery in 1911, has been in the pet food business since 1935, when it bought Chappie, a UK-based dog food company, which eventually became Pedigree. That diversification was only the start for Mars in the pet world:

• The company acquired and launched more pet foods in the 1960s—Whiskas for cats and Kal Kan for dogs. In 1965, Mars established the Waltham Petcare Science Institute to study the dietary needs of pets and tailor the food with the backing of pet health scientists.
• With the bellies of dogs and cats full, it was time to get into pet health and diagnostics. Mars bought into Banfield Pet Hospital in 1994 and took on the entire operation in 2007. It bought up more pet clinics between 2015 and 2018, including the $9.1 billion acquisition of VCA (formerly Veterinary Centers of America), a company with 800 animal hospitals.

Pet hospitality: Mars now owns more than 3,000 veterinary clinics worldwide. Hopefully, there’s always a loaded candy dish with Milky Ways and Skittles at the front desk (for humans only).

Bottom line: Mars makes more money from your pet than your sweet tooth. Per Acquired Briefing, the privately held family company makes ~60% of its revenue from the pet care side of the business and runs neck-and-neck with Purina (owned by Nestlé, another major candy player) as the world’s biggest pet care company, with both reaching ~$22 billion revenue annually.—DL

Nearly every holiday involves candy. Just ask the poor souls at Reese’s who have to contort peanut butter cups into a thousand festive shapes like they’re balloon animals. But not all holidays are created equal. Three of them stand out on the candy calendar: Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and Easter. (No disrespect to candy canes or gelt.)

Trick Treat or Treat. If you’re celebrating Halloween, candy’s a part of the picture. Every October, Americans spend billions on the sweet stuff, and the most popular activity on the big day is handing out candy. But that’s a relatively new phenomenon. According to the Sugar Association trade group:

• Modern trick-or-treating didn’t really take off in the US until the late 1940s.
• Even then, children would frequently get things like cookies, coins, and toys.
• Wrapped candy became popular in subsequent decades due to (mostly unfounded) concerns about poisoning.

Powered by hugs and kisses: This Valentine’s Day, 56% of US consumers were projected to buy candy, outpacing other popular gifts like greeting cards and flowers, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights & Analytics. There’s no question that innovation in confectionery has made the holiday what it is today:

• Richard Cadbury, of chocolate egg fame, popularized heart-shaped chocolate boxes in the 1860s, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
• Milton Hershey’s Kisses hit the market in 1907.
• Candy hearts that said “Be Mine” and “Kiss Me” entered the conversation in 1902, per History.com.

Basket case: Candy is also the most popular Easter purchase category, with Americans spending $3.3 billion on Peeps and other themed treats, according to the NRF. There’s plenty of Easter-themed fare to choose from, like chocolate bunnies, chocolate eggs, and marshmallow Peeps, which, in most states, were the most beloved Easter treat last year, according to a USA Today analysis of Google search data. Just try not to eat any plastic grass this year.—BC

Working in the candy industry probably feels a bit sour right now, because the practice of getting a sweet treat appears to be falling off in the US. Convenience store trips for candy were down 7.5% in the year leading up to last fall, reflecting nearly 1 million fewer households buying candy at convenience stores during that time, according to a VP at the market research firm Circana.

The drop-off comes as new challenges threaten to lick the sugar off the candy industry’s business:

• About 1 in 8 US adults is taking a GLP-1 as of November 2025, according to a KFF poll. Many users report that the medication has rewired their cravings, with some former sweet tooths no longer able to stomach sugary treats at all.
• Meanwhile, a global cocoa shortage disrupted the supply chain and inflated candy aisle prices over the past couple of years, dinging chocolate companies’ profits as some shoppers pivoted to gummies and other sugar candies, which are often cheaper.

It’s also getting even harder to afford sweets for some of the ~40 million people in the US who use food stamps: At least five states have restricted SNAP purchases of sugary treats, including candy, this year, in line with the government’s MAHA initiative (up to 13 more are expected to follow).

Colorful concerns

The tide is also turning against neon-colored treats. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been urging food and drink companies to phase out artificial dyes, and 25% of US adults now avoid artificial colors and flavors, per Circana.

Looking ahead…Nestlé, Hershey, and many other major snack companies have agreed to ditch at least some synthetic dyes over the next couple of years, but replacing them will likely be a time-consuming and costly process. Natural dyes are frequently sourced from seasonal crops or even bugs that only live on certain continents.—ML