43 Halloween Fails From 2026 That Prove Spooky Season Can Serve Up Way More Tricks Than Actual Treats

And once you’ve survived the costume and the calendar, there’s still the third big C: the candy. It’s the one Halloween purchase almost everyone makes. The NRF found that 96% of shoppers planned to buy it, to the tune of $4.1 billion, and handing it out remains the most popular way to celebrate, with 61% planning to do just that. You can’t go wrong with candy, right?

Ask almost anyone and they’ll tell you their favorite candy doesn’t taste the way it used to. Some of that comes down to nostalgia, as Megan McArdle acknowledges in The Washington Post, but not all of it. This year, Reese’s became the poster child for the complaint after the founder’s grandson accused Hershey of cutting corners on ingredients. The backlash was loud enough that the company promised to return to its classic recipes.

And it’s not just the recipes. Bars have shrunk, ingredient lists have grown, and treats are increasingly engineered to last for months on the shelf. McArdle points to the steep rise in cocoa prices between 2022 and 2024 as one source of pressure. Preservatives sound grim, she admits (“who wants their candy embalmed? No one”), but they beat biting into a stale peanut butter cup. In the end, she suggests, the problem could be less corporate greed than human fallibility: companies trying to guess what we want, and not always getting it right.

And really, human fallibility is what this list is all about. Whether it’s a costume you spend half the night explaining at the punch table, a bleary-eyed morning at your desk, or a peanut butter cup that isn’t quite what it used to be, Halloween has a way of bringing out some very human flaws. But maybe that’s part of its charm. After all, if every October 31 went perfectly, we’d have nothing to laugh, vent, or scream about while we eagerly await the next one. Just ask some of the guys and ghouls on this list.