HALLOWEEN JUNK FOOD 2025!
It's that time of year again when the weather is colder and the sweets are plentiful! Let's dig in to the best of the 2025 Halloween season's spooky junk food offerings! Check back frequently—updates will be made as we find new items!
KOOL-AID GHOUL-AID "ZOM-BERRY"
Same ol' Ghoul-Aid with a sweet updated look. Last year, we saw the Kool-Aid man's witchy transformation—which somehow took a couple years to produce. This year, he's gone full zombie mode—complete with exposed brains and… a stitched mouth? Is he Billy from Hocus Pocus?
Anyways, yes, it's the same familiar flavor Ghoul-Aid has always been, but the intrigue comes from the many forms and faces of the Kool-Aid man. I’ll never sneeze at a chance to see him decked out in new attire, no matter which holiday. Plus, the real bonus—these pouches glow in the dark! Nothing says "I'm a functional adult" quite like spending 20 minutes in a dark basement trying to get the perfect Instagram shot of a glowing juice pouch. The flash kept ruining it, but we persevere.
Rating: 7/10 - Same great flavor, bonus points for glow-in-the-dark packaging and the Kool-Aid man's ongoing identity creativity.
HALLOWEEN OREOS
Listen, I'm a sucker for fresh new Oreos—even if they aren't anything other than Oreo flavored. The annual holiday ones are about as fresh as you can get unless you're there at the Oreo factory picking them off the production line.
But these aren't your usual orange crème Halloween Oreos. In addition to those, this year we have orange AND green crème-filled cookies with adorable characters and Halloween paraphernalia with cut-outs to reveal the green under the cookie! It's like a fun, edible scratch-off ticket, except you always win!
I tried to get a good look at each design—especially the vampire one—but I was already through a quarter of the bag trying to find them all. I'll try to rest easy at night knowing some lucky trick-or-treater will eventually uncover a fresh new vampire Oreo with a ghoulish green mouth. That is, if I don't finish the entire bag first doing "research."
Rating: 8/10 - Fresh Oreos with fun designs that'll have you hunting through the whole bag. Classic flavor, premium presentation.
LITTLE DEBBIE PUMPKIN SPICE OATMEAL CREAM PIES
Read the title again—these feel like something that probably should've happened before, don't they? Somehow, it took 65 years for the original Little Debbie snack cake to get the pumpkin spice treatment, and we're alive to tell the tale. We are so lucky—ish.
I won't lie, it was at the top of my list in the early stages of the 2025 haunting season, and I overlooked a ton of new goodies until I found these. You may be asking, was it worth the effort? I'm here to tell you—nah.
You see, the Oatmeal Cream Pie can't be enhanced. How can you make what's already perfect better? You can't. It's like trying to improve a sunset by throwing glitter at it. The cheese-colored pumpkin spice crème gets almost completely lost in the flavor of the oatmeal cookie exterior. I wanted these to be amazing, but unfortunately, they fall flat. The pumpkin spice, which smells so pungent, is surprisingly subtle. I know it’s in there but I can’t find it.
Rating: 5/10 - A slightly missed opportunity. The pumpkin spice is playing hide and seek, and the oatmeal cookie is winning.
GHIRARDELLI CHOCOLATE JACK-O'LANTERNS
One thing I enjoy about the Halloween season: regular candy takes the shape of appropriate holiday fodder. You've seen Snickers Pumpkins, Reese's Ghosts, and Butterfinger Skulls—now you get to meet Ghirardelli Jack O'Lanterns.
So, it's everyday Ghirardelli flavors packed into not-so-everyday-shaped pumpkins. I love these! I haven't done my research deep enough to determine if the Caramel Apple-filled chocolates have been around before or not. I'm gonna assume they have been. But I feel it misses the mark. I get some apple flavor, but it's so faint, you'd swear it was whispering to you from across a busy street. Maybe even from a different time zone.
Flavors aside, they're still super enjoyable, and I'll take eating a Jack O'Lantern over regular candy any day. There's something psychologically satisfying about biting the head off a chocolate pumpkin. It's festive and mildly therapeutic.
Rating: 7.5/10 - Quality Ghirardelli chocolate in fun shapes. The caramel apple flavor is shy, but the overall experience is solid.
HALLOWEEN PEELERZ
Peelerz are a bit new to me, and I'm quickly becoming much less a stranger. I've tried a few of the fruit-shaped variety ranging from peach to banana, and I really haven't been disappointed yet. The gimmick is interesting—really seems like something that would've worked in the 80s and 90s that would've been long discontinued just for us nostalgia nuts to be talking about them today. So, you peel the outer skin and expose a slightly softer inside. What's not to love? They only get better when they’re Halloween and body part shaped.
I really enjoyed the pumpkins, and the zombie heads look a lot like Madball sculpts, but the body part variety are the ones I'm mostly excited about. Some of these look entirely too anatomically correct, and it's sending me. When you tear the body parts open, you expose this red gooey center, and it is SO satisfying. It's like performing surgery, but you get to eat your patient afterward—totally normal behavior.
The flavor (Raspberry-Strawberry) isn't so bad either. They have a bit of a floral taste up front, but it mellows out into a nice balance of each aforementioned flavor. Though let's be honest, when you're eating candy body parts, flavor is secondary to the sheer joy of ripping open a gummy toe.
Rating: 9/10 - The most fun you can have with candy. Excellent concept, satisfying execution, and disturbingly anatomically correct body parts. What more could you ask for?
That's all for now, boils and ghouls! Remember, we’ll be updating this list throughout the season as we unearth more spooky snacks and creepy confections. Keep checking back to see what other new Halloween junk food we manage to track down. Your candy bowl will thank you!