Every August, Hershey previews the candy that’s about to take over your grocery store’s seasonal aisle, and most years the news is a formality: the same fun-size favorites you already know, back on shelves a little earlier than the year before. Not this time. When The Hershey Company unwrapped its 2026 Halloween portfolio on August 13, the detail that actually stopped people mid-scroll wasn’t a new candy shape. It was a bag of cheese puffs shaped like ghosts.
A Witch Joins the Ghost on the Wrapper
Start with the part that actually is candy, because it’s a genuinely fun update. Kit Kat Count & Witch reworks the classic wafer bar into two breakaway spooky shapes — a witch silhouette joining the returning ghost-adjacent lineup — sold in fun-size packs alongside regular bars, king-size bars, and 6-packs, according to Hershey’s press release. It’s a small thing, snapping a Kit Kat finger along a witch’s hat instead of a plain rectangle, but it’s the kind of detail that makes a candy bowl feel like it was actually designed for the holiday rather than just relabeled for it.
Hershey is also bringing back Cookies ‘N’ Creme Fangs in snack size, a fang-shaped bar that hadn’t appeared since 2024, per the same release. And Reese’s Pumpkins return in their familiar molded shape, with a Reese’s Pumpkin Bowl — a reusable pumpkin container holding 110 snack-size pieces — sold as an Amazon exclusive, according to Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery’s coverage of the lineup. None of it reinvents the format. It’s Hershey doing what Hershey does well: taking chocolate you already crave and giving it a seasonal costume.
The Real Shock: Hershey Goes Salty
Here’s the part of the announcement that actually is new. For the first time in the company’s history, Hershey’s Halloween lineup includes salty snacks — not a chocolate-covered pretzel dressed up for October, but full snack-aisle categories like puffed cheese snacks and popcorn wearing Halloween packaging. Katie DeCapria, Hershey’s Head of Hersheyween, framed the expansion as strategy rather than novelty, telling the company’s newsroom that “our Halloween leadership is earned long before consumers walk into a store.” Translation: Hershey wants to own the seasonal shelf before shoppers even decide what they’re buying, and that means showing up in categories it never touched before.
The new salty roster, confirmed by both Hershey’s release and Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery, is bigger than a single product:
Pirate’s Booty Boos & Bites puffs the brand’s aged white cheddar snack into ghost and monster shapes, while Pirate’s Booty Trick-or-Treat packages the same cheddar puffs into individually portioned bags built for handing out. Reese’s Sweet & Salty takes the peanut butter brand somewhere it hasn’t gone before, dipping animal crackers, pretzels, and filled pretzels rather than a chocolate cup. SkinnyPop Halloween Packs put the brand’s popcorn into individually wrapped seasonal portions, and LesserEvil — a better-for-you snack brand under the Hershey umbrella — makes its Hersheyween debut with three items at once: LesserEvil Pumpkin Spice Popcorn, spiced with cinnamon for a fall-flavored twist; LesserEvil Spooky Popcorn, packaged for the holiday; and LesserEvil Spooky Spaceballs, the brand’s cheese corn puffs in festive dress.
If you’ve ever hosted a Halloween party and watched half your guests bypass the candy bowl for the chip bag, this is Hershey acknowledging what you already knew: trick-or-treat night was never a purely sweet occasion for everyone in the room.
Sour Strips and the Rest of the Sweet Side
The candy side of the portfolio isn’t standing still either. Sour Strips mark the brand’s first-ever appearance in a Hershey seasonal lineup, landing inside a new Sweets Assortment Stand-Up Bag alongside Twizzlers Strawberry and Jolly Rancher Gummies Trickies Minis — a chewy format built around mismatched colors and flavors that don’t match what you’d expect, according to the trade coverage. Fruit-shaped Jolly Rancher Gummies Minis and a broader Jolly Rancher Gummies Assortment round out the chewy category, while the Hershey Halloween All-Stars box gathers 18 full-size, limited-edition shapes — including Reese’s Pumpkins, a Kit Kat Ghost Toast bar, and the new Jolly Rancher Trickies — into one assortment for anyone who wants a taste of everything without buying a dozen separate bags.
Taken together, it’s more than 20 new seasonal items, a number Hershey ties directly to a shift it’s watching in how people celebrate: earlier starts, more occasions, and a holiday that now stretches well past a single night of trick-or-treating, per the newsroom announcement. Whether or not a witch-shaped Kit Kat changes your own routine, the salty-snack move is the one worth watching. Hershey has spent a century teaching people what Halloween candy looks like. Now it’s betting the same crowd wants a cheddar puff shaped like a ghost sitting right next to the chocolate — and if this year’s shelf is any indication, your Halloween bowl is about to get a lot more interesting than orange and black wrappers.
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