2 min read- Recent research found that Peeps are the most popular Easter candy in the United States.
- Other top Easter candies include chocolate bunnies, Jelly Belly, Swedish Fish, and Reese’s Eggs.
- Despite their cult following, Cadbury Creme Eggs ranked last in the study.
Ask anyone how they feel about Peeps and you’re almost guaranteed a strong opinion. People either love them or hate them—there is no in between. Although it’s one of the more divisive candies on the market, the little marshmallow chicks still fill up Easter baskets every year. According to research from Innerbody, Peeps are still the most popular Easter candy in the United States, drawing 50 percent more interest than the next most popular option, the classic chocolate bunny.
After Halloween, Easter is one of the biggest candy-buying holidays in the country. But instead of dark colors and sinister sweets, the season swaps in purples, oranges, and other pastel colors across candies like jelly beans and an assortment of bunny-shaped items. So, to identify which of those sweets are most popular, Innerbody analyzed Google Trends data and identified the candies by relative search interest.
Not only did it reveal Peeps as the most sought-after Easter candy, but they also dominated the most states geographically. Seventeen states ranked Peeps as their top Easter candy, especially in an “interior belt stretching from Kansas and Oklahoma through West Virginia, up into Pennsylvania.”
The factory where Peeps are made is located in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, so it tracks that the cutesy candy would have a strong hold in the area.
The other popular Easter candies that couldn’t quite outshine the chick-shaped mallows include chocolate bunnies, Jelly Belly, Swedish Fish, and Reese’s Eggs, in that order. Perhaps the most shocking piece of information is that Cadbury Creme Eggs came in last place in the ranking of Easter candy popularity.
What has the world come to?!