Missouri Chooses Favorite Chocolate Candy Bar

Which Chocolate Candy Bars Are Most Popular in Missouri?

The Cherry Mash might be the candy Missouri is best known for, but when it comes to the state’s most popular chocolate treat, the winner is the Milky Way bar.

With National Chocolate Day on Oct. 28 and Halloween three days later, BetMissouri.com took a break from covering Missouri sports betting and researched the most popular chocolate candies in each state. We started with Statista’s research on the most consumed chocolate candy, then utilized Google Trends to search the level of interest in each from Oct. 1, 2022 to October 18, 2023. We then determined the Top 3 chocolate candies of each state. Maybe this will make your Halloween shopping easier.

Most Popular Chocolate Candy Bars by State

State	Winner	Second	Third
Alabama	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Kit Kat	Snickers
Alaska	Snickers	M&M’s	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Arizona	Kit Kat	Snickers	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Arkansas	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Snickers	M&M’s
California	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Kit Kat	Milky Way
Colorado	M&M’s	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Connecticut	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	M&M’s	Twix
Delaware	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Milky Way	Snickers
Florida	Milky Way	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Georgia	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Twix	Kit Kat
Hawaii	M&M’s	Twix	Snickers
Idaho	Snickers	Kit Kat	Twix
Illinois	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Milky Way	Snickers
Indiana	Snickers	Milky Way	Butterfinger
Iowa	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Kit Kat	Snickers
Kansas	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	M&M’s	Kit Kat
Kentucky	Butterfinger	Kit Kat	Twix
Louisiana	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	M&M’s	Hershey’s Milk Chocolate
Maine	Kit Kat	Twix	M&M’s
Maryland	Milky Way	Snickers	Butterfinger
Massachusetts	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Snickers	M&M’s
Michigan	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Twix
Minnesota	Kit Kat	Butterfinger	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Mississippi	Kit Kat	M&M’s	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Missouri	Milky Way	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Kit Kat
Montana	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Twix	Hershey’s Milk Chocolate
Nebraska	Milky Way	Twix	Snickers
Nevada	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Twix
New Hampshire	M&M’s	Snickers	Butterfinger
New Jersey	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Milky Way	Snickers
New Mexico	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	M&M’s
New York	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Twix
North Carolina	Snickers	M&M’s	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
North Dakota	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Hershey’s Milk Chocolate	Kit Kat
Ohio	M&M’s	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Milky Way
Oklahoma	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Twix	Kit Kat
Oregon	Twix	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Butterfinger
Pennsylvania	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Milky Way	Twix
Rhode Island	Snickers	Twix	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
South Carolina	Kit Kat	M&M’s	Hershey’s Milk Chocolate
South Dakota	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Snickers
Tennessee	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Kit Kat	Twix
Texas	Snickers	M&M’s	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Utah	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Milky Way	Twix
Vermont	Kit Kat	Twix	M&M’s
Virginia	Twix	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	M&M’s
Washington	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Butterfinger
West Virginia	Snickers	Kit Kat	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Wisconsin	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Twix	Butterfinger
Wyoming	M&M’s	Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups	Hershey’s Milk Chocolate

Show Me a Milky Way, Missouri Says

In terms of Missouri popularity, the Milky Way was followed by the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and the Kit Kat bar.

The Milky Way was the No. 1 choice of four states in our research, with Missouri joining Florida, Maryland and Nebraska. Reese’s was numero uno in 19 states and finished in the top three in 40 of the nation’s 50 states. Americans love a little peanut butter with their chocolate – or is that chocolate with their peanut butter? Americans also love to break off a piece of their Kit Kat bars, with the mix of chocolate and wafer first choice in 12 states, and top three in 26.

The other most popular chocolate concoctions in the country are the Snickers bar, Twix, M&M’s, Butterfinger, and the iconic Hershey’s milk chocolate bar. All but the Butterfinger – which was once part of the Nestlé empire and is now from the Ferrero Group – come from Big Chocolate. Reese’s, Kit Kat and Hershey are in the Hershey family (although Kit Kat is a Nestlé brand outside America and was created by Rowntree’s of York in the United Kingdom in 1935). M&M’s, Milky Way, Snickers and Twix are part of the massive Mars corporation.

How Milky Way Bars Got Started

Missouri’s favorite, the Milky Way, was created by Frank C. Mars and first sold in 1924 – so get ready for the Milky Way Centennial, candy lovers. It is the oldest original Mars creation still being manufactured. A combination of chocolate, caramel and nougat, the bar was created to mimic the taste of a chocolate milk shake.

Although the Milky Way was created in Minneapolis, the chocolate for the coating was supplied by Hershey’s, which also supplied the chocolate for the original Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (introduced in 1928). Reese’s, though, was located in Hershey, Pa., and later merged with Hershey. In its first year of existence, the Milky Way bar grossed $800,000, which, in 1924, was real money, especially when a bar sold for less than a nickel. Today the Milky Way sells close to 100 million bars just in the U.S.

It’s not surprising, as studies claim that Americans eat about 11 pounds of chocolate per year – 20% of Americans supposedly eat chocolate every day – and spend more than $7 billion on the sweet stuff. Honestly, that number seems low. Have you ever seen a Walmart around Halloween? It looks like a billion dollars’ worth of candy in each store.

Interestingly, in our divided population, there’s no logic behind a state’s favorite chocolate candies – geography, topography, politics are all irrelevant to America’s collective sweet tooth. Peanut Butter Cups are No. 1 in California and No. 1 in Alabama, because we really all are more alike than different. The only clear geographical fact is that the Hershey bar is a favorite in North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. In the plains they like their chocolate plain.

Stay close to BetMissouri.com for stories of cultural interest such as this, updates on sports betting legislation and for Missouri sports betting promo codes.

Author

Howard Gensler

@DNTattle

Howard Gensler is a contributing writer at BetMissouri.com. Howard is a veteran journalist who’s worked at the Philadelphia Daily News, TV Guide and the Philadelphia Inquirer and is a founding editor of bettorsinsider.com.