20 Halloween Candies: Vegan Picks and Label Caveats

Americans are expected to spend $4.1 billion on Halloween candy this year, and a weird amount of that candy is vegan without ever meaning to be.

Three animal-derived ingredients to watch for in fruity candy are gelatin, confectioner’s glaze and carmine.

Gelatin comes from animal collagen. Confectioner’s glaze is shellac, a resin secreted by the lac insect. Carmine is a red color made from insects, and it has to be listed by name.

Those are a useful first check, but a label won’t always tell you where every ingredient comes from.

Some picks have a maker vegan claim. Others have no obvious animal ingredients listed, but that alone doesn’t confirm every ingredient’s source.

Fun Dip, Bottle Caps, Spree and Sour Punch Straws still have unresolved additives. Recipes change by country and pack size, so flip the bag before you buy.

Here are 20 Halloween candies and the caveats worth knowing.

1. Sour Patch Kids

A gummy with no gelatin sounds like a typo. The US bag lists sugar, invert sugar, corn syrup and modified corn starch, then acids, flavor and four dyes.

The chew comes from corn starch. The UK version is a different recipe.

2. Swedish Fish

Same maker, same trick: the chew is starch, not gelatin. They were developed by Swedish candy maker Malaco and showed up in the US in the late 1950s.

One catch. The standard US bag lists carnauba wax, but some packs have used beeswax, so flip the bag and check.

3. Skittles

Skittles didn’t always make this list. They used to contain gelatin and dropped it around 2009.

Today’s US bag is sugar, corn syrup, palm kernel oil, starches, a long line of dyes and carnauba wax. Starburst, its Mars sibling, has long used gelatin, so check that label.

4. Twizzlers

Twizzlers are basically flavored wheat flour. The main ingredients in the twists are corn syrup, wheat flour, sugar and cornstarch, and the Strawberry Twists don’t list anything animal after that.

Hershey doesn’t call them vegan, and this only covers the strawberry twists. That flavor has been around since 1927, which is a long run for sweet red bread.

5. Red Vines

Red Vines don’t make you guess. The maker’s own FAQ asks “Are Red Vines Vegan?” and answers with a flat yes.

The same FAQ admits only the black ones are truly licorice, because those are the ones with licorice extract in them. Respect the honesty.

6. Smarties

The maker says it outright: classic US Smarties rolls are vegan. Smarties Squashies are made by another company and contain gelatin, so stick with the rolls. The whole list is dextrose, citric acid, calcium stearate, flavor and colors, and a roll runs 25 calories.

This is the US Smarties, the chalky little roll that’s sold as Rockets in Canada. The Smarties sold in Canada and the UK is a chocolate candy from a different company, and it has milk in it.

7. Dum Dums

No milk, no eggs and no gelatin on the list, which is a strong showing for a lollipop named Dum Dum. It’s sugar, corn syrup, a few acids, flavors and colors.

The maker says it uses either beet or cane sugar. Some US cane sugar gets filtered through bone char. Dum-Dums’ FAQ doesn’t specify how its sugar is filtered, so that one’s your call. I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

8. Airheads

Stick to the classic bars. Those are sugar, corn syrup, maltodextrin, dextrose, corn starch and palm oil, plus flavors and dyes.

The maker says Airheads don’t contain dairy, except the pops, which might. The Bites and gummies are a different story, so check the bag.

9. Dots

A gumdrop with no gelatin, and it’s been around since 1945. Corn syrup, sugar and modified food starch do the work.

The label says egg, milk and soy “may be present.” That’s a shared-equipment warning, not an ingredient.

10. Jujyfruits

This is the movie-theater candy that tries to leave with your fillings. The shine comes from carnauba wax, which comes off a palm leaf, not a bug.

Fun fact from the maker: the shapes mean nothing. The color tells you the flavor.

11. Chuckles

Grandparent candy. Corn syrup, sugar, cornstarch, flavors and colors, in cherry, lemon, lime, orange and licorice.

No gelatin, no glaze, no notes.

12. Fun Dip

Fun Dip is flavored sugar you eat with a spoon made of sugar. The cherry pouch lists dextrose, maltodextrin, and less than 2% of citric acid, calcium stearate, natural flavors and Red 40 Lake.

The one asterisk is calcium stearate. It can come from plant or animal fat and the maker doesn’t say which. Nothing animal is named on the label.

13. Pixy Stix

Dextrose, maltodextrin, citric acid, flavors and colors. That’s the entire candy.

14. Bottle Caps

Root beer, cola, cherry, grape and orange, all pressed out of the same dextrose base as Fun Dip. Same calcium stearate question too.

The label also says “May Contain Egg.” That’s a cross-contact warning. Egg isn’t an ingredient, but strict readers will want to know.

15. Spree

Here’s where one company’s candy aisle gets strange. The original Spree roll has no obvious animal ingredient named, but its calcium stearate source remains unconfirmed.

Runts, from the same maker, list carmine. Everlasting Gobstoppers list egg albumen. Three hard little fruit candies that look like cousins, and one swap in the recipe splits them.

16. Atomic Fireballs

This is the best argument for reading labels on the whole list. Atomic Fireballs are sugar, corn starch, flavor, carnauba wax, gum arabic and color.

Red Hots, from the same company, list confectioner’s glaze. Same cinnamon burn. One is coated in bug resin and one isn’t.

17. PEZ

PEZ answers the question you’d otherwise have to email them about. The US refills contain mono and diglycerides, which can go either way, and PEZ just tells you: the source is vegetable.

It also says the candy is the only product run on its line. PEZ doesn’t use the word vegan, but that’s more than most brands volunteer.

18. Ring Pops

Lactic acid sounds like milk and isn’t milk. It’s made by fermentation, and there’s no milk on the label.

The strawberry ring is sugar, corn syrup, lactic acid, sodium lactate, flavors and Red 40. The gummy version uses gelatin, so stick with the hard candy ring.

19. Chick-O-Stick

It sounds like poultry and contains none. It’s cane sugar, corn syrup, peanut butter and toasted coconut, the one candy here with actual peanut butter in it.

It’s also the least accidental of the bunch. The maker now prints “Vegan Friendly” on the bag, and notes it’s made in a facility that uses milk, egg and tree nuts.

20. Sour Punch Straws

I saved the shakiest one for last. The classic strawberry straws come from the same company as Red Vines, but there’s no vegan claim on these.

No obvious animal ingredient is named on the label, but that doesn’t confirm it’s vegan. The label lists corn syrup, wheat flour, sugar, three acids, flavor and color. Two ingredients, glycerine and glyceryl monostearate, can be plant or animal derived, and the maker doesn’t say which.

The Bottom Line

Candy corn, the most Halloween candy there is, fails three ways at once. Brach’s candy corn lists gelatin, shellac and honey.

Meanwhile a paper straw full of flavored sugar passes clean. Go figure.