Top 15 Favorite Seasonal Snacks

Over the past few years, the grocery market has been completely saturated with special seasonal flavored items. Top companies churn out more and more of them every year because consumers love them. Pumpkin products line the shelves in fall, and gingerbread and peppermint rule the Chrismtas roost, while carrot cake and jelly beans take over around Easter time. Fall is my personal favorite, as I love Pumpkin flavored things. With that time of the year approaching once again, I decided to think of every possible seasonal snack I have ever tried, and come up with all my favorites. The number of items I could think of was over 50, and I decided to whittle the list down to 15 for this list. Even though the fall items are my favorite I tried to even it out between the different seasons for this countdown. So here we go.

15. Starburst Jelly Beans Crazy Beans (Easter Product): Every year around Easter, Starburst releases three separate Jelly beans varieties, tropical, original, and Crazy beans. While the other two are good, the crazy beans are the best. These are two separate flavors in one, as the outer shell has its own distinct flavor and the inside filling also has its own flavor. My personal favorite is Grape-ade, grape flavored shell with lemonade flavored filling.

14. Fruit Punch Oreos: (Summer Product): These were a new item for 2014. For many people an oreo with fruit punch flavored creme doesn't sound very appealing, and I was skeptical at first also, but these ended up being absolutely delicious.

13. Red Velvet M&M's (Valentines Day Product): M&Ms is one of the top brands when it comes to seasonal products, as they have several, a few of which will be seen later on this list. In this one, they perfectly capture the complex flavor of Red Velvet Cake in M&M form.

12. Ghiradelli Peppermint Bark (Christmas Product): These little squares of peppermint Bark have a very refined, subtle peppermint flavor. I am not a huge mint person, and many peppermint products that come out over Christmas time are too overpowering, making this perfect treat stand apart.

11. Gingerbread Peeps (Christmas Product): Peeps are no longer just an Easter staple, as this marhsmallow product was infused with a perfect gingerbread flavor for Christmas. I dont know how they did it, but they captured the gingerbread flavor perfectly.

10. Cookie Dough Donut (Valentines Day Product): It is kind of a strange paring, but over the past few years, cookie dough flavored products have been related to Valentines Day. This cookie dough donut from Dunkin Donuts is like crack. The donut itself is just the usual yeast donut, but the cookie dough filling is so gooey and delicious, that it is able to crack the top 10.

9. Russell Stover Carrot Cake Egg (Easter Product): Russell Stover is a titan when it comes to easter products. They always come out with about 50 different varities of chocolate eggs with a different filling from birthday cake to orange creme, to brownie batter. The best among them is this egg with carrot cake filling.

8. Ben and Jerrys Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream (Fall Product): Pumpkin cheesecake is really good, but pumpkin cheesecake in ice cream form? heavenly

7. Candy Corn Starbursts (Fall Product): This is candy corn texture and shape with a starburst flavor. Much better than actual starbursts.

6. Carrot Cake M&Ms (Easter Product): Another inclusion from M&Ms, and another carrot cake flavored item. One thing Ive learned is actual carrot cake is gross, but in candy form it is actually quite good.

5. Gingerbread Oreos (Christmas Product): The best seasonal Oreo out there.

4. Dunkin Donuts Pumpkin Donut (Fall Product): This is sort of a big one for me, as this was the first pumpkin flavored treat I ever tried and got me into the pumpkin flavored game. Many of the treats on this list are relatively new, but Pumpkin donuts have been released every fall for as long as I can remember. And its no wonder why, they are amazing and people love them.

3. Candy Corn M&Ms (Fall Product): I already have a bag of these in my pantry, as I couldnt wait for them to hit the shelved and ordered a bag off amazon. The best of the seasonal M&M products, these dont exactly taste just like candy corn, but thats ok because candy corn doesnt taste that good. Its hard to describe exactly the taste, all that I can say is it is amazing.

2. Pillsbury Pumpkin Cookies (Fall Product): These were a new one in 2013 and I am eagerly anticipating these coming back. The best thing about these were how versatile they are. You can have them as the plain cookie and they are amazing. You can spread cream cheese icing on them and they are also amazing. You can opt to not bake them and eat the raw cookie dough and they are amazing. Or my favorite, you can put the cookie dough for the microwave for about five seconds and eat it as warm cookie dough. Whatever of the four options you choose, you cant go wrong.

1. Root Beer Floats (Summer Product): A little bit of a twist at the top spot as its not a company released product, instead just a good old fashioned homemade root beer float. As a result, it can be a year round product and is not exclusively limited to the summer, but at its heart, Root Beer Floats are a summer thing, and they smooth and creamy and everything that's right in the world.

Ranking Candy Bars

Over the past few months I have taken on the task of trying almost every one of Americas most popular Candy Bars. Now that I have finally tried all of the ones I am interested in, I have decided to come here and rank them from top to bottom. Some of these are ones I had never tried before this endeavor, some are ones that I have loved since a kid, and some are ones that I thought I hated and therefore had shunned for years, only to discover they were absolutely delicious. These are strictly chocolate bars, so no skittles, mike and ikes etc, and I also left out Reeses Pieces because I dont think they count as a candy bar either. Here we go

20. Hersheys Bar: There is nothing bad about a plain old Hersheys bar, but there is nothing all that good either. It is pretty much just plain milk chocolate and nothing else, and if I wanted just plain milk chocolate I would go for dove instead of Hersheys, because this bar has a certain waxy texture. Not a bar I really plan on getting again.

19. Crunch Bar: This is a candy bar I throughly enjoyed as a kid, but just couldnt get into this time around. The crunchy filling was just weird to me with a weird texture.

18. Mini Reese's: I swear Mini Reese's taste way different than regular reese's. The chocolate far outweighs the peanut butter and it is just nasty.

17. Butterfinger: I don't get this one. If I did this countdown six months ago, Butterfinger would have ranked in the top 5, it was one of the candy bars I routinely ate, but I guess I overdid because all of a sudden I had one and was absolutely disgusted, to the point where I would gag whenever I would even think about eating a Butterfinger. I went from loving to hating this bar overnight, fickle tastebuds.

16. PB Twix: This twix bar replaces caramel with peanut butter and replaces the normal white biscuit with chocolate cookie.I found the peanut butter to be too dry and the chocolate cookie to taste kind of gross. I didnt even finish this one.

15. Reese's Nutrageous: On paper I thought this would be a snickers bar with reeses Peanut butter, but in reality there was wayyyyy to many peanuts in this.

14. Reese's Fast Break: This is basically a Milky way bar with Reese's Peanut Butter instead of Caramel. Unfortunately, like with Mini Reeses, the chocolate taste dominates over the peanut butter and nougat.

13. Butterfinger Cups: Reese's peanut butter cups with butterfinger filling instead of Peanut Butter. The filling in this is much smoother and less crunchy and much less potent than a regular butterfinger, so I still somewhat enjoy this one, but not enough to buy it regularly.

12. Reese's Sticks: This is basically a kit kat bar with Reeses Peanut Buter sandwiched inside. it tastes pretty good, but the peanut butter taste was too weak.

11. Butterfinger Crisp: Same as the Reese's Sticks, but with butterfinger filling instead of the Peanut Butter. Not bad, but nothing special.

10. Milky Way Caramel: This is nothing more than caramel wrapped in chocolate. So simple and straightforward, but so good.

9. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups: One of the all time classics, but it failed to fully resonate with me. It was very good, but again I was left wanting for more peanut butter and less chocolate.

8. Snickers PB: A snickers bar with peanut butter, really good, but the peanut butter flavor wasnt all that strong so it just missed the top echelon

7. White Kit Kat: Kit Kats with white chocolate instead of Milk Chocolate. Delicious and creamy.

Now that we have reached the top 6, these are the ones that I absolutely fell in love with, and would repeat but in a heeartbeat. Numbers 6-3 are all 9.9 out of 10s and were extremely tough to rank but I did my best, but there is very little that separates them. The top two were clear to me, both perfect 10 out of 10s, and it was hard to pick one to be number one, so they are basically 1A and 1B.

6. White Reese's: The sweetness of white chocolate blends in so perfectly with the peanut butter, creating a creamy, delicious treat.

5. Kit Kat: Another one of the all time classics. Everyone knows it, and everyone loves it.

4. Twix: The classic Twix bar with the cookie crumble. Pretty simple, yet rediculously delicious.

3. Milky Way: This was a Candy Bar I was hesitant to try. I hadn't had one in at least 10 years because I always considered them kind of gross, I dont know why but they just werent on my radar. These are basically Snickers Bars with Peanuts. No peanuts takes away the crunch and makes them so perfectly chewy and smooth. the Caramel, nougat and chocolate all blend together in your mouth creating something perfect.

2. Reese's Big Cups: My gripe with pretty much every other Reese's product on this list is not enough peanut butter, too much chocolate. Well big cups do away with that completely, as this is complete peanut butter overload, and it is nothing short of perfect. I am absolutely addicted to these, and indulge in one about once a week. Just look at all the peanut butter inside one of these babies, its incredible.

1. Snickers: The perfect candy Bar. Crunchy peanuts, gooey caramel, smooth, creamy nougat, and a simple milk chocolate not too overpowering, but effective enough. Perfection.