Halloween Candy-Maxing: The Rules of the Haul

John Russell • Oct 23, 2026

Gentlemen,

Every October a man is handed a plastic pumpkin and a kid in a costume and told to go walk the neighborhood. He should. It is the one night of the year when every house on the street hands out free product to anyone who shows up with a bag, and most of the people collecting it are seven years old and have no plan at all. You have a plan. Here it is.

Rule one: the pillowcase

A plastic pumpkin holds about a fistful and quits by the third porch, and then the kid is carrying it under his arm like a football while candy falls out the top. A pillowcase holds a season. Let him carry the pumpkin for the photos at the first house, then swap at the corner. Nobody has ever been turned away from a door for carrying a pillowcase. If anything the old-timers respect it.

A man carrying a full white pillowcase over his shoulder walks a dark sidewalk beside a small dinosaur holding a plastic pumpkin, porch lights and jack-o'-lanterns ahead.

Rule two: the route

You do not wander. You start at the house that gave out full-size bars last year and work outward from there in rings, like a search party, and you skip the cul-de-sac with the one porch light because the math does not work. The house with the fog machine and the twelve-foot skeleton spent real money this month and will be generous. The dark house with a bowl on the step is a self-serve station: take two, leave the sign alone, you are not an animal.

A hand-drawn neighborhood map on a kitchen table under a desk lamp, houses circled in red marker with rings drawn out from the first one, a flashlight and a beer beside it.

Rule three: the costume does a job

It fits over a jacket, because it is going to be forty degrees by eight o'clock, and it has pockets, and you can jog in it when the kid breaks into a run. If the costume takes two hands to hold up, it is a man purse with a theme. Dan W. found that out as the Big Bad Wolf, and the jury was not kind.

A man in a puffy jacket with a cheap cape tied over it jogs down a leaf-covered sidewalk after a small costumed kid running toward a lit porch.

Rule four: the Dad Tax

Fifteen percent, collected at the kitchen table, in full view, before the trading opens. This is a service charge. You planned the route, you supplied the pillowcase, and you walked four miles in a jacket under a costume. Peanut butter cups are taxed first. Nobody in the history of the holiday has fought over the ones in the orange and black wrappers, so leave those for the kid and tell him he got a deal.

The Dad Tax: a pillowcase of Halloween candy dumped on the kitchen table under the lamp, a man's hand gathering the peanut butter cups, the kid's plastic pumpkin and a wolf mask looking on.

Rule five: the trades hold up in court

A trade is final. One full-size bar is worth three fun-size, a box of raisins is worth nothing and the man offering it knows it, and the sour stuff trades at a premium to the one kid on the block who eats it, so find him early. Anybody who reopens a trade after the bags are sealed has a hearing coming on the Revoked Report.

A trade at the kitchen table: one hand holds out a full-size bar in gold foil, the other pushes three small orange-wrapped candies back, and a referee's hand lies flat on the wood between them.

Rule six: if you are the house

Full-size bars, or at least the real ones. The single pretzel bag and the toothbrush from the dentist get noticed, and the kids keep a list, and their dads keep a longer one, and that list decides whether your house is the first ring or the last one next year.

From the open front door: a wooden bowl of full-size bars in plain foil on a stool, a glowing pumpkin, orange lights on the railing, and three trick-or-treaters on the steps seen from behind.

Run it this way and you walk home with a pillowcase over your shoulder and a kid who thinks he did it himself. Run it the other way and somebody files on you, and the docket is already busy this week: there is a man on his roof hanging Christmas lights and a man who put Thriller on four times ahead of you.

So here is the question for the members. What is your tax rate, and what is the one candy you will not trade? Tell us in the comments. And if you are running the operation without a card in your wallet, put your name on one.