The Halloween candy contest results are in and the most popular treat among West Philly kids is… not Reese’s! Read on to find out what it is.

Penn students involved with the Halloween Data Project went to the Spruce Hill Halloween Tot parade and hung around during the trick-or-treating festivities and were able to record lots of creative costumes and kids’ opinions (266 in total!) on their favorite candy and least favorite candy. The students compiled all of their data into an interactive dashboard for kids and parents to see all the different answers in the community: West Philly Candy Dashboard (Panbo App was used to create it).

To personalize the dashboard for West Philly, the students created digital drawings, a mascot named Panbo that explains the data, and a thank you note at the very end that names every individual costume they saw. The dashboard itself presents the data collected in many different ways: a cluster map with each individual response, bar graphs showing the rankings of the candy, and interactive pie charts that help you see correlations between certain costumes and their favorite form and flavor of candy.

So, according to the collected data, the most popular West Philly candies are Skittles! To see more data, click here to access the interactive dashboard.

As part of this project, the students are also making special goodie bags with the top 4 candies, some fun stickers, and a QR code label that allows people to scan and access the data dashboard. This “West Philly Variety Pack” will be sold at the Clark Park Farmer’s Market this Saturday and also in a select few local businesses in the area. Proceeds from the sales will go towards the next step of the project—a community solar project where some West Philly trees will be decorated with holiday lights for this season’s upcoming festivities.