15 Candy Additions To Elevate Your Next Bowl Of Popcorn

Baseball games and loaded hot dogs. The mall and a steaming, salty pretzel. Paris and baguettes. Certain cultural experiences just don't feel right without a corresponding delicious and unapologetically cliche food — and that's why movies and popcorn are an iconic duo. Whether you're wiping your brow and sneakily checking your bank account after shelling out for popcorn at AMC on a first date or popping a couple of bags in the microwave for a "Harry Potter" marathon in the living room, there's nothing that screams "movie night" like popcorn.

Everyone has their quirks when it comes to popcorn — some like it loaded up with lots of gooey butter, some want it tossed in caramel sauce (kettle corn, you have the floor), and some want it dressed up, like curry or truffle Parmesan popcorn. Yet another movie theater-specific quirk is pouring candy, like M&Ms, straight into the popcorn for a sweet and salty treat. 

Sacrilege? Actually, the combo of candy and popcorn is more common than the uninitiated might think. Sweet and salty foods have danced a long and thrilling tango throughout history, so it's no surprise that adding candy to popcorn has evolved so much that it's now common practice. The next time you visit a theater or turn on the tube for a movie marathon, consider shaking things up by pouring one of these candies into your popcorn.

When it comes to combining candy and popcorn, M&Ms are a classic choice. The multicolored candy-coated chocolates have been around since the 1940s, delighting the public with their simple, sweet flavor and bite-sized portability. They're readily accessible at theaters, but they're also easy to at the grocery store when you stock up for pre-movie marathon snacks (and you'll save an arm and a leg purchasing them outside of a venue).

The results of combining M&Ms and popcorn are similar to what happens when Reese's Pieces are thrown in the mix. The heat of the popcorn causes the candies' sugary outer shell to dissolve and the inner chocolate pieces to melt, leading to a brilliantly colored, warm, sticky, candied popcorn medley. It's like heaven in a bowl, and the perfect accompaniment for a movie night, whether you're catching a midnight screening of "Rocky Horror" or cozying up on the couch with your bestie to catch up on "Love Island." Try experimenting with different M&M's flavors to see what best tickles your fancy.

Structurally speaking, Skittles have a lot in common with M&M's: A hard, outer candy shell encasing a softer, sugary inside. Rather than chocolate, however, Skittles favor brighter, tropical fruit flavors in bags of technicolor candies, including grape, lime, strawberry, orange, and lemon flavors in the original pack. If your taste in candy leans more toward fruity than chocolatey or nutty, Skittles might be your popcorn's perfect match.

Again, you'll want to add your Skittles to the bag of popcorn while it's still as hot as possible to allow for maximum melting potential. Skittles melt when exposed to heat, and their multicolored casings turn a bag of plain white popcorn into a rainbow-streaked, sweet, and just slightly savory masterpiece when the two are combined. Try experimenting with different flavors of Skittles, from the aqua-colored tropical flavors to the face-puckering sour pack, and see which type best suits your taste buds.

One doesn't often see chocolate-coated cookie dough bites outside of the movie theater, but if you happen to come across them, snatch them up. Cookie dough bites consist of safe-to-eat chocolate chip cookie dough bits encased in a milk chocolate shell. The doughy center is soft and a perfect approximation of your grandma's famous chocolate chip cookie dough, minus the salmonella risk from raw eggs. Each individual bite is just a little smaller than the average popcorn kernel, making these bad boys a tasty, convenient, and innovative addition to popcorn.

As with any other chocolate-coated candy, the outer layer of milk chocolate enclosing cookie dough bites will melt away into dreamy, chocolate bliss when exposed to the heat of freshly popped popcorn. The dough too will soften, leaving soft bites of chocolate chip cookie dough to be consumed with each mouthful of chocolate-coated popcorn ... the perfect snack to share with a friend or loved one at the movie theater.

Chocolate. Peanut butter. Crunchy bites. Butterfinger Bites pack all the deliciousness of a full-size Butterfingers bar into fun, bite-sized pieces. While Nestle's Butterfinger BBs would be the ideal vessel for combining Butterfingers and popcorn due to their compact size, the candies were sadly discontinued decades ago. Luckily, Butterfinger Bites serve as an acceptable replacement for the well-loved BBs. Bites are larger than the BBs, consisting of crunchy peanut butter filling blanketed in milk chocolate.

Due to Butterfinger Bites' larger size, it's best to break them down into smaller chunks before adding them to your popcorn. This can be a difficult feat without making a mess, so if you're experimenting with this at home, a knife will come in handy. The end result is a glorious, goopy, chocolatey, peanut butter popcorn concoction that's sure to blow your friends away next movie night. Another plus? In a win for people with gluten sensitivity or intolerance, Butterfinger Bites are gluten-free and contain no artificial flavoring.

Shoutout to whoever first had the idea to dip crisp rice in chocolate. It's not a combination that would occur to most people, but Crunch bars have made quite the name for themselves in the candy world by combining these two disparate ingredients. The crispy chocolate bars also come in bite-sized form by the name of Buncha Crunch, which happens to be perfect popcorn pairing fodder. The milk chocolate-coated crispy rice candies are sweet, crunchy, and the ideal size for tossing into a bowl of popcorn.

It's the texture that sets Buncha Crunch against the crowd here — those crispy rice centers are no joke. Popcorn has its own type of crunch, but it's softer, so Buncha Crunch's snappy insides provide a nice textural contrast. As is the case with any chocolate-coated candy, Buncha Crunch's milk chocolate shell will melt as long as the popcorn is hot enough. Consider adding some extra salt to your popcorn in order to really bring out the flavors of the butter and chocolate.

Peanut butter and chocolate go together like Bonnie and Clyde, partners in delicious crime. Rich, sweet chocolate and nutty, creamy peanut butter actually combine to produce flavor via the Maillard reaction, a chemical reaction between reducing sugars and amino acids, which results in a unique and intriguing overall flavor. No one does chocolate and peanut butter better than Reese's in the candy world. While Reese's Pieces make an excellent addition to popcorn, lovers of traditional Reese's cups are sure to enjoy the addition of Reese's mini cups to their next bowl.

Reese's mini cups are essentially the larger-sized cups in miniature: Tiny cups of milk chocolate, peanuts, sugar, salt, and a handful of additional ingredients. Reese's Pieces contain no chocolate, so the cups provide a very different experience — and the miniature size allows them to melt and integrate into popcorn far more efficiently than the full-sized cups (although if you can only get your hands on the regular size, they're pretty easy to break up into smaller pieces).

Goobers are kind of an oddity in the candy world. Unless you or someone you know is a Goobers fanatic, you may not have heard of these chocolatey, peanutty candies at all. Goobers are quite simple in their composition. They're just chocolate-covered dry-roasted peanuts, so if you're curious about these sweet treats but unable to find them in stores, any sort of chocolate-covered peanut will do. In terms of flavor, the peanut and chocolate combo makes Goobers similar to Reese's products, but with whole, shelled peanuts being used, they're quite different texturally.

Goobers contain less of the sugary sweetness of, say, peanut M&M's and the fact that the peanuts are dry-roasted prior to being doused in chocolate gives them a slightly different flair than most other peanut-forward candies. When combined with popcorn, the outer layer of milk chocolate will begin to melt into the kernels while the peanuts themselves remain whole (and warm ... and salty ...). Make sure to pick some up the next time you're hitting a matinee, or grab a box to take home for your next movie night.