Ghoulish News for Ghosts & Goblins: Treats Are More Expensive

You want to hear a horror story?  Here's one: bad weather has driven up the price of pumpkins, peanut butter and sugar -- the primary ingredients of Halloween treats.

This is scary news for kids and their parents, not to mention retailers who have come to be big fans of a holiday that not too long ago was identified more with tricks than treats.

Americans are expected to spend $6.9 billion on Halloween this year, up 19 percent from last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

Why so much?  Well, it's partly because adults have been getting into the ghoulish spirit in a big way in recent years.  While using scare tactics to extort treats out of grown-ups is still kid stuff, adults are increasingly spending big bucks on decorating their homes, renting or buying elaborate costumes and stocking up on Holloween greeting cards.

All of this has made Halloween the second biggest holiday of the year for merchants, exceeded only by the Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza trifecta.  The average American now spends $72.31 on the holiday, the retail federation reports.

Why so popular?  Halloween started out as an end-of-October harvest festival, then picked up some ghoulish overtones perhaps imported from Mexico, where Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is celebrated November 1 and 2.  All those vampire shows on cable probably added a bit of juice to the blend.

And as for those treats, the National Confectioners Association estimates that American consumers will spend $2.3 billion buying chocolate and nonchocolate treats this Halloween season, up about 1 percent from last year, according to The Toledo Blade.

But prices for Snickers bars and gummy treats are likely to be a little bit higher this year (or the candy is likely to be a little bit smaller, which amounts to the same thing). 

Thanks to the farmer's eternal lament -- too much rain in some areas and not enough in others -- the price of sugar is at an all-time high and peanut butter is rising quickly as the lowly goober becomes a scarcer commodity, Susan Whiteside, a spokesman for the confectioners group, told the Blade.  

Does that mean lower spending on treats?  Possibly, but if you thought Occupy Wall Street was bad, just wait and see what happens if Americans try to short-change all those ghosts and vampires next Monday.