BRITAIN'S SWEET TOOTH EXPOSED.
The American sweets, snacks and drinks Britain can't stop searching for — and what Candymail customers actually choose.
From Takis and Nerds to Reese's and Sour Patch Kids, we analysed UK search behaviour alongside twelve months of Candymail customer data to uncover Britain's imported-food favourites, emerging crazes and seasonal obsessions.
The headlines
Short on time? These are the numbers worth knowing.
Takis searches per month
The biggest search term in our American candy, snack and drink sample.
Cheez-It surge
Search interest rose sharply over three months.
Candy Corn searches
October turns this American Halloween staple into a huge UK search trend.
Sour Patch Kids
Candymail customers bought more than a metric tonne during the measured period.
Laffy Taffy
Standard ropes sold would stretch roughly 26 football pitches.
Reese's vs Nerds
Reese's bought weighed roughly twice as much as Nerds, despite Nerds attracting far more searches.
Britain's appetite for American treats is getting much more interesting.
What was once a niche built around a handful of famous chocolate bars now stretches from fiercely spicy snacks and sour sweets to seasonal marshmallows, limited-edition flavours and products shoppers have only just discovered online.
Search behaviour tells us what catches Britain's attention. Candymail customer data gives us another perspective: what people actually choose once curiosity turns into a purchase.
Britain's most searched American treats
The ranking isn't dominated by chocolate. Spicy snacks, fizzy drinks and sour sweets all command serious UK attention.
Google Keyword Planner · United Kingdom · Average monthly searches · September 2025 to August 2026.
Takis attracted more than three times as many average monthly searches as Reese's in our sample.
Halloween, Easter and sudden snack obsessions
Average search volume only tells part of the story. Some imported treats become dramatically more popular at particular moments of the year.
Candy Corn shows just how strongly American Halloween culture travels. Search interest surges when spooky season arrives.
Peeps searches
UK curiosity around the American marshmallow favourite builds well before Easter.
Cheez-It searches
One of the clearest late-period surges in the dataset.
Halloween Candy Corn and Easter Peeps show how US confectionery traditions increasingly generate their own bursts of UK demand.
The American snacks suddenly getting hotter
Search growth can reveal the products gaining momentum before they become the obvious favourites.
CHEEZ-IT
+174%three-month search growth
OLD BRAND. NEW OBSESSION.Cheez-It and Chips Ahoy have been familiar to American shoppers for years, but UK search behaviour shows established brands can suddenly find an entirely new audience.
What Britain searches for isn't always what shoppers choose
Google shows us curiosity. Candymail's own customer data shows what happens when shoppers are faced with hundreds of imported sweets and flavours.
Rather than publish detailed commercial sales figures, we converted twelve months of selected customer purchases into approximate physical product weight.
More than a metric tonne of Sour Patch Kids-branded sweets bought by Candymail customers.
Nerds attracts more than twice the average monthly searches of Reese's, yet Candymail customers bought roughly twice as much Reese's by product weight.
Candy-only product-weight calculations exclude drinks and products where a reliable labelled pack weight could not be established. Totals are therefore conservative.
Candy Maths
Kilograms are technically useful. These comparisons are much easier to picture.
TONNE
More than 1,000kg of Sour Patch Kids-branded sweets.
OF TAFFY ROPE
Standard 22.9g ropes sold by Candymail would stretch roughly 26 football pitches end to end.
REESE'S
PEEPS
404kg+ of Nerds is roughly the same weight as more than 15,500 standard 26g Nerds Ropes.
What flavours are winning?
The data points to a few clear types of imported-food obsession.
What Britain's candy cravings tell us
Britain likes bold flavours.
Spicy and sour products feature heavily among the imported treats attracting UK attention.
American seasons increasingly travel too.
Candy Corn and Peeps show how Halloween and Easter can create distinctive bursts of UK demand.
Google curiosity and the shopping basket aren't the same.
Some brands attract enormous search audiences while different favourites emerge once people start exploring products.
Old American favourites can become new British trends.
Cheez-It and Chips Ahoy show established products finding fresh waves of UK attention.
Discovery is part of the appeal.
Unusual flavours, seasonal releases and products not permanently available in ordinary UK supermarkets retain a strong sense of novelty.
Enough data.
Time for sweets.
Explore the sweets and snacks behind Britain's latest cravings.
How we made The Candymail Candy Trends Report 2026
Search figures are based on Google Keyword Planner data for the United Kingdom covering September 2025 to August 2026. Unless a specific month is stated, figures shown are average monthly searches for the individual keyword.
Candymail customer analysis covers product sales between 26 September 2025 and 26 September 2026.
Detailed company revenue and unit-sales totals have not been published. Selected comparisons instead use approximate physical product weight.
Product-weight estimates were calculated using labelled pack weights available in Candymail product data. Products without a reliable usable weight were excluded from the relevant calculations.
Drink products were excluded from candy-only weight comparisons, meaning several published totals are deliberately conservative.
The Laffy Taffy distance calculation uses standard 22.9g ropes and an approximate rope length. The football-pitch comparison uses a 105-metre playing length.
The Nerds Rope comparison uses a standard 26g rope for the approximate weight equivalence.
Candymail visibility and review references are based on Salience Search Marketing's 2025 Confectionery Industry Analysis .