17 Movie Theater Snacks, Ranked Worst To Best

You might expect the movie theater business to be all about the films, but most theaters actually make their money from selling food. That won't come as a surprise to anyone who's watched most of a paycheck vanish while buying snacks for their family, but it underscores how important food is to the overall movie experience. We all know concessions are much more expensive than what they cost in a store, but we still happily fork over the extra dough so we can munch at the movies.

Snack preferences are deeply personal, and we often stick with the same candies we've been eating since we were little kids. We don't want to yuck anyone else's yum, but some movie snacks are objectively better than others. Which treats are worth spending your hard-earned cash and which should be thrown into the trash? This guide will prevent you from wasting your time on snacks that don't deserve you.

We've all heard that eating raw cookie dough might not be the safest snacking option, but it tastes even better than baked cookies so it's difficult to say no. Cookie Dough Bites promise to give us all the flavor of cookie dough without the potential for salmonella or E. coli poisoning. They should be incredible, which makes their mediocrity profoundly disappointing. By removing eggs and raw flour, Cookie Dough Bites also remove everything worthwhile about the dough-eating experience. 

The cookie dough filling tastes more of chemicals than anything else, and the bites are so small that they can't use real chocolate chips, depriving us of the joy of crunching down on chunks of chocolate. The milk chocolate coating tastes like nothing and does little to redeem the sins of the filling. Food scientists have blessed humanity with many tasty gifts, from Hot Pockets to instant ramen, but they have not figured out how to make a tasty, shelf-stable cookie dough substitute.

In these trying times, one thing we can all agree on is that we love pizza. When it's prepared from scratch by skilled hands, pizza is one of humanity's all-time greatest food inventions. Unless you're ordering from one of those new-fangled theaters with real restaurants inside, movie theater pizza is neither made fresh nor crafted with proper technique. Instead, you're most likely going to get a frozen pizza that's been reheated in the microwave (or if you're lucky, a convection oven). Some frozen pizza tastes okay, but theater concession stands tend to source the cheapest food possible. That means you're likely to get bargain-basement cafeteria-style pizza at most multiplexes. To add insult to injury, you have to pay exorbitant movie theater prices for something you could eat at home for a couple of bucks. If you're craving pizza, go to a pizzeria before your movie instead of splurging on overpriced DiGiorno.

Nestle Sno-Caps are an old-fashioned type of candy called a nonpareil. According to Merriam-Webster, nonpareil means "having no equal," so the name of these candies suggests that their taste is unmatchable. Maybe if they had a less arrogant name, they would benefit from lower expectations. Unlike many movie candies, Sno-Caps are made with semi-sweet rather than milk chocolate. We love a nice, bittersweet dark chocolate, but the cheap stuff in Sno-Caps doesn't have much flavor. The white sprinkles on top provide a nice crunch, but they also taste like nothing. Sno-Caps have less fat than other popular chocolate brands, but you're not usually thinking about health when you're eating candy at the movies. This snack is definitely coasting on its history as a classic theater option. There's a reason you don't see people munching on Sno-Caps when they're not catching a flick. Modern consumers need something more exciting than crunchy sugar beads to want to spend a bunch of calories on a box of candy.

According to OldTimeCandy.com, Mike and Ikes have been around since 1940. Unlike many candies from the first half of the 20th century, Mikes and Ikes still taste acceptable to modern palates, although they're not going to knock your socks off. Unlike many multi-colored "fruit" candies (looking at you, SweeTarts), the colors actually signify noticeable differences in flavor. You can even buy single-flavor boxes, although your local cinema probably only stocks the original mixed package. This candy has a unique texture, with a crisp, slightly grainy sugar shell yielding to a soft interior. The fruit flavoring doesn't taste real per se, but it doesn't taste artificial in a way that detracts from the eating experience. They're pleasant, and they don't weigh you down — and it's easy to eat way too many of them without realizing it. Mike and Ikes are a good choice for mindlessly inhaling while you watch the latest blockbuster.

Pretzel bites vary from theater to theater, but normally they consist of miniature nuggets of pretzel dough that are baked and then served with a nacho cheese dipping sauce. Movie theater nacho cheese shines in this context, adding unctuous creaminess to the fluffy, salty pretzels. Even better, it's not a huge deal if you run out of the cheese because pretzel bites taste much better on their own than stale tortilla chips do. If you're lucky, your local theater might even deep fry their pretzel bites instead of baking them.

The one thing that can ruin pretzel bites is age. If you know that the concession stand at your theater heats up all their food in the morning and lets it mummify under heat lamps all day, you should choose a pre-packaged snack over the pretzels. The heat lamp transforms pretzel bites from crispy and chewy to tough and leathery in record time.

Raisins get a lot of hate online. Cosmopolitan summarizes many of the common complaints about these innocuous dried grapes. Apparently, lots of folks think that raisins are nasty and that they sabotage otherwise tasty foods like oatmeal cookies and pastries. We are independent-minded snackers, and we needn't let the internet's raisin slander ruin something we know is good. If you look past all the snide comments and look at Raisinets with fresh eyes, you will realize that they are one of the best movie candies.

On their own, raisins taste kind of healthy, but Raisinets solve this problem by coating them in milk chocolate. The raisins lend a satisfyingly chewy texture and a complex flavor to the chocolate. While Nestle points out that "Raisinets have 30% less fat than leading chocolate brands," keep in mind that they pack in 28 grams of sugar in each serving, not exactly healthy.  

Skittles' weird advertising campaigns and colorful looks have enticed generations of kids to "taste the rainbow." The bite-sized candies blend tangy and sweet flavors with great success, and they're intense enough not to bore you but mild enough that you can eat a whole bag easily. Their texture is a big component of their appeal too, balancing crispy and chewy sensations to maximize addictiveness.

Each color of Skittles is supposed to represent a different fruit, but some people think that the different flavors are a scam and all Skittles actually taste the same. Researcher Don Katz told "Today" that test subjects were unable to distinguish between different Skittles flavors when their noses were plugged. Before you run to sue Skittles for fraud, you should know that the flavors do taste different when you're able to smell. Flavor is created by a combination of aroma and signals from the tongue, and each color of Skittle has its own unique aroma. Quite frankly, who cares if they taste different from each other when you're shoveling them in by the handful?  Whether they taste the same to you or not, Skittles are a first-rate movie snack. 

Milk Duds are the greatest of all movie candies. They pull off junk food sorcery by combining low-quality components into a product that's greater than the sum of its parts. The milk chocolate coating on them is insipid and would be unacceptable if eaten on its own. The caramel is aggressively chewy and might pull a filling out if you're not careful. Somehow, the magicians at Hershey created an addictive confection with those two uninspiring ingredients. The mild chocolate blends with the buttery, toasty notes of the caramel to produce a unique and enjoyable eating experience. Even if the movie is boring, Milk Duds give you something to do because you'll get a full jaw workout from how chewy they are. They take a long time to eat — especially if they've been sitting on the shelf for a while — which is great if you're trying to make your snack money last.