In today’s post: Everyone loves the Candy Bar Game! It’s perfect for playing at parties and works well with groups of all ages. Roll the dice for your chance to grab your favorite candy bar – and then hope no one steals it before the time is up! Great game for birthdays, family reunions, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve.
Why You’ll Love This Game
It can be hard to find games that work well for groups, but The Candy Bar game is perfect for groups of any size and players of any age. The main draw of this game is, of course, the candy. Add in a time limit to keep things moving quickly and a little friendly competition for the best candy and you have a game that everyone will enjoy. This fun candy bar game is a huge hit at birthday parties, Christmas parties, on New Year’s Eve, or any time you just want to have fun. It’s a great game for family reunions or anytime you want to get to know people better because you have to remember people’s names in order to play.
See the end of the post for variations that make the game even more fun! Your kids will think you are such a cool mom when you teach them how to play the candy bar party game. My nephew played this for his 14th birthday and his mom said his friends are still talking about how fun it was months later.
Note: The game I’m sharing today involves stealing wrapped candy bars from one another. The Christmas candy bar game that I’ve shared previously involves using a butter knife and fork to try to cut pieces of chocolate off a large frozen bar while wearing oven mitts. Click here for those instructions.
What You’ll Need
You only need a couple things to play the Candy Bar Game:
- First, you need a variety of candy bars or other individually wrapped snacks or treats. How many candy bars you play with is up to you, but it’s most fun if you have 2-3 candy bars per person playing (or more if it’s a small group). If you are playing with a very large group and the cost for the candy seems to high, you can still have a blast playing with just one candy bar per person, plus a few extras. And you want as many different kinds of candy bars as you can find. I try not to duplicate any candy for this game. Head to a store that has a good candy aisle, or order a variety snack pack from Amazon, like this one, that comes with lots of different candy and snack items.
- Second, you need a brown lunch sack for each person.
- Finally, you need a single die. If you are playing with a large group, you can play with two dice instead of one.
All Different Kinds of Candy
This game is the most fun when you use lots of different kinds of candy. I always get plenty of chocolate bars because that’s what our family likes best: Snickers, Almond Joy, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Twix, Butterfinger, Milky Way, Three Musketeers, etc. But don’t forget to grab other types of candy as well, such as boxed candies like Junior Mints, Milk Duds, and Mike and Ikes. Don’t forget Starburst, Skittles, Twizzlers, etc.
Kids especially love other small treats, like small bags of chips or cookies, Ring Pops, Hostess cupcakes, or even small toys.
How to Play
Have everyone sit at the table. If you have too many people to fit at a table, have everyone sit in a circle on the floor. Place all of the candy in the middle of the table (or circle) and give each person a lunch sack.
Round One
To begin the game, the first person rolls one die. If they roll a one or a six, they get to grab a candy bar from the pile in the middle and hide it inside their sack. If they don’t roll a one or six, they pass the die to the next person. Keep passing the die clockwise, with each person rolling it once, until all the candy bars have been taken from the middle and placed inside people’s sacks. That’s the end of round one. Remember to pay attention during round one – you want to keep track of your favorite candy bars because you’ll need to know who is holding them in order to steal them in round two!
Round Two
Round Two is where things get exciting – it’s the “steal” round. At this point all the candy bars are hidden inside people’s lunch sacks, so you can’t see what anyone else has. Set a timer for as long as you’d like the round to last, and start playing again. This time if you roll a one or six, you can steal a candy bar from someone else. BUT you have to ask a specific person for a specific candy bar that you think they have in their sack. If they have that candy, they have to give it to you. But if they don’t have the candy you asked for, you’re out of luck until it’s your turn to roll again. This means you have to keep track of who has your favorites at the end of round one AND who is stealing the ones you want in round two.
Roll and pass the die as quickly as possible in round two so you have plenty of chances to steal back your favorite candy. When the timer goes off, whatever you have in your own sack is yours to keep!
How long you set the timer for in round two is determined by how many people are playing. If you only have 4-5 people playing, 5 minutes is generally plenty of time. But if you have 20+ people playing, you may want to set the timer for 15 minutes to give everyone plenty of chances to steal the candy. If you have a large group, you can also play with two dice, starting them on opposite sides of the circle. That means two people will be rolling and potentially stealing at once, which makes it even harder to keep track of where the candy is ending up.
Variations
Make it easier for younger kids: If you’re playing with mostly younger kids, you have a couple options to make the game easier. You can have everyone wait until the end of round one to put their candy in their sacks OR you can choose not to hide the candy at all. Explain to kids before the game starts that candy bars will be stolen during this game so they know what to expect and don’t cry the first time something is stolen from them. It’s a good idea to have a couple of extra candy bars to distribute to anyone who doesn’t have any candy in their sack at the end of the game – and you can let kids know that no matter what, they will get at least one candy bar at the end. Alternately, the person who ends up with the most bars can share one with someone who doesn’t have one at the end.
Make it harder for teens and adults: If you’re playing with mostly teens or adults, you can throw in a twist to make the game a little harder. During round two, anytime you roll a three, you have to put one of your candies back in the middle, where anyone can steal it when they roll a one or six!
Combine rounds one and two: This is a fun variation that allows the players to determine how long they want the game to go on. In this variation, there is only one round. When you roll a one or a six, you can choose a candy from the middle OR you can steal a candy from someone else (as long as you ask a specific person for a specific candy that they do in fact have). For this version, the game ends when the last candy bar in the middle has been taken. That means players can choose NOT to take the candy bar from the middle and keep stealing from each other if they want the game to go on longer. Or someone could end the game by taking the last candy from the middle when they are happy with what they have in their bag. This variation works best with older kids and adults.
However you decide to play, everyone is going to have so much fun!
Sean P Williams says
Do you need enough candy bars for everyone playing, or is it okay for some to have an empty bag?