Top 10: Asia's favourite snacks and candy

Everyone's got their guilty pleasures when it comes to what they put in their mouth. Whether you like your treats sweet, savory, baked, fried, spicy, buttery, minty, chewy, chocolately, on a stick, or covered in cheese dust, the world's makers of snacks and confections have something for you. 

But what goodies do people in Asia turn to when they just need a little nosh? That's what we're here to find out.

The following facts about Asia's favourite snacks and candies are derived from the 2021 edition of Campaign Asia-Pacific's exclusive Asia's Top 1000 Brands research, done in partnership with Nielsen IQ. The region's most comprehensive research on consumer brand perception, Asia's Top 1000 Brands asks consumers in 14 Asia-Pacific markets to name the brands they consider the best in 15 major product and service categories. From this, we compile the overall Asia's Top 1000 Brands ranking, a list of the top 100 brands in each market, and a variety of features and category-based reports like this one.

As alluded to above, snack foods cover a wide array of choices, so we're actually giving you not one but three top 10 lists, covering three sub-categories of the food category. Without further ado, we give you...

Asia's top snack foods:

Biscuits, crackers and cookies

1 Oreo

2 Ritz

3 Meiji

4 Quaker

5 Orion

6 Kjeldsens

7 Arnotts

8 Parle

9 Britannia

10 Good Day

Candy

1 Cadbury

2 Ferrero Rocher

3 Kit Kat

4 Nestle

5 Snickers

6 Hershey's

7 Mentos

8 M&M's

9 Lotte

10 Chupa Chups

Salty snakes

1 Lay’s

2 Pringles

3 Calbee

4 Cadbury

5 Lotte

6 Orion

7 Dorritos

8 Cheetos

9 Meiji

10 Three Squirrels

Still hungry for knowledge? Here's some more tasty morsels from our survey of the region's favourite snack and candy brands.

Biscuits, crackers and cookies

Regional No 1 Oreo tops the charts in five specific markets — China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Oreo also finishes in second place in Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan and in third in Australia, Japan and Philippines.

Regional No 2 Ritz ranks highly in many markets but is the top choice nowhere. Its highest rankings are 4th (Taiwan and Thailand) and 5th (Australia and Indonesia).    

Market-specific No 1 rankings for brands in the regional top 10:

Oreo: China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam

Meiji: Singapore Orion: South Korea

Kjeldsens: Hong Kong

Arnotts: Australia

Parle: India 

Candy

Regional No 1 Cadbury is the top choice in three markets — Australia, India, Malaysia. It also comes in second in New Zealand and Singapore, and third in Indonesia.

Market-specific No 1 rankings for brands in the regional top 10:

Cadbury: Australia, India, Malaysia

Ferrero Rocher: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan

Kit Kat: Singapore, Vietnam

Hershey's: Philippines

Mentos: Indonesia

Chupa Chups: Korea

Salty snacks

Regional No 1 Lay's is the top brand in only two markets — China and Taiwan. It comes in second in Hong Kong, India and Taiwan, and third in Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.  Regional No 2 Pringles attains its spot despite being No 1 in no markets. It finishes second in Korea and Philippines, third in Australia, and fourth in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore.   

Market-specific No. 1 rankings for brands in the regional top 10:

Lay's: China, Taiwan

Calbee: Hong Kong, Japan

Orion: Korea, Vietnam

Doritos: Australia

(Courtesy: Campaign India)