I will not tolerate people being disrespectful toward candy corn.

Those waxy, triangular (and sometimes pumpkin-shaped) treats are a top-tier Halloween candy. You know it’s true.

It’s hard to think of a candy that visually represents Halloween more than candy corn. It’s what the peppermint stick is for Christmas, or what the chocolate egg is for Easter. 

People buy tons of candy corn every year. The Illinois-based confectioner Brach’s, which produces about 7 billion pieces of candy corn annually, sold more than $73 million worth of the stuff in 2018, according to a Fox Business report.

And yet it seems like everyone hates candy corn — sending one of Halloween’s best candies straight from the trick-or-treat bag into the nearest garbage bin.

Comedian Lewis Black memorably called candy corn “the worst thing about Halloween.”

“All of the candy corn that was ever made was made in 1914. They never had to make it again,” he said on his 2006 album “The Carnegie Hall Performance.” “We never eat enough of it.”

Black went on to say that candy corn “tastes like something that was made out of oil.”

“You could take all of the bags of candy corn, and actually, if you melted them down, you could run a car,” he said.

Candy corn was ranked the worst Halloween candy in a CandyStore.com survey of more than 17,000 people this year. Gordon Ramsay listed candy corn as one of the five worst Halloween treats on an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel in 2016, describing the candy as “ear wax formed in the shape of a rotten tooth.”

Ramsay’s comments drew laughter from the audience of candy corn-hating heathens.

Not me.

Candy corn does not deserve your hatred.

Year after year, we few candy corn-lovers are subjected to the same tired and unoriginal complaints about those sweet little kernels of goodness. 

Voicing a love for candy corn in public is practically unheard of anymore.

In one of the rare somewhat positive depictions of candy corn in popular culture, the caterpillar Heimlich begs a group of flies to let him eat candy corn in the 1998 Pixar movie “A Bug’s Life.” (Of course, it had to be in arguably the most forgettable Pixar movie.) And even here, the unstated joke is that the plump and voracious Hemlich will eat anything — even candy corn. 

What exactly is the issue people have with candy corn? That it’s entirely sugar? Of course it’s entirely sugar. It’s candy.

People don’t like its waxy texture? Lots of candy has a waxy texture. Skittles have a waxy texture. 

“Oh,” these people will say, “it’s different with candy corn.”

Notice that what these people are saying is that they have a specific and deliberate hatred for candy corn that has no logical basis. It’s sick form of sugary discrimination, and I will not stand for it.

There are even people out there who hate how candy corn will flood its way onto store shelves in September. These are people who clearly hate Halloween, and probably also hate the concept of having fun.

Some people simply say they would rather gorge themselves on other candies on Halloween.

Folks. You can eat chocolate any time of year. You can eat lollipops or jawbreakers or any other candy any time of year.

Truthfully, you can stuff your face with as much candy as you want any time of year, though as a nation we — with a somewhat surprising amount of restraint — have decided to limit our annual gluttonous sugar feast to just a single night in October.

But candy corn is almost exclusively a Halloween treat.

In fact, 70% of candy corn sales take place in the eight weeks leading up to Halloween, according to Observer. The other 30% of sales are spread across the remaining 44 weeks of the year.

So what you’re really saying when you say you hate candy corn is that you hate the entire season of fall. And that you hate Halloween. Is that the type of person you want to be? Someone who hates fall and Halloween?

Shame on you.

The fact of the matter is that candy corn never hurt you. In fact, it was always there for you when you needed it.

Who was there for you in mid-November when you reached the bottom of your trick-or-treat bag and you needed a quick jolt of sugar?

Candy corn.

Who is there for you every October to start showing up on store shelves to remind you it’s almost time for Halloween?

Candy corn.

Who reminds you of everything wonderful about fall and the Great Pumpkin and Jamie Lee Curtis screaming in a closet as Michael Myers is coming at her with a kitchen knife?

You know who. It’s candy corn.

The fact of the matter is that candy corn deserves your respect. 

If you don’t like it, don’t throw it in the garbage. Give it to a candy corn lover in your life. We exist, and we can’t get enough of the stuff.

Now don’t even get me started on how much I love those Valentine’s Day candy hearts.

Erik Yabor is a breaking news reporter for LNP | LancasterOnline. “Unscripted” is a weekly entertainment column produced by a rotating team of writers.