eye candy

From eye +‎ candy. Early-1980’s US TV and advertising jargon,^[1] perhaps influenced by earlier nose candy (“cocaine”).

eye candy (uncountable)

1. A very attractive person or persons, or the salient visible physical attributes thereof.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:beautiful person

   Antonyms: see Thesaurus:ugly person

   Hypernym: head-turner

   I'm going to the beach to check out some eye candy.

   • 1980, Geoffrey Cowan, See No Evil, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 309:

     But despite his claims that NBC would become “the class act,” not all of [Fred] Silverman's changes seemed aimed in direction of excellence. Unfortunately his rationale for eschewing exploitative “eye candy” seemed to apply to more serious sex-related ventures as well.

2. (by extension) Any object or sight with considerable visual appeal.

   Synonym: feast for the eyes

   • 2007, Maximum PC, number Winter, page 3:

     DirectX 10 promises an almost obscene step up in the level of eye candy you can expect from an A-list game, which is the great news. The bad news is, you'll need a new videocard to get those gorgeous graphics.