Reese’s Miniatures with Pieces

In my previous review of the Oh Henry! – Reese Peanut Butter bar, I talked a little about how these days everything is kind of coalescing into each other, until eventually we will only have one candy bar that will be a combination of everything that the Hershey’s company owns. Today’s product is more of a….snack-ception type of deal. Bear with me as I try to conceptualize how the creatives came up with this product.

At some point someone came up with Reese’s Pieces, which is kind of like an M&M chocolate, where the inside is chocolate and peanut butter, and the outside is a candy coated shell to make for a nice easy snack that won’t melt as easily as the classic peanut butter cup. The Pieces are so well-established now that there are people who are reverent supporters of one, but not the other. That’s kind of a testament to how successful it is.

But then someone in the products team decided, “Hey, why can’t we all just get along?” Said hippy was then given reign to come up with a product that addressed that. And so, his brilliant idea was to put pieces INSIDE the original peanut butter cup. I jest, but I think deep in the recesses of everyone’s mind, we knew this day would come sooner or later. It’s not like it takes much work for them either. They already produce the two, all the have to do is divert one of the machines to spit a few pieces into the peanut butter centre before they cap things off.

I guess the big question now is, does it work or not? I must admit this does excite me a bit. Not because it’s anything revolutionary, but because I’m curious if it would be any different at all from what I’m expecting. I’m pretty experienced with both of these snacks separately at this point, so I’m curious how it will come together, whether it will be greater or less than the sum of its parts. I’d be happy if it’s equal at this point.

These are the same size as their standard miniature sized cups. If not for the foil wrapper, I doubt you’d know these were anything different. There is some debate as to which is superior, the original cups, or these ones. On the one hand, I kind of like these because they are taller, but the argument against them is that the ratio of chocolate to peanut butter is off. While I do understand that, I feel like the way I eat them (aka in one bite) these ones serve me better, ratio wise.

Even without the wrapper, you wouldn’t know there was anything different about these. Some of the pieces have a slight break to the sides where the pieces peak out, but again, difficult to discern any difference.

Biting into it, it really doesn’t seem any different until you get that strange, slightly jarring texture of a candy shell in your mouth. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I eat my peanut butter cups, or any snack with a soft cream/butter centre, the last thing I want to find is that I’ve bitten into a shell. It’s like eating a rice or noodle dish, and biting into an eggshell or a hard bone. It’s just weird and kind of takes away from the whole experience in that moment. While the candy shell isn’t particularly hard, it’s still enough to take me out of it. After getting through the candy shell, it’s more of the same. The peanut butter encased inside the pieces is a bit more firm, and not quite as smooth or melty as the peanut butter inside the cup itself. The mish mash of textures is kind of weird, and I’m not that crazy about it.

The flavour is really nothing unexpected. The peanut butter in the pieces is slightly sweeter then the peanut butter in the cup, but all in all it’s similar enough that flavour wise there’s not much contrast. That is to say, purely from a flavour perspective, this is nothing interesting or unique.

At the end of it, I don’t think this product is greater than the sum of it parts, but rather less than. I’d much rather have pieces and cups eaten together in the same sitting, than to have one within the other. It just isn’t doing it for me. But it could just be me. Maybe go try a bag of these if you like both products. I just don’t know that there’s anything interesting enough about this to warrant picking it over the classic cups, or pieces. Hell, just buy both and have a party instead.