It’s been a quiet year for IC2S, but I’ve been kind of needing the break. Since the birth of my daughter, I haven’t had the time or desire to write like I did before. I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things again though, and what better way to commit than with another round of reused writing and corporate whoring? There have been quite a few Reese’s products released since I last updated this list and I’ve been keeping track of my thoughts on them this whole time.
As before, I’m not exclusively going over “official” Reese’s products, but any exceptions are done at my discretion. I’ve also once again excluded the original Peanut Butter Cups from the list, because they’re just timeless and the default baseline for quality (and therefore would just end up on the lower half of the list for being less interesting, which I feel is unfair for something that good).
Anyway, without further ado, let’s get started!
60) Reese Mix – These things got a dishonourable mention in the original version of list because they’re way too expensive for what you get, so I could never bring myself to buy them. However, my (at the time) fiancé knows I like to try new Reese products and hadn’t seen one of these before so she bought me a couple. So, it turns out that Reese Mix are kind of worse than I expected. I mean, it’s just the sum of its parts – peanuts, pretzel, Pieces and Minis, but the pretzel bits are really salty. On the one hand, this just makes you want to eat the Minis more to counter-act the excessive salty taste, but it’s a pretty bad look when your snack food is actively making me want to ignore parts of it to get to the bits I like. Plus, the saltiness is so prevalent that the taste has been passed over to everything else in the package anyway. All-in-all, it’s not the ideal way of eating any of the ingredients and I’m 100% certain you could make your own Reese Mix that would not only taste better but be far cheaper overall. Hell, the neighbourhood pre-teen entrepreneur could make a killing on knock-off Reese Mix and they’d taste better to boot. These things are just all-round failures as far as I’m concerned.
59) Reese’s Ultimate Peanut Butter Lovers Peanut Butter Cup – These are a disaster. You’d think that a peanut butter cup made entirely out of peanut butter would be tasty but then you try it and, oh yeah, it really is entirely made up of peanut butter. It’s interesting how Reese have been advancing their technology to make half-and-half shells or shells that aren’t chocolate at all, but this is just science gone mad. Think about it – you’re basically just eating several large globs of peanut butter that is too rich and too sweet and it goes against the whole idea of Reese, that chocolate and peanut butter are a match made in heaven. Never again.
58) Reese Puffs – Reese Puffs are the KFC Double Down of the breakfast cereal world: breakfast cereals are already towing a fine line trying to justify themselves as something other than sugary junk food, but Puffs shit all over that line and head into territory that’s just disgusting. I mean, the tag line when I was a kid was that they’re “Reese, for breakfast!” Yeah, uh, no thanks. I mean, I like Coca-Cola, but I don’t want one until after noon at the earliest because who starts their day that way? Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms at least pretend like they aren’t pure sugar in a bowl, but Reese Puffs don’t even put up a pretense about what this product is. I had these maybe once as a kid, and even then I was not taken in. Of all the things on this list, if I had to sacrifice one Reese product for the good of humanity, this is the one I’d cast into the fire.
57) Reese’s Pieces Peanut – These might have been the first Reese’s product I’ve ever tried that I will straight-up never buy again. Like, at least I like parts of the Reese Mix, but these? Reese’s Pieces Peanut is so… bleh. Nothing about it worked for me – the salty peanuts just didn’t gel with the peanut butter taste, and since they’re Pieces there’s no chocolate in them to balance out the peanut butter. So basically, you’re just eating a bag full of crunchy, salty peanut butter. It’s super disappointing and I hated it.
56) Reese’s Mallow-Top Peanut Butter Cup – I don’t like marshmallows. With this in mind, when I saw the Reese’s Mallow-top I knew that my enjoyment of it was going to hinge on whether the white top actually tastes like marshmallow or not. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve got to give some props to the marketing and R&D team because boy does that top taste like a marshmallow… unfortunately, that also means that they were revolting to me. I’m not even sure if the marshmallow is mixed right into the creme top, or if it’s a syrupy layer of flavour between the peanut butter and the creme, but either way it ruins the taste of this for me. Maybe that’s just my personal preferences tanking this product, but if you’re a big marshmallow junkie then this could easily be a hit for you.
55) Reese’s Pieces Shake & Break Egg – I’m not sure what I expected of this. It’s a fairly standard, hollow, chocolate Easter egg, but the twist is that it has some Reese’s Pieces inside. So you’re just eating a boring, vanilla Easter treat with next to no peanut butter taste (and with less Pieces inside than you would expect). I wasn’t expecting much of this, but even then I was disappointed. Considering that Reese’s put out several top-tier Easter products every year, you’re wasting your money if you put it towards a Shake & Break egg.
54) Reese’s Pieces with Caramel Flavoured Milk Chocolate – The idea of Pieces with a caramel center is intriguing, but then you realize that that is not what this is. Instead, someone decided that caramel flavoured milk chocolate would be better (and, I’m sure, cheaper to execute). As a result, we get the worst of all worlds – the center of the Pieces have a hint of caramel flavour, but it makes the chocolate hard, rather than chewy, and the taste ultimately clashes with the peanut butter. Definitely the worst of the four main Pieces varieties released in 2023.
53) Reese’s Creamy Peanut Butter Cup – At a certain point, it feels like Reese’s are scraping the barrel with some of their variants. Was anyone complaining that the peanut butter in a Reese cup is not smooth enough? I was not expecting much when I tried these out, but even then I was left underwhelmed. You can barely notice any difference between these and a regular peanut butter cup, you could put both in front of me blind and I honestly don’t think I could pick them out. This variant is maybe a fraction less-solid than normal, and is definitely not worth the extra cost and pomp.
52) Reese’s Peanut Butter Clusters – Imagine a Reese’s version of Turtles chocolates – that sounds amazing, right? Just swap out the caramel in Turtles with peanut butter and we’re golden. However, I was very surprised by how underwhelmed I was with Clusters. You’d think that taking a Turtles and then adding peanut butter to it would just make Clusters tastier and better by default, but I’m not particularly keen on them. Personally, I don’t feel like the peanut butter really adds much to the taste. If anything, it makes them a bit too sweet, to the point where I’d rather have a Turtles chocolate instead. Hell, I’d rather have a knock-off Turtles chocolate like Almondillos instead of a Clusters. However, the real crippling issue with Clusters is that they also ripped off the worst part about Turtles – they are bloody expensive. Like, I’m talking $7 on the low-end for a small box of these things. I’ve actually seen them selling for as high as $10 before! And, like Turtles, you’re not getting enough chocolate in that box to make that steep price worth it. If you see any marked down 50% after Christmas is over then they might be worth the purchase, but I would never pay full retail price for these again. In fact, I did pick a box of these up at 50% off on Boxing Day for about $5 and I’m still pretty iffy on whether they were worth that price.
51) Reese’s Half-Pound Peanut Butter Cup – In the original version of this list back in 2018, I made a joke about how a half-pound Peanut Butter cup was just too much Reese’s to actually enjoy yourself… well, I went and bought one to test out that theory. It is, indeed, a huge peanut butter cup and, as expected, way too much to eat by yourself in one sitting. I got about halfway through before it started to make me feel that sickly feeling of peanut butter and chocolate overload. These things are just too rich and it’s not like they’re cheap either (over $5 for one), so I can’t really see why someone would go for one of these other than as a gimmick… that said, a couple weeks after I finished it, I was sorely tempted to get another. There’s something about the extra sweetness of a half-pound cup’s ludicrous excess that justifies its existence and tempts me, but in my head I know that it has so many caveats that it’s not really worthwhile.
50) Reese’s Popped Snack Mix – Sure, this is basically one of those shitty Reese’s Mix packages, but the addition of chocolate-coated popcorn makes enough of a difference that it actually improves the overall package. Instead of just having a bunch of excessively-salty filler to slog through and then some compromised Miniatures to actually enjoy, the addition of the popcorn at least gives you something else to make the whole package feel worthwhile. That said, these still have most of the same weaknesses as a regular Mix, including the excessive saltiness and the high price, but at least the tasty popcorn make it a much more balanced product if you do decide to indulge in it.
49) Reese’s Big Cup with Reese’s Puffs – These were really disappointing, the Reese Puffs are tiny and not very well distributed, you may only get a few in a single cup and they don’t make much of a difference to taste or texture. Basically just a Big Cup which has maybe a tiny bit of crunch on occasion, which isn’t going to cut it given all the far superior varieties of Big Cups out there (and given that these are sold at a premium in comparison). I had some hope for these but they really flopped.
48) Reese’s Whipps – I swear that I tried one of these things when I was a kid, but I can’t remember much about it, it didn’t leave any sort of fond memories. I don’t recall it being bad, but there’s not much else on this list that I wouldn’t rather have instead. I’d probably buy one just for the memories if I saw one, but it isn’t a particularly interesting choice. That said, considering that it’s like 90% nougat I can see why it wouldn’t leave much of an impression either.
47) Reese Bar – I’ve had a Reese Bar a few times, but I’ve never been particularly impressed. Maybe it’s just me, but these things are too big and push over the limit where you’re getting “too much” sweetness. Plus they don’t hold together very well – I always find that if you try to break pieces off of the bar it caves in on itself and the peanut butter filling is very soft, almost liquid. They’re certainly edible, but whenever I buy them I inevitably will tell myself “Oh right, that’s why I stopped buying these things.”
46) Reese Blizzard – So I usually order a Reese’s Blizzard on the rare occasion where I go to Diary Queen, but that said I definitely have issues with them. For one thing, Dairy Queen Blizzards are stupidly expensive in general, and keep getting worse year after year. Furthermore, if I order anything more than a medium, I feel gross afterwards. I mean, think about what you’re actually ordering: you’re basically eating 3 or more packs of Peanut Butter cups, in addition to the ice cream itself. I have gotten sick from the sweetness overload on multiple occasions… not that that stops me from ordering them again, but the fact that these things literally can make me feel sick makes them harder to recommend than nearly everything on this list.
45) Reese Minis – They aren’t quite as satisfying as a full-sized Peanut Butter Cup, or even the wrapped Miniatures for that matter, but Reese Minis are a nice little treat. The fact that they come in resealable bags is great, it helps to make them last and not over-indulge in them. There are 2 varieties of Minis available too, regular and white chocolate. The variety is nice, but I tend to lean towards the white chocolate – for one thing, I think that they taste better, and Hershey’s rarely sells white chocolate Reese products north of the border so I’ll take whatever avenue I can get for that fix.
44) Reese’s Pieces – These things are iconic, easily the second most popular Reese product after the original peanut butter cups, in part thanks to the textbook usage of product placement in E.T. which made everyone want to try them. While I enjoy Reese’s Pieces, I find that their quality is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes I’ll buy a box and they just don’t taste all that great. I’m not sure if it’s inconsistent recipes, poor quality control, corner cutting, or what. When I was in high school I remember several occasions where this would happen, so it was like a flip of the coin on whether I was actually going to enjoy my box of Pieces or not and it completely soured me on them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still have Pieces on occasion, but I don’t care for them nearly as much as some other people might and I don’t actively seek them out.
43) Reese’s Crispy Crunchy – I was pretty disappointed by this thing. It’s essentially a Crispy Crunch bar, which I do really like, but bigger and with peanut butter and nuts added to the mix. Wow, how can that possibly go wrong? Well… it did somehow, because I would rather have a Crispy Crunch, no contest. This bar tastes like a cheap, dollar store knock-off of a Crispy Crunch rather than a product put out by a major chocolate manufacturer and nothing about it really “works” for me. Hell, it doesn’t even deserve to be a Crispy Crunch knock-off, it’s a freaking Butterfinger knock-off. Just unfortunate all around.
42) Dark Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Thins – Holy shit, they weren’t kidding when they called these things “thins”. They’re, like, half the size of a normal cup at least! Clearly intended as a “diet” option for the calorie-conscious, the chocolate on these is much harder and denser by necessity in order to keep the cup from collapsing on itself, and there’s far less peanut butter inside than usual. They’re certainly not bad, but… like, if you’re trying to be calorie-conscious and eating these as a result then you’re not going to be making much of a difference. Meanwhile, my indulgent ass is just going to be gravitating to the full-sized versions of these instead. Of the three varieties that launched with the “Thins” label, the dark chocolate is my least favourite, but it’s still worth checking out.
41) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Thins – I have to give the milk chocolate thins the slight edge over their dark chocolate counterparts, but honestly there’s barely a difference. They’re still tasty, still thin and still a fool’s refuge if you’re looking for something that’s actually calorie-conscious.
40) Reese’s Big Cup Peanut Brittle – The “chocolate” part is replaced with peanut butter creme (which Reese seem to be obsessed with experimenting with these days) while the interior is crunchy (read: extra nutty) peanut butter. Honestly, the crunchy peanut butter is the draw here, the peanut brittle creme has a different taste but it isn’t better than chocolate IMHO. That said, this tastes way better than the peanut butter lovers and the fact that the peanut brittle isn’t just more PB probably helps.
39) Reese’s Pieces with Pretzel – These taste about how you’d expect, they’re Pieces with a hard pretzel crunch, salty taste and that signature aftertaste. They’re pretty tasty overall, but there’s an unexpected issue where the pretzel pieces are a bit too large and are harder than the peanut butter and shell, so every time you bite into one, the exterior all crumbles around the pretzel piece.
38) Reese’s Dark Chocolate Miniatures – I was on vacation in Niagara Falls in the summer of 2020 when I found these at the Hershey store and bought a big bag of them. I’m glad I did too because I haven’t seen any since then. I don’t typically care for dark chocolate, but I can imagine that particular taste working well with Reese’s peanut butter. Unfortunately, the balance just isn’t quite there in Reese’s Miniatures, meaning you get just a bit too much dark chocolate for my liking and not enough peanut butter. If you like dark chocolate anyway then this probably isn’t a negative, but for me it manages to tip a very delicate balance in the wrong direction.
37) Reese’s Chocolate Lovers Peanut Butter Cup – I’m not entirely sure who this product is for. It’s just a peanut butter cup, but with slightly less peanut butter and slightly more/somewhat richer chocolate. It’s like they tried to design a peanut butter cup for people who don’t like peanut butter cups… but still left a lot of peanut butter in there so it doesn’t even accomplish that. Oh, and it only comes with 2 cups, so I really don’t see why someone would buy these over other Reese’s products, except as a gimmick. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this well enough, but I just don’t understand why these exist when they’re so similar to a regular peanut butter cup, but with less in a package.
36) Eggs, Hearts & Christmas Bells – This entry covers a couple seasonal Reese’s variants under one umbrella; they don’t really deserve to have their own separate entries, since they’re all basically the same product in different shapes and packaging each time. The Christmas Bells, Valentines Hearts and Easter Eggs are, in essence, seasonal versions of Reese’s Miniatures – small, individually wrapped peanut butter cups with a shape based on the season they’re made for. They’re great, and if you find some of these in your Christmas stocking or on an Easter egg hunt, you know that whoever bought the chocolates was slaying it this year. Always a welcome gift, although the one thing keeping them a bit lower is that, as seasonal releases, Reese price gouge you for them. On the flip-side, as soon as the holiday is over the prices will get slashed in half so you can get lots of them cheap, so it’s a bit of a trade-off.
35) Reese’s Peanut Butter Lovers Peanut Butter Cup – The Peanut Butter Lovers cup definitely comes out on top compared to the Chocolate Lovers. That said, neither of them do much to stand out, instead just providing a bit more of a niche for a Reese’s lover. What makes the Peanut Butter Lovers cup stand out is that the top quarter of the cup has been replaced with shaped peanut butter, which naturally gives the whole cup a more pronounced peanut butter taste. I’d say that it is more akin to the taste of a Big Cup, just in a smaller package. It suffers the same sort of issue as the Chocolate Lovers cup where the difference isn’t a big deal and there are only two cups in a package, but I’d have to say that the Peanut Butter Lovers does a little bit more to stand out and at least it still has some chocolate in it, unlike the disastrous Ultimate Peanut Butter Lovers Cup.
34) Reese’s Nutrageous Bar – I’m kind of surprised that I hadn’t tried a Reese’s Nutrageous before 2020, considering that they’ve been around since 1994. That said, I can kind of understand why they haven’t become particularly widespread, because this is basically just an Oh Henry! with peanut butter… except that there are also Oh Henry! bars with Reese’s peanut butter in the middle, which taste basically the same and are cheaper, so I struggle to see the point for this product to even exist. The bar itself tastes fine, but I did find the caramel to be particularly sticky, making the bar a bit more of an effort to eat than I was expecting.
33) Reese’s Pieces with Milk Chocolate – As soon as I saw these Pieces with some chocolate inside them I thought “oh, these are just the peanut butter M&Ms”… and my intuition was 100% correct, they are practically identical in taste to that candy which has been on the market for years already. That said, peanut butter M&Ms are great and they taste 100x better than actual Pieces, so this is still a win overall, even if it is very unoriginal.
32) Reese’s Nutcrackers – Reese’s must have been putting a lot of money into R&D in the last few years. For decades we’ve gotten “shaped” holiday chocolates which resemble giant chocolate turds more than they do Christmas trees and bats, so imagine my shock when I opened up a Reese’s Nutcracker and found that the chocolate nutcracker shape and design was very well-defined and firm. Even more surprisingly, they are filled with a generous amount of peanut butter, making for a really delicious package. The only thing keeping these from being higher is that you only get like 10ish total in a bag, but if you can pick some up after the holidays for a discount, then you are in for a treat.
31) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup with Pieces – These things have been around in years in king sized form so it was surprising that it took them this long for regular-sized versions to start being sold. That said, maybe there’s a reason for that, because in standard-sized form they really don’t taste all that different from a regular or crunchy Peanut Butter Cup. The Pieces in this are tiny and all they do is provide a little extra crunch. Not bad by any means, but not much to get excited over.
30) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Stuffed with Crunchy Cookie – These things sound like an amazing combo… I mean, peanut butter, chocolate AND cookie bits!? Unfortunately, they don’t really live up to the hype. It’s really just a regular Peanut Butter Cup but with a subtle crunch to it from the cookie bits. The cookie bits don’t change the taste substantially, but the crunch is very satisfying. However, you only get 2 cups in these packs, whereas you get 3 in a Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups pack and I can’t really say that it’s worth the difference considering that they taste basically identical in the end.
29) Reese’s Take 5 Bar – The Reese’s Take 5 is a very unique addition to the Reese canon, combining a thin layer of caramel and peanut butter with a pretzel and then coating it all with chocolate. Apparently these have existed for years as their own separate thing but were recently brought under the Reese’s umbrella, which kind of makes sense because they’re unlike any other Reese product. It all comes down to that pretzel, which dominates the taste and texture of the bar, giving it a nice crunch and salty taste. That said, I don’t particularly care all that much for pretzels and there’s a bit of that pretzel aftertaste, which is unfortunate, but I found this bar far more intriguing than I was expecting. I don’t know if I’d buy these with any sort of regularity, but I can definitely see myself trying them again if I encounter any.
28) Reese’s Pieces with Chocolate Cookie – These had to be one of the most intriguing Reese’s varieties to experience for the first time. First of all, they’re unusually round for a Reese’s product, basically full spheres. The so-called “cookie” also has a very interesting taste and texture – imagine a corn pop with a crunchy Pieces shell and you have a good idea what eating these is like. I actually quite enjoyed these and would happily buy them again!
27) Reese’s Bites – Every time I go to do these updated lists, some long-forgotten memory gets dredged up of a Reese’s product I used to enjoy and have completely forgotten until now. This time, that product are Reese’s Bites, a long-since discontinued product which were basically small balls with a thin-but-hard chocolate exterior and a generous peanut butter center. Like a lot of Reese’s products, I’d eat too many of these and feel sick afterwards due to the peanut butter overload, but they were just so damn good that I couldn’t help myself.
26) Reese’s Fast Break – As far as Reese’s chocolate bars go, the Fast Break is definitely one of the better ones. The nougat is very soft and subtle, but it’s the healthy serving of the peanut butter that really makes this thing shine. It’s very simple (basically a Snickers, but with the peanuts and caramel swapped out for extra peanut butter), but it works so well. If I come across one of these again anytime soon I know that I’ll be buying one because these are delicious.
25) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with Crunchy Peanut Butter – I’m not sure if I’m just not remembering these things very well, but the big “crunchy peanut butter” gimmick of this product never actually stood out to me – they always tasted like a normal Peanut Butter Cup, just maybe a bit less smooth. It’s a small difference I guess, but not much to justify having a whole other variation on the market. I think Reese agreed because I haven’t seen one of these things in years and imagine they were probably discontinued. It’s too bad though, just remembering that these exist makes me hungry for one…
24) Reese’s Miniature Cups – On first glance, these might just seem to be the same thing as the aforementioned Minis, but there are a couple notable differences which make Miniatures stand out. First of all, Miniatures are all individually wrapped and are maybe about twice the size of an individual Mini. This might not seem like a huge difference, but for whatever reason, Miniatures just taste better to me. There just seems to be more quality put into each one and the size makes for a better balance of chocolate and peanut butter taste. Plus, they come in regular and white chocolate versions, which just helps to vault them over the comparable seasonal Reese’s chocolates, in my opinion.
23) Christmas Trees & Easter Eggs – At first glance, these appear to be nothing more than low-effort, cheap holiday cash-ins (hell, that “tree” is more reminiscent of a chocolate turd than an evergreen). However, these things over-deliver in a big way, being enormous compared to other Reese products and are stuffed with that delicious peanut butter. Plus, unlike most seasonal chocolate, they actually tend to be priced reasonably. The fact that they come in regular and white chocolate varieties is just icing on the cake. I fondly remember buying these things all the time around Christmas when I was in university. Hell, I would not be surprised if I was eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter Tree while writing some of the earliest posts on this blog.
22) Reese’s Easter Eggs with Pieces – Reese’s have clearly figured out the answer to the question “How do you make a Reese’s product better?” Answer: Just added Pieces. That’s really the only difference here between regular Reese’s Easter Eggs and these, but it’s enough of a difference that it deserves its own entry. I haven’t seen Reese’s Christmas Trees with Pieces yet but I’m sure they’ll exist by soon enough.
21) Reese Swoops – I can remember back when Reese Swoops first came out and really enjoyed them at the time. They had a very unique taste and texture that no other Reese product has had before or since. I was saddened when I heard that they were discontinued. If you never got the chance to try one, imagine a Pringle made entirely of chocolate and with a little Reese’s peanut butter swirl mixed in directly with the chocolate. Suffice to say, they were delicious and it was easy to forget just how much chocolate you were consuming as you scarfed them down, especially considering that they were originally intended as a “lite”, diet chocolate.
20) Reese Big Cups – Unlike some of the Reese’s products I mentioned earlier, while Big Cups tow the fine line between decadence and overindulgence, I feel like they strike the perfect balance where I feel just guilty enough. I definitely feel like I’m pushing some limits with a Big Cup, but I never feel like they’re too much or like I’m going to be sick or disgusted with myself for having one. There’s got to be some Catholic priest on staff at Hershey HQ who’s doling out the exact measurements of guilt that are acceptable whenever a candy bar is released and goddamn he towed the line flawlessly with the Big Cup.
19) Reese’s Big Cup Crunchy – It’s a Big Cup, but with peanuts in it. It really simple and doesn’t make a major difference in terms of the actual taste, but I’d be lying if I said that the crunch of the peanuts isn’t really satisfying. Literally, that’s it, I enjoy the crunch of the big peanuts pieces more, that’s enough to put it over the regular Big Cups and Cookie Big Cups for me.
18) Reese’s Outrageous! Stuffed with Pieces – The naming convention for this chocolate bar is pretty weird. It’s a Reese’s Nutrageous bar… but the nuts have been replaced with Reese’s Pieces. I don’t know why they didn’t just come up with a completely new name, especially since they make sure to specify that the bar is stuffed with Pieces anyway, but whatever, I’m not a big marketing exec now am I? In any case, the Outrageous bar is quite good! In fact, it is significantly better than the original Nutrageous bar. It tastes very similar to the peanut butter Oh Henry! bars, minus the nuts of course, and adding in Pieces always makes a Reese’s product better by orders of magnitude. My only real complaint is that the standard size version is quite small for a chocolate bar and, like the Nutrageous bar, the caramel is still a bit too sticky, but it is a tasty treat regardless.
17) Reese’s Big Cup with Pretzels – I’m not a huge fan of pretzels, so I was a bit wary of putting them in a peanut butter cup where the saltiness could overpower the perfect balance of chocolate and peanut butter. Thankfully, I actually had it backwards, because the pretzel taste is overwhelmed by the peanut butter and chocolate. What gives this a leg up is the fact that the surprisingly-big chunks of pretzel you get give you more “crunch” than most Reese products I’ve ever tried, and if you’ve learned anything about me thus far it’s that I love me some crunch. This was good enough that, after I finished my one-cup package, I was sad that I didn’t have a second cup to go with it, which is about as good an endorsement as I can offer. Will definitely buy again if I see any.
16) Reese Sticks – It shocks me just how good these damn things are. If you thought peanut butter and chocolate were a match made in heaven, Reese Sticks prove that 3 thin strips of wafer make a case for a hot threesome. Just… these things are brilliant. They sell smaller versions in the same sorts of bags as Minis too, and they are so addictive that you risk scarfing down half a bag in one sitting if you’re not careful. If you’ve never tried these, then seriously, freaking do it.
15) Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Reese’s Pieces – I normally don’t care about a Hershey’s bar; the milk chocolate is tasty but it’s a boring product as far as chocolate options go and so they’re almost always overshadowed by more enticing treats. However, the fusion of Reese and Hershey bar really surprised me – the bits of peanut butter taste and the crunch from the Pieces gives the simple Hershey’s bar some more flavour than usual and there’s even little bits of peanut added in for added texture and taste! All-in-all, it’s pretty similar to the M&Ms Bar (which I do really like), but much better!
14) Reese’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups – Like I said with the miniature and thin versions of these things, I don’t typically care for dark chocolate, but I had a feeling that dark chocolate would work really well with Reese’s peanut butter. That said – goddamn, I was not expecting them to be this good! Like, given the choice between these and regular peanut butter cups I’d say that I’d go with the dark chocolate ones more often than not (assuming the number of cups in a package and the price are equal). The balance between dark chocolate and peanut butter is so much better in the full-sized cups compared to the minis or thins. Compared to standard peanut butter cups, these have a bit of a richer taste to the chocolate which works spectacularly with the peanut butter. These get a hearty recommendation from me, whether you like dark chocolate or not.
13) Reese Crunchers – These might be the most surprising entry on this list for me. I saw a package of these at a gas station and, similarly to Reese Mix, the price seemed steep but I figured I’d give them their one shot to impress me. The price is definitely a bit too high, but bloody hell are they worth the cost. They’re kind of like little, delicious bite-sized clusters and just writing about them is making me want to eat the package of them sitting beside my desk. (Post-script: Yeah, within 5 minutes I had that package opened and was scarfing them down greedily.)
12) Reese’s Outrageous! Crunchers Stuffed With Pieces – These things are nearly identical to regular Crunchers, but they’ve had miniature Pieces added in. That gives them the slightest of edges over regular Crunchers for me, but they’re so close that you can’t really go wrong either way. That said, if you have to pick between the two in a pinch? Outrageous! Crunchers, 100% of the time.
11) Breyers Reese Ice Cream – Breyers’ Reese ice cream has some big legs up on the Reese Blizzard which propel it so far up the list. For one thing, a whole container of Breyers ice cream can be purchased for about the price of a Blizzard… even less when they go on sale for around $4 on the reg. Secondly, the ice cream is flavoured to actually complement the peanut butter cups in there, which makes it taste better than a Blizzard in general. Thirdly, you control the portioning, so you shouldn’t ever feel sick when eating this. Whenever I see this product on sale at the grocery store, I love to pick it up because I know that I’ll get to enjoying it on a hot day. Still less economical than, say, buying a big tub of vanilla ice cream, but it’s Reese ice cream, can you blame me if I want to indulge a little sometimes?
10) Reese’s Crunchy Peanut Bar – You’ve probably gotten the idea by now that I like my Reese’s peanut butter with a crunchy texture and the Crunchy Peanut Bar may be the best way to experience that particular taste. There is a lot of peanut butter in this surprisingly-wide bar, so peanut butter lovers are going to be over the moon. Taste-wise, it’s very comparable to the King Size Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups, but you get a lot more here and in a more convenient package. I checked this out on a whim and I came away very impressed.
9) Reese’s Big Cup with Potato Chips – Okay, I said that the Reese’s Crunchy Peanut Bar may be the best way to get a crunchy peanut butter texture, but these seem like they’re going to be impossible to top. If you haven’t tried them, I imagine you’re thinking “Potato chips, chocolate and peanut butter!? That sounds disgusting!”, and I thought that as well… for about 3 seconds. Think about it at all and you’ll realize that unparalleled crunch and a hint of extra salt make this unconventional trio a genius move, far better executed than the litany of other attempts at making a crunchy peanut butter cup.
8) White Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Thins – White chocolate Reese’s are the best and these thins offer one of the most convenient ways to get ahold of them. They are quite comparable to their full-sized counter-parts and don’t feel like a sacrifice in quality like, say, the White Chocolate Minis. They are also by far the sweetest option between the three Thins varieties, but they are just so damn good that I’d pick them nearly every time.
7) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Eggs – I overlooked these things on previous versions of this list, which isn’t too surprising considering that Reese’s have at least 5 distinct Easter egg products. However, Peanut Butter Eggs are easily one of the best seasonal variants out there, so I do feel bad for missing them for so long. Unlike the aforementioned Reese Easter Eggs (which are mostly peanut butter with a thin chocolate shell) and Mini Eggs (which are bite-sized treats), Peanut Butter Eggs are a nice sized egg with a thick chocolate shell around a generous interior of delicious peanut butter. I love them, but their only real drawback is that they’re expensive. Individually-wrapped Peanut Butter eggs are about $1.50 each, but if you want a bag of them you’re looking at about $15+. Unlike some expensive Reese’s products though, I’d actually be tempted to spend this on Peanut Butter Eggs, because they’re just that good. That said, I’ll always prowl the local Walmarts and Giant Tigers when Easter is over to find bags of these things at discount prices, but you have to be quick because they usually get snatched up within hours of opening on the day after Easter.
6) Royal Reese’s Brownie Blizzard – My God, a Reese’s Blizzard is already tasty enough, but this one was so over the top that it was unbelievable. A peanut butter filling and brownie bits in addition to the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Holy crap, this thing is completely amazing. Like most Dairy Queen products, it’s insanely expensive, so you’re only going to be indulging in this kind of thing on a special occasion, but man… that special occasion is going to be the freaking best. This product is also discontinued as of the time of writing this, but if you tried one then you know the magical time that the Royal Reese’s Brownie Blizzard graced us with.
5) Pieces Eggs – The most exciting part of the Easter season for me is that the Easter chocolates are going on sale. For most people, that means Cadbury Mini Eggs, but for me that means Pieces Eggs. While Pieces themselves don’t set my world on fire, Pieces Eggs are a whole other animal. To put it simply, Pieces Eggs are quite a bit bigger than a regular Reese’s Pieces and have 2-3x more peanut butter filling, so they’re far more satisfying to me. The only real issue is that, like all Easter chocolates, they charge you through the nose for them. That said, I’ve paid nearly $20 for a big bag of Pieces Eggs before, which pains me, but it’s (just barely) worth it and that bag will probably last me for months when all is said and done.
4) Reese’s Peanut Butter Franken-Cups – I made the bold declaration that these Halloween chocolates were the best Reese’s product I had ever had the first time I tried one and while I have cooled slightly since then, they’re still easily the best seasonal variant I’ve ever tried. The reason for this is simple – that green creme you see? That’s not mint like I originally thought. It’s basically just green-coloured white chocolate. In other words, Franken-Cups are half milk chocolate, half white chocolate peanut butter cups. Can you see why I got so enthusiastic about them? Taste-wise, they’re quite close to a white chocolate peanut butter cup, but a tad less sweet, hence why I was so enthusiastic about them. Having had them a couple more times alongside white chocolate peanut butter cups, I still have to give the edge to the full white chocolate cups, but the fact that a new product was able to get so close is remarkable in itself. Plus they came in packs of 3 or 4, which is freaking generous as far as promo Reese products go.
3) Big Cups with Reese’s Pieces – Who is the diabolical candy-making genius who thought up this decadent combination? Taking a big cup and then adding a whole additional candy into it is just such a brilliant mixture that I have to applaud it, even if it might be enough to break that delicate balance that Big Cups strike and put them on the side of over-indulgence. They’re as good as they look, but I definitely feel some shame afterwards for how decadent they are… not that that has done anything to stop me from eating several of these since they first came out.
2) Miniatures with Reese’s Pieces – As I predicted in my original rendition of this list years ago, Miniatures with Reese’s Pieces are the perfect version of the “just add Pieces” puzzle which Reese has been pursuing the past few years. Whereas Big Cups with Pieces feel like they’re too decadent, Miniatures with Pieces give you the benefit of portion control. Unlike some of the other, smaller “just add pieces” products, Miniatures are just big enough that you can distinctly taste the crunch of the miniature Pieces. They are small enough that you can eat a few at a time without feeling like you’re going overboard, although you know that some people are going to eat the whole damn bag at once.
1) White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups – Dear God, white chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are still absolutely amazing. There’s only 2 of these in a package, compared to 3 in a regular package of Peanut Butter Cups. When I was in my early teens they sold these everywhere in Canada, but for a decade or more they were bloody impossible to find here. I’ve seen enterprising international candy-sellers listing these things for $5 EACH, and I love these so much that I begrudgingly bought 3 packages of them. Hell, I’ve considered dropping $60 or more of a whole box of them on Ebay, because they are just that good. The white chocolate Minis aren’t nearly the same, and while the white chocolate Trees and Miniatures get close, they’re still hard to get ahold of and nothing quite matches just how good a white chocolate Peanut Butter Cup is. That said, in recent years I have been finding these on sale more often at specialist chocolate stores, so I try to get a few packages on hand to enjoy on special occasions and they’re always just the goddamn best. While these finally got some legitimate competition from the Franken-Cups, white chocolate Reese Cups are still the absolute best.
