Sweet Tooth’s Quarterly Candy Review: Reese’s Whipps
November 19th, 2008 by Cooper Levey-Baker in Editor's Desk, Food and Drink
At first glance, Reese’s Whipps — The Hershey Company’s latest entrée into the candy bar market — looks like a can’t-lose proposition. The formula sounds perfect: Take the delicious peanut-butter-simulating goo of Reese’s Cups, combine it with the high eatability of a 3 Muskateers and forge the results into a bar-like shape. Ecstasy should be mere bites away.
Sadly, it is my duty to report that Whipps just plain suck. And it’s not hard to figure out why. When the taste specialists at Hershey combined the Reese’s Cup with the 3 Muskateers, they forgot something: the Reese’s. Yes, while the packaging promises “Light and Fluffy Peanut Butter Flavored Nougat” [sic], the nougat is surprisingly generic, more like a Publix brand marshmallow than the creamed-peanut genius of a Reese’s.
Don’t think of the Whipps as a failure, Hershey, just a missed opportunity. It’s been 14 years since the debut of Reese’s NutRageous, a similar attempt to merge the Reese’s formula with a rectangular shape that has, to date, failed to capture the public imagination in the way, say, the Snickers bar has. With this most recent misstep, some candy experts are beginning to doubt whether Reese’s will ever succeed in bar form. Prove them wrong, Hershey. Prove them wrong.
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November 19th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Cooper, you totally missed an important Reese’s concoction that actually works: Reese Sticks. Think Twix with a good portion of classic Reese’s peanut butter and you’ve got it. Damn fine candy bar.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Good call, Ries, although I don’t know if a Twix-like concoction really counts as a “candy bar,” per se. Seems more like a wafer.