New product Wednesday: Reese’s Dark Chocolate PB Cup Miniatures

by Teresa Gubbins

• Tweet
• Email
• Print
• 4 Comments

Soon to disappear from supermarket shelves.

Purchased at: Kroger at 5665 East Mockingbird

This is kindof a new product in reverse: Introduced in 2009, these Reese's Dark Chocolate Miniature Peanut Butter Cups are about to disappear.

History of

Hershey's introduced regular-size Dark Chocolate and White Chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in 2003 as limited-edition items. Limited edition = oooh, gotta have. After people went nuts for a little while, Hershey's turned them into year-round products.

As for the miniature version, they offered them as a special item during the holidays. And then in 2009, Hershey's made the miniatures year-round, too.

The big deal

You might wonder, what is the big deal here, it's the same candy bar but in a different format. You might also point out that miniature versions of regular candy bars represent a whole lot more packaging, as each miniature requires its own little paper liner. Extra packaging is bad.

But what's good about the miniatures is portion control. A regular Reese's cup is a commitment, candy-wise; whereas a miniature is a bite, a snack.

And the miniatures have another benefit: They allow you to more easily consume a dark chocolate miniature and a white chocolate miniature nearly simultaneously. Consumed together, the two chocolates produce an intriguing contrast. The dark chocolate has a mild bitterness that gives the peanut-butter filling character; the white chocolate adds creaminess.

Snacking on a white chocolate mini in concert with a dark chocolate mini gives you a lot of bang for your buck when you're in the mood for a small sweet.

True fans of the Reese's Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup can still get it in a regular-size version. But Hershey's is discontinuing the Dark Chocolate Miniatures as of July 1. For us non-committal dilettantes who like to mix-and-match, it's mystifying that they would ditch the dark yet keep the white. But it says something about the waning appeal of dark chocolate. All the rage a couple of years ago as a healthy snack because it ostensibly contains antioxidants, its popularity soared in 2006, 2007, and 2008. It's still favored by serious chocaholics and it's the new toy for home bakers, but dark chocolate's popularity as a mainstream item has peaked.

Tweet