U.S. News

Just before Valentine’s Day, Brad Reese bought a bag of Reese’s Unwrapped Peanut Butter Creme Mini Hearts from his local convenience store in West Palm Beach, Florida. It was a brand-new product, released especially for the holiday, tagline: “We’ll never break your heart.”

Reese is a Reese’s aficionado who makes a point of trying everything the company produces. This isn’t a coincidence: he’s one of the Reeses, a grandson of HB Reese, the former Hershey dairy farmer who invented the peanut butter cup in 1928. Although he’s never worked for Reese’s or Hershey, which acquired the peanut butter cup company in 1963, Reese considers himself a custodian of HB’s legacy. He also takes an avid interest in the Hershey company and its leadership.

The Unwrapped Peanut Butter Creme Mini Hearts proved to be a disappointment. “I took two bites and I had to spit it out,” Reese says. “I’ve never had that happen to me, ever, in the 70 years of my life. There was no taste. It was inedible.”

Reese took a closer look at the packaging, specifically the ingredients. He noticed that instead of milk chocolate, the mini hearts were covered in a chocolate-flavored coating that was mostly sugar and vegetable oil; the list of ingredients contained a disclaimer that the candy contained less than 2% cocoa. He visited the candy aisle at a nearby supermarket to investigate further and found that several other Reese’s and Hershey products, including Take 5, Mr Goodbar, and Heath bars, also lacked milk chocolate.