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'Reese's Peanut Butter Cups' are peanut butter-filled chocolate cups. They were created ca. 1928 by H. B. Reese, a former dairy farmer and shipping foreman for Milton S. Hershey. The H. B. Reese Candy Co., established in the basement of Reese's house in Hershey, Pennsylvania, went on to merge with The Hershey Company in 1963 due to the popularity of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (now produced by The Hershey Company, Reese's division), are the most popular and most widely recognized brand of peanut butter cups in the world. In the United States, they come in one-, two-, three-, four-, and six-packs in distinctive orange packaging. In Canada, where they are known as 'Reese Peanut Butter Cups', the cups come in a standard pack-size of two cups, three cups or the king-size variation with four cups. In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, they were originally available only in two-packs, though are now only available in three-packs, imported from Canada. In 2007 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were made available in Denmark by HydroTexaco and 7-Eleven.

Contents

Variations

Advertisements

Pop culture references

Amusement park ride

References

External links

Variations

The cups also come in miniature sizes, in a dark brown paper cup and gold foil wrapper, that are usually sold in bags of 12 ounces or more, or individually. Hershey's currently puts out "limited edition" variants of the original version, such as one for "peanut butter lovers" (peanut-butter filling in a peanut butter cup), for "chocolate lovers" (peanut-butter-flavoured chocolate filling and chocolate coating), white chocolate coated, "Inside Out" with peanut-butter-flavored chocolate on the outside, and chocolate on the inside, fudge coated Reese's cups with fudge instead of chocolate, double chocolate with a chocolaty peanut butter mix on the inside, caramel Reese's with caramel and peanut butter inside the cup and marshmallow Reese's with marshmallow and peanut butter inside the cup. There have also been "Reese's Eggs" sold around Easter only, and "BigCups", larger versions of the original cups with more peanut butter than the regular sizes. BigCups also come with chopped nuts and mixed nuts mixed in with the peanut butter, and "nuts and caramel" with a combination of peanut butter, chopped nuts, white chocolate, and caramel inside the cup.
Other products of the Reese's division of Hershey include: Reese's Fast Break, Reese's Pieces, Reese's Pieces with Nuts, Reese's NutRageous, Reese's Take Five Candy Snack bars (pretzels, peanuts, peanut butter, and caramel contained in a milk chocolate coating) Reeses Peanut butter bars (with either chocolate or fudge coated), ReeseSticks, and Reeses Crispy Crunchy Bar which is a candy bar incorporating chocolate on the outside with nuts, peanut butter and a crispy wafer on the inside. Reese's peanut butter is also sold separately in jars. In June of 2007, Reese's began selling "Collector's Edition" Reese's Peanut Butter and Banana Creme "Elvis Cups".
In 2007 Hershey's began producing a peanut-butter-filled milk chocolate bar without the Reese name. Also they are going to release a new variation of the product, The Elvis Peanut Butter Cup (Cup with added banana).
In September of 2007 Hershey's will begin producing a new Reese's bar called Reese's Whipps.

Advertisements

They are well-known for their ad campaign stating, "There's no wrong way to eat a Reese's," accompanied by some creative way of consuming it. In the 1970s television commercials, the usual scenario involves one person eating chocolate colliding with another person eating out of a peanut butter jar with the famous lines,
''You got chocolate in my peanut butter!''
''You got peanut butter on my chocolate!''
The slogan for this advertising campaign was: "Two great tastes that taste great together." One of these commercials featured a very young John Travolta colliding with a very young Robbie Benson
In 2006, a commercial for a new Reese's Caramel was similar to the '70s commercial. In this Reese's commercial, Indy Racing League driver Tony Kanaan was eating caramel and NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick was eating an ordinary Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. When they ran into each other, Harvick's Reese's dipped into Kannan's jar of caramel. Harvick then says, "Hey, you got caramel on my Reese's!" Then a chorus begins singing the jingle, "Three great tastes that taste great together...Reese's Peanut Butter Cup!", while the product is shown on screen. Harvick and Kannan are both sponsored by Reese's and Hershey's in their respective racing series, thus the commercial is frequently seen during NASCAR and Indy Racing League broadcasts.
In the 1990s, a series of popular commercials ran in Canada featuring the character of "circle researcher Rory Tate", played by actor Tim Sims. The plots revolved around his investigations of circular phenomena, such as crop circles, at the hands of flying UFO-like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Pop culture references

★ In the Family Guy episode "PTV", the main character Peter Griffin notes that some inventions would never have come about without impulsiveness. A flashback comes up that is a parody on Reese's ad campaigns, involving two apparently intoxicated drivers in a car accident of which one is eating chocolate, and the other one peanut butter. The collision is quickly followed by the arrival of a police officer named Reeses, who asks what happened. The drivers quote the lines from the original advertising, the officer tastes the chocolate and peanut butter combination, then murders the two men and takes the idea for himself, seemingly leading to the invention of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

★ In the NewsRadio episode "Complaint Box", the main character Dave Nelson (played by Dave Foley) reads a number of joke complaint cards. Three, which are read consecutively, say "He got chocolate in my peanut butter", "He got peanut butter on my chocolate" and "Together they taste like crap".

★ At the beginning of "A Pinky and the Brain Halloween", Pinky, who has been eating a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, falls onto Brain's transmitter and gets pieces of the chocolate on it, causing Brain to yell, "No! Pinky, you got chocolate on my Jacko-lantronic transmitter!" Pinky replies, "You got Jacko-lantronic transmitter on my chocolate! Yummy!"

★ Amy Ray mentions Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in her song "Driver Education."

★ At the beginning of the ''TaleSpin'' episode "All's Whale that Ends Whale", while fishing, Baloo accidentally hooks a jar of peanut butter and causes it to land in his bucket of bait. Kit yells, "You got tuna in my peanut butter!", with Baloo replying, "You got peanut butter in my tuna!"

★ An online article from US News and World Report, dated May 21, 2004, uses the famous Reese's Peanut Butter Cup as an analogy to illustrate how advances in technology, used together, give scientists a better understanding of how the human brain functions. The article refers to the "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Effect", because as chocolate and peanut butter create a better result than either one alone, brain imaging and biotechnology create a much clearer understanding of the brain.

★ In the movie 50 First Dates, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are referred to in a number of scenes.

★ In the American Dad! episode Black Mystery Month, after a group of people first hear about Steve Smith's plot to prove the world that George Washington Carver did not invent Peanut Butter, one of the people phones someone else, saying "We've got Chocolate in our Peanut Butter" .

★ In the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Sandy's Rocket," Spongebob has peanut butter floating in outer space. Patrick squirts toothpaste into it and Spongebob exclaims "You got your toothpaste in my peanut butter!"

★ In a This Hour Has 22 Minutes episode, a mother with her baby walks by and drops her baby in a passerby's peanut butter bowl, saying "You got peanut butter on my baby" then he proceeds to say "You got your baby on my peanut butter", then they both begin to taste the baby and exclaim how good it tastes.

★ An episode of ''Muppets Tonight!'' has Gonzo the Great running into the control room with a Buena Vista Home Video release of ''Muppet Babies'' and Zippety Zap runs into the same room with a recorded episode of ''Seinfeld'', crashing into each other, and their tapes are mixed with each other, just like in the commercials. There is even a quoted reference to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups before the sketch, "Seinfeld Babies", starts.

Amusement park ride

There is now a ride in Hersheypark named after this candy. It is called the "Reese's Xtreme Cup Challenge," and it is a form of mounted laser tag with participants riding an indoor dark ride while firing upon targets throughout the ride.

References

External links

★ Official Reese's Peanut Butter Cup site

★ Reese Family History

★ Reese's Historical Timeline

★ Reeses Product Listing