Reese's Pieces

In the early 1920s, H.B. Reese worked as a foreman in the shipping department of the Hershey Company. As a father of 10, he had a lot of mouths to feed, so though he was a creative businessman, Reese worked diligently at this stable job to support his family.

Harry Burnett Reese was a candymaker at heart, however; after his shifts at the chocolate warehouse, he returned home to his basement workshop laboratory where he made various candies and confections, including two candy bars named for his children. By 1923, he had launched his own candy company where hand-coated candies were sold on consignment. 

In 1928, when one of his customers was having trouble sourcing chocolate-covered peanut butter candy, Reese (then a father of 16!) decided to tackle the challenge personally. After developing an automated process to manufacture them, he integrated individually-wrapped peanut butter cups into his product line, leading him to greater heights of success. Once WW2 shortages forced him to streamline his business, these best-selling peanut butter cups became his only product.

After his death, the former Hershey dairy farmer, Hershey shipping foreman, and Hershey competitor had his legacy come full circle when his candy company merged with Hershey's in 1963. I've discussed at some length Reese's position in the market, but they obviously make a rad product that I'm a fan of, so I tend to give them a lot of runway. 

In 1982, an auteur director wanted to use M&Ms in his little alien movie. The Mars company wasn't interested, so they pivoted their pitch to a new candy with the same oblate spheroid shape. The director was Steven Spielberg, the movie was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and the candy was Reese's Pieces.

Reese's iconic peanut butter coated in a candy shell colored orange, yellow, or brown. That's it. That's the whole candy. No need to gild the lily here; no need to reinvent the wheel. This is a candy utterly without nuance, though it honestly benefits from that absence. To me, though this is hugely subjective, Reese's Pieces is a candy that carries nostalgia. It feels inexplicably bound to my ideas of the movie theater experience, perhaps due to that cinematic lineage, but perhaps just because it's such a good movie snack.

I give it 86 radicals out of 100, and 3 hype out of 5, making it "yeah, hype"