Our biggest taste test ever! 53 different Reese's Peanut Butter items!

Theresa - With all the family coming for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we should do another big taste test. Like we did with the M&Ms.
Joe - Great idea! Any thoughts on what we should do?
Theresa - What about Reese's?

Lovely! I wonder how many different kinds there are?
So starting in early September, Theresa and I started getting every different kind of Reese's product we could find. And let me tell you, there were a whole bunch of them. It was easy enough to find the regular stuff. I think one run to CVS I was able to find over 20 unique items. And you'd be surprised by the variety a local 7/11 has too.
Because we started collecting things before Halloween, there were Halloween specific Reese's items. And then as soon as the Halloween things left the shelves, Christmas items followed.

And so, here we are at 53 unique Reese's items. It's our biggest taste test ever.
Is this every Reese's item? No. I know there's a Reese's pie, Reese's brownies, baking chips, coffee creamer, and a few others that I either couldn't find or didn't think "fit".

When the family was here for Thanksgiving, we got everything started. We don't quite have everyone here, so instead of doing all 52, everyone picked their favorites, plus a couple extras.

I know Megan was excited to try them all.

Avery was snacking on Reese's Pieces.

All together we tried 12 different things. It was peanut butter overload, but it was still tasty.

At Christmas, it was time for the big one. There's Theresa's whole family from Michigan here. The kids were certainly excited to have such a bounty of things to try.

Alli found her favorite item.

That right there is a lot of orange.
Because it was so much, we drew a random line down the table and decided to have everything across 2 days.

Here we go! We're going to start by getting the frozen things out of the way.

1. Breyers Reese's / Reese's mini pieces ice cream - I like the peanut butter ice cream, and having candy bits in it makes it even better.

And since we're having ice cream why not top it off with...
2. Reese's Shell - A chocolate and peanut butter topping. When it gets cold, it turns into a crunchy shell.

Austin sampling the ice cream.

3. Klondike Reese's - The regular chocolate shell but with peanut butter ice cream inside. Again with the peanut butter ice cream, and again, tasty.

4. Creamy Reese's Peanut Butter - I was expecting a sweet peanut butter similar to what's inside the cups. It was not a sweet peanut butter and actually tasted a little oily.
Funny story on this one. I knew this peanut butter existed, but couldn't find it in any of my stores. On a trip to Colorado I was able to find it. "Great" I thought.
Except when I tried to fly back home to California. The TSA apparently considered this a liquid, and wouldn't let me take it onto the airplane. Confiscated. D'oh.
I ended up adding it to a walmart.com order I had coming for some other things.

5. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - The classic. Everyone has had it and they're delicious.
There's not much to say about it, so instead, here's a history lesson.
H.B. Reese started a candy company in his basement in Hershey Pennsylvania in 1923. He always used Hershey chocolate in his candies. In 1963, the Reese Candy Company merged with the Hershey chocolate corporation, and just 6 years later the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup was Hershey's top seller. It's the top selling candy in the US still.

Time for some Reese's pumpkins.
6. White Creme Peanut Butter Pumpkins (Orange) - Snack Size - I know many people love the pumpkins because of the different ratio of chocolate to peanut butter.

I was thrown for a little bit, because the picture of the pumpkin was orange, but the bag says White Creme. But opening it up, sure enough, it's orange alright.

7. White Reese's Pumpkins - Amy's favorite as it turns out.

These are bigger than the snack size, though from what I could tell, they tasted the same. Normally I'm not a big fan of white chocolate, but maybe because it's paired with the peanut butter it works better.

8. Reese's Pumpkins - Regular chocolate pumpkins this time.

9. Reese's stuffed with pieces - Snack Size - I like crunchy bits in my Reese's cups.

10. Reese's Clusters - Made with peanut butter, caramel, peanuts, and pecans, wrapped in chocolate. This is the first Reese's I've had with pecans in it. It was very reminiscent of a Turtle, and also tasty.

11. Hershey's Milk Chocolate & Reese's pieces - It really depends on if you like Hershey's chocolate or not.

12. Reese's Sticks - Like a Kit Kat kind of, but with peanut butter wafers.

13. Reese's Fast Break - Chocolate, peanut butter, and nougat.

Looks interesting inside. This was Ian's favorite. He likes what he calls "3 mousekateers" so I know he likes nougat.

14. Reese's Nutrageous - Chocolate, peanuts, peanut butter, and caramel.

A lot of these seem like Reese's is taking an already popular candy bar, adding peanut butter and chocolate to it, and calling it something else. In this case, a Payday.

And if that last one is a Payday, this next one is a Butterfinger.
15. Reese's Crispy Crunchy - Chocolate, peanut butter, crispy peanut butter candy, and peanuts. Another tasty one.

16. Reese's Outrageous stuffed with pieces - Chocolate, peanut butter, and caramel.

17. Reese's Chocolate Lovers - An extra thick layer of chocolate on this one.
I had the hardest time finding these back in September. They were released earlier in the summer and most stores were already out of them. The donut shop Krispy Kreme was even doing a cross-promotion with both Chocolate Lovers and Peanut Butter Lovers donuts. But I couldn't find them before Krispy Kreme stopped their promotion, so I never did a comparison taste test back then. But in my search for this particular bar, I was able to find a few other Reese's candies that I hadn't even known about.

Which is what made it even more disappointing that this was the first one I didn't really care for. The chocolate on this didn't taste like normal Reese's chocolate. It was more stiff than the chocolate I'm used to.

18. Reese's Peanut Butter Lovers - This time the regular Reese's cup has been covered with a layer of peanut butter chocolate.

If there's a Chocolate Lovers you have to make a Peanut Butter Lovers too, don't you.

Well before this point, people are starting to get a little overwhelmed with peanut butter and chocolate. So far it's just Austin and myself that have tried a piece of everything.

Sampling the tiniest of pieces.

The kids have been pacing themselves, mostly because mommy said they can only try 10 small samples for the whole night.

Let's try a few more things before we call it a night.

19. Reese's Pieces - These have been popular ever since E.T.

20. Reese's Snack Mix - Sweet and Salty Mix with Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Minis and Reese's pieces candy, pretzels and peanuts.

21. Reese's Dipped Pretzels - Pretzels dipped in peanut butter candy and drizzled with chocolate. Salty and sweet, these were delicious.

For these next couple, I was looking for the biggest Reese's you could buy. I know about the Big Cups and we'll get to those tomorrow. But from everything I could find, these are the biggest Reese's Cup you can buy.

22. Huge Thanks Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - I plan to do a comparison on these sizes later with more pictures, but for now, this is a 5 oz version of Reese's Cup. But, that's not the biggest.

23. Half Pound Reese's Peanut Butter Cup - The title of biggest Reese's Peanut Butter Cup goes to this 8 oz behemoth. Sold around Christmastime (fortunate for me) the package contains two 8oz cups.

That's a lot of chocolate and peanut butter.

The biggest 8oz cup and the smallest mini cup. More on this in a future post.
Phew! We've had a lot of chocolate, but we're not even halfway through.

Day 2!

We made Alli wait a whole day to get to her favorite.
Remember when we finished Day 1 with the biggest Reese's Cup you could buy? Well that's not the biggest Reese's item you can buy. That goes to this 1 pound Santa!

It's as big as the plate I'm cutting it up on.

There's a happy girl.

24. 1 Pound Reese's Peanut Butter Santa - Wow. I can't put my finger on why, but this is the best Reese's we've tried. And even after going through all the rest of the ones after this, Santa was almost everyone's favorite.

25. Reese's Snowman - This is a 5 oz snowman filled with peanut butter and chocolate.

You can't tell it with the packaging, but inside is a pretty detailed snowman with his own decked-out Reese's snowboard.

26. Reese's Take 5 - Pretzels, Caramel, Peanut Butter, Peanuts, and Chocolate. Salty and Sweet is delicious. This is a good bar.

27. Reese's Spooky Eyeballs - Alli loves these for some reason. I think she remembers getting them around Halloweentime.

28. Reese's Monster Mania - Just another shape.

29. Reese's Big Cup - Time for a round of Big Cups. If you can't find the larger cups I showed above, most days you can find these 1.4 oz cups. They're big with lots of peanut butter inside.

30. Reese's Big Cup Crunchy - With this much peanut butter in these cups, it's normally like smooth peanut butter. Well if you like crunchy peanut butter, this is the cup for you. It's the same cup as above but this time with peanuts included.

31. Reese's Big Cup Stuffed with Pieces - Same cup as above but with mini Reese's pieces inside.

32. Reese's Big Cup Stuffed with Crunchy Cookie - Some type of chocolate cookie bits inside this one. I like crunchy chocolate cookies in my Reese's too.

33. Reese's Crunchers - Peanuts, Mini Peanut Butter Chips, Puffs, and covered in Chocolate. If you're wanting something crunchy, sure, why not.

34. Reese's Popped Snack Mix - Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Minis, Reese's Pieces, Peanut Butter Candy Coated Peanuts, Pretzels, and Chocolate Drizzled Popcorn. Our first introduction to Reese's Popcorn. It's tasty. And if Reese's Pieces are similar to M&Ms, these Peanut Butter Candy Coated Peanuts are akin to Peanut M&Ms. Lots of deliciousness here.

35. Reese's Thins - If you're a fan of the Reese's Chocolate with just a little peanut butter, these might be for you. I've heard lots of good things about these and many people liked them.

36. Reese's Thins Dark Chocolate - Same as above, but with dark chocolate. I'm usually a fan of dark chocolate, but I didn't particularly care for Reese's dark chocolate.

37. Reese's snack size peanut butter cup - There's a few different sizes of a Reese's peanut butter cup. We'll see this again when we do our comparison of all the different sizes.

38. Reese's XL Bar - Would you rather have your Reese's in a bar form instead of a cup? Why not try the XL Bar?

39. Chips Ahoy! with Reese's cups and Reese's chips - If you're a fan of Chips Ahoy you might like these cookies.

40. Chewy Chips Ahoy! with Reese's cups and Reese's chips - Similar to the cookies above, but a chewy variety.

41. Chocolate Chewy Chips Ahoy! with Reese's cups and Reese's chips - Let's find another way to add even more chocolate to a cookie.

42. Reese's Trees - Another different shape of Reese's, this time for Christmas
43. Reese's Trees White Chocolate - Again I'll say that I'm not usually a white chocolate fan, but with Reese's it works well.

44. Reese's Bells - Pick a shape and Reese's might just make it.

45. Reese's White - If you can't find any holiday chocolates that are white, these will keep you satisfied during the rest of the year.

46. Reese's minis - We've seen the biggest, now see the smallest. We'll see these in the comparison post too.

47. Reese's minis white chocolate - Is it fair to say that I'm starting to run out of things to say about Reese's?

48. Reese's Miniature Cups - If you see a bowl of Reese's, this is usually what it's filled with. I wonder if more regular cups or miniature cups are eaten each year.

49. Reese's Miniature Cups Stuffed with Pieces - Even the small ones, they make with pieces inside.

50. Reese's Miniature Cups Dark Chocolate - Another variety of dark chocolate, still not a fan.

51. Reese's Miniature Cups White Chocolate - Yep, it's white.

52. Reese's Puffs Cereal - I've tried countless types of cereal. One of my favorites is Reese's Puffs. It's crunchy and both savory and sweet.

53. Reese's Puffs Treats - Reese's cereal with a peanut butter drizzle and dipped in peanut butter. If it works for Rice Krispies, why not Reese's Puffs? Actually maybe they shouldn't have. The cereal is great. The treats weren't so much.

Whew! That was a whole lot of chocolate and peanut butter. Reese's has an incredible amount of variety in their product line.
Austin and I tried every single item.

So with 53 different kinds of Reese's, what are the standouts?

• Reese's Santa - This 1 pound solid bar had a great tasting chocolate and a great texture peanut butter. It surprised everyone who tasted it how good it was. 
• Reese's Clusters - These were similar to Turtles, and the addition of peanut butter is great. 
• Reese's Dipped Pretzels - Peanut butter pretzels are always delicious. Doubly so if it's Reese's peanut butter. 
• Reese's Puffs cereal - This cereal is always tasty, either for breakfast, or just to snack on. 
• And Theresa wanted me to add that the Reese's Pumpkins, Monsters, and Trees were really tasty. Her second favorite of all of them. 

What should we try next? 

Is there anything you can think of that might have more than 53 different items?