When faced with the unenviable convenience-store dilemma of choosing between Reese Peanut Butter Cups and Reese’s Pieces, your choice, until recently, has been an unsatisfactory “pick one or buy both.” What kind of horrible world do we live in? Is this an unimaginable, Vonnegut-tinged dystopia where a man or woman with only $2.10 in their pocket must choose one or the other? Are we such monsters? Have we learned nothing from human history?
Now, thanks to science, we have a new answer: buy one, get both.
Reese Big Cup Stuffed with Pieces is exactly that: a large Reese cup with tiny little Reese’s Pieces – like the kind you can buy for baking – embedded in the peanut butter centre. Simple, yet kind of a brilliant idea.
As with other Reese products, sweetness dominates, though the combination makes the texture different than either of the component parts on its own. Instead of a clean grainy bite shearing through the cup, teeth encounter resistance from the pieces, their candy shells cracking against the pressure.
Piece filling is different than Cup filling, and both are represented. Cup filling is more rough and dry than typical creamy peanut butter, while Piece filling has a whipped, oily feel to it. I prefer the Cup filling to the Piece filling, but I also like the crunch of the Piece shells.
So basically, it’s the best of both worlds. But the nutritional info panel is terrifying enough that I won’t have these often.
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The Details
Price: $2.09 for a 79-gram package with two king-size cups. Bought at a neighbourhood convenience store in Edmonton’s Strathearn neighbourhood.
Availability: Not as widespread as other Reese products seem to me.
Calories: 400 calories per package. Which divides out to 200 calories per cup. That’s more than a can of Coca-Cola.
Verdict: It’s a uniter, not a divider.
I am just wondering if there is a lull in the candy market that these variations on a tried and true formula are necessary. Admittedly I have not this one and remember putting it back on the shelf after looking at the nutritional information. From my experience with other “new twists on an old classic” rarely has the new version held a candle to the original.