Reese’s – Page 11 – The Impulsive Buy

REVIEW: Reese’s Spreads

Margaret / January 5, 2015 / Reviews / 9 Comments

The challenge is issued, the gloves are dropped, the physicians wait at the sidelines, ready to dress the wounds of the wounded. Who will stand above: the candy or the spread? The Modernist or the Traditionalist? Call the bluff. Claim your honor. The pistols are loaded.

With cat-like reflexes, the Traditionalist makes the first move. The Reese’s candy ever remains a classic, the very foundation upon which all peanut butter candies attempt to stand. It sharpens its brass knuckles on its well-grounded history: the gritty, crumbly peanut butter insides, the hyper-sweet, milk chocolatey outsides, all nestled away in its charming paper cup. I can’t even keep it around long enough to consider if it’s less than perfect.

But then…

Stronger than a 3-horsed chariot driven by Ron Swanson, the spread busts out with a perfume of peanut butter and chocolate. Smooth, shiny, a smidge gritty from itty candy chunkies, this Righteous Goodness combines all the textural traits of a nut butter with the classic chocolate-and-honeyed-peanut-butter taste of its candy contender.

With a flavor that combines peanut butter, Nutella, and sweetened condensed milk, it’s easy to eat from the jar or spread on those 48 leftover Christmas cookies from the office party. It goes on toast. It goes on waffles. It goes on ice cream. It would make an easy job for marketers conspiring to brainwash humankind with a catchy jingle that would subconsciously influence us [i.e.: me] to buy more of it. I already blame my subconscious for the excessive number of jars I will be purchasing in the future.

So the shots have been fired, the dust has cleared, the cowboy audience got bored and returned to the Tavern to nurse their beer bellies. But which product emerged victorious?

When you’re in a duel, you are acutely interested in NOT dying, so why kill your fellow compatriot? If you shoot, s/he may very well fire in return, rupturing your aorta and, well…sayonara to that vacation to Puerto Rico. Both versions of Reese’s realize this and offer their respective qualities. One, a munchable, melty candy. The other, a smooth, chocolatey peanut spread that integrates well with anything you consider suited for peanut butter. Me? I prefer something that I can carry around in my pocket, but, dang if this spread isn’t delicious.

Perhaps more importantly, the spread proves an important point: that, despite its long history, peanut butter and chocolate live in the gullet of the confectionary world with justifiable cause. The salty-sweet combination, combined with a gritty, sugared goodness, fills a special pocket of the stomach without overwhelming. It punches you and embraces you at the same time. Like a good man hug. And what better way to start the year than with a good man hug?

(Nutrition Facts – 2 Tbsp – 190 calories, 100 calories from fat, 12 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 140 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 19 grams of sugar, and 3 grams of protein.)

Item: Reese’s Spreads
Purchased Price: $3.29
Size: 13 oz. jar
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Sugary. Chocolatey. Peanut-buttery. Nubbins of candy/chunky peanut butter stirred in. Tastes just like spreadable Reese’s. 3-horsed chariots driven by Ron Swanson. Beer-bellied cowboys. Man hugs.
Cons: May induce sugar rush. May induce buying too many jars. May induce lack of pantry space after buying too many jars. Not quite as awesome as the candy, but still very awesome. Reminder that those leftover Christmas cookies are very, very stale. Catchy jingles that get stuck in your head. Vacations in Puerto Rico that don’t exist.

REVIEW: Sonic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate Waffle Cone Sundae

Matt / September 29, 2014 / Reviews / 5 Comments

An ice cream sundae is nothing without its cone. Well, except if it’s in a cup. That’s why Madonna’s cone-bra was so ingenious — it was both cones and cups at the same time. For sanitary reasons, I should probably advise against eating ice cream out of anything that’s been near Madonna’s chest.

For a limited time, Sonic restaurants will be offering the new Waffle Cone Sundae in three flavor combinations: M&M’s Candies & Strawberry, Snickers Bar & Caramel, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate. If you would like to take a walk on the wild side, you can also choose to customize your Waffle Cone Sundae. Or, if you’re bland, boring, and allergic to fun, you can order a plain vanilla Waffle Cone Sundae, devoid of all toppings, for only a single dollar less.

Me? I stand somewhere in the middle. I enjoy an occasional thrill, but I’m nowhere near crazy enough to try crowd-surfing at a Yo-Yo Ma concert. That’s why I went with a pre-made flavor: the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate Waffle Cone Sundae.

Hmm. Sonic certainly didn’t spare the peanut butter cup topping. As soon as the carhop handed me the ice cream cone, little bits of Reese’s started falling all over the place — probably the reason why he thrust a handful of napkins in my face a few seconds later.

I needed those napkins, too. The waffle cone itself is crisp, yet fragile. On several occasions, a single bite caused large portions of the cone to shatter. I had mistakenly left my Patrick Bateman gloves at home, so I found myself licking frantically to prevent vanilla ice cream from dripping all over my beautiful, bare hands.

Even with such a delicate cone, the ice cream never leaked out of the bottom. This was convenient, as I didn’t want to be burdened with the task of explaining the origin of sticky, white stains on the car seats to my leasing agent.

The flavor of the Waffle Cone Sundae’s vanilla soft serve base is complemented by both the peanut butter cup bits and the chocolate syrup. The first few bites combine the two toppings in perfect proportion, a familiar blend of chocolate and peanut flavors.

Regrettably, the balance doesn’t last for too long, as the top layer of the sundae disappears quickly. What remains is little more than plain vanilla ice cream in a plain waffle cone — a dessert as boring as the Christmas with Colonel Sanders vinyl record. (There was so much potential. The Little Drumstick Boy? The Twelve Days of Chicken? These songs practically write themselves.) To attain a more thorough distribution of flavors, Sonic would have been better off swirling the toppings into the vanilla ice cream base.

I was disappointed to find that the waffle cone seems weakly flavored, smothered by the vanilla ice cream during most bites. As the cone begins to double-up in an overlap toward its bottom, the waffle flavor becomes more apparent, but the cone merely serves as a vessel to hold ice cream for the majority of the sundae.

The most attractive aspect of Sonic’s Waffle Cone Sundae is the price. Ice cream isn’t always cheap in today’s economy, and I definitely don’t want to resort to eating those questionable Walmart ice cream sandwiches whenever I’m craving frozen dairy treats. For just a few cents under three dollars, the Waffle Cone Sundae is a bargain.

Despite all of its flaws, the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate Waffle Cone Sundae remains a satisfying and inexpensive ice cream cone. Both the quantity of toppings and the waffle cone itself were less than ideal, but for the price, its peanut butter and chocolate flavor is sufficient.

On the first day of Chicken,
The Colonel sent to me:
12 pounds of gravy,
11 herbs and spices,
10 tubs of white meat,
9 thighs and drumsticks,
8 buttermilk biscuits,
7 Chicken Littles,
6 wings and sauces,
5 DOUBLE DOOOOOOOWNS!
4 Famous Bowls,
3 Go Cups,
2 pot pies,
and a bucket of Original Recipeeeeee.

(Nutrition Facts – Not available on Sonic website.)

Item: Sonic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate Waffle Cone Sundae
Purchased Price: $2.89
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Sonic
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Tasty chocolate and peanut butter flavors. Inexpensive. Twelve Days of Chicken.
Cons: Fragile cone. Just plain ice cream after top layer. Forgetting my Patrick Bateman gloves at home.

Fast Food Reese's Sonic

REVIEW: Chewy Chips Ahoy Chocolate Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

Margaret / April 23, 2013 / Reviews / 12 Comments

As with any decade, the 90s brought along waves of immense enthusiasm for a variety of cultural phenomena. Shoulder pads. Slap bracelets. Oat bran. I think the yo-yo came back for a brief stint in 1999. Somewhere along the way, the enthusiasm for such trends dwindled.

So it goes with the grocery store chocolate chip cookie. While not a distinctly 90s product, they, much like the nation’s love for shoulder-specific garments, seem to have fallen humbly out of the marketing spotlight, and yet I know that there are those among us who love the cheap, chewy, slightly preserved taste of a pre-packaged cookie. This is nothing to be ashamed of, dear reader, for, indeed, they are cookies. If you munch them, are they not sugary? If you chew them, are they not filled with bits of goodness?

Such were my thoughts when I happened upon the Chewy Chips Ahoy! Chocolate Made With Reese’s.

The promise of greatness.

I read somewhere that, even if we tried, it would impossible to clone a dinosaur (note to self: must re-think way to attain a pet dinosaur). While they’re not related to a triceratops, I’m convinced the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, similarly, cannot be replicated. While many companies try, the proportions of a Reese’s are exact, the peanut butter ample, and the fudgy, slightly oily chocolate give the needed contrast to the gritty, dry peanut butter. It is, in my book, what every peanut butter cup is measured up against, so the fact that Mr. Chips Ahoy (would he be a pirate?) could garner some support from The Mr. Reese definitely puts these cookies in an advantageous position. At the same time, it also raises my level of expectations.

And these do not disappoint. The chocolate and peanut butter combination is spot-on. There are milk chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and Reese’s chunks/bits all around. You get at least one in every bite. The chocolate chips are of a mild, semisweet variety while the peanut butter chips are nutty, creamy, and just sugary enough. Every now and again, a chunk of meteor-like Reese’s shows up to the party. These chunks lean more to the edge of “broken up Reese’s bits” than they do “whole Reese’s cups,” but, with at least two to three solid chunks in every cookie, I can roll with that.

If there’s anything I think Mr. Chips Ahoy could work on, it’d be his cookie base. The texture works, leaning more towards “cakey” than “chewy,” and, if I’m being nit-picky, the taste of the chocolate base is pretty weak, but, let’s be honest: that’s nothing too out-of-the-ordinary for a chocolate Chips Ahoy. These cookies are all about the chips. It even says it in the name.

Certainly, there are many prospects to consider when having an afternoon snack. Is it filling? Does it have enough protein? Is it enhanced with a fiber extracts and Omega-3 liquigels of unknown origin? Well (thankfully), these cookies have none of that. What they do have is a good portion size. Not gigantomundo. Not itty-bitty. And, not to go all “Goldilocks” on ya, but they’re just enough to make a serving size worth 2 cookies, which is all I really need, although I could stuff them all at once if I had the hankerin’.

Well, Nabisco, ya did good. I could eat these on a plane, in a car, on a bus, or in a train. The fudgy chips, cakey cookie, and dry grit of the roasted peanut butter in the Reese’s makes for an all-sensors-loaded experience. I fear the English language has yet to discover the word for the joy this combination brings, but, if I were to invent one, it would likely smoosh together an amalgam of interjections, onomatopoeias, and exclamation marks. Keep making more good cookies like this, Mr. Ahoy. I’ll keep buying.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 100 milligrams of potassium, 18 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 11 grams of sugars, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Chewy Chips Ahoy Chocolate Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Purchased Price: $4.59
Size: 9.5 oz.
Purchased at: Met Foods
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Nutty, chocolate goodness. Lots of peanut butter chips. Lots of semisweet chocolate chips. Reese’s chunks. Nice size. Onomatopoeias. 90s trends.
Cons: Not the best chocolate cookie base. Could have more Reese’s. Lack of vocabulary to describe yumminess. The inability to have a pet dinosaur. Shoulder pads.

Chips Ahoy Cookies Nabisco Reese's

REVIEW: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

Marvo / May 30, 2012 / Reviews / 12 Comments

For a second, I thought about copying and pasting the regular Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups review we did in 2010 to complete this review, because everything I said in that review would apply to these new Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Doing that would’ve been an extremely lazy and reprehensible thing to do, even though I’ve done it before. Of course, a lazier and reprehensibler thing I could’ve done was make this review consist of nothing but a link to the old review.

But you deserve better than that and these Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups deserve better than that because they’re quite tasty.

Although the packaging says they’re made with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, they don’t taste like they were made with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The peanut butter center of the iconic candy has such a distinct flavor that it should easily stand out in these cookies, but instead it’s a nondescript peanut butter flavor.

The cookies not only contain mini peanut butter cups, but also peanut butter flavored chips. They even contain something a bit scary called Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Drops, but none of them have that familiar Reese’s peanut butter flavor. While that’s extremely disappointing, the peanut butter in these cookies do complement the chocolate well.

The Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are wonderfully chewy with a good balance of chocolate and peanut butter. Basically, they’re forkin’ delicious. The cookies are on the smallish side, but they’re packed with chocolate chips, peanut butter flavored chips, and tiny peanut butter cups. Actually, that’s not quite correct. While every cookie I pulled out and stuffed into my mouth had peanut butter and chocolate chips, some of them didn’t have any peanut butter cups. However, that really didn’t make them taste different from the others.

Even though they lack the unique flavor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and they’re made using partially hydrogenated oil, it’s hard not to chain eat through a package of these Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Have you ever seen a double rainbow? It’s extremely beautiful. Seeing two colorful arcs in the sky with a chance to get two pots of gold is exhilarating.

These Chewy Chips Ahoy Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are like a double rainbow, except the second rainbow is a bit faded and you can barely make it out in the sky. It’s still awesome, but not as awesome as it could’ve been.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat*, 0.5 grams of polyunsaturated fat, 2 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 100 milligrams of sodium, 40 milligrams of potassium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 11 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

*made with partially hydrogenated oil

Item: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Price: $3.79 (on sale)
Size: 9.5 ounces
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Forkin’ tasty. Addictive. Like a double rainbow, except with one rainbow a little faded. Lots of chocolate and peanut butter chips. Chasing double rainbows to get two pots of gold.
Cons: Doesn’t taste like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Peanut butter cups aren’t in every cookie. Made with partially hydrogenated oil. Could’ve been awesome. Smallish.

Chips Ahoy Cookies Nabisco Reese's

REVIEW: McDonald’s McFlurry with Reese’s

Marvo / December 16, 2011 / Reviews / 5 Comments

They say bacon makes most things better, but I believe the same can also be said of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. (See here, here, and here.)

Blending Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with soft serve ice cream to create the limited time only McDonald’s McFlurry with Reese’s sounds like McMagic.

By the way, McMagic is quicker and cheaper than regular magic, and if you use it too much, you’ll get fat.

To be honest, I thought the McFlurry with Reese’s was on McDonald’s menu all this time, which I guess shows how often I eat a McFlurry. After accidentally Googling McFluffy and then correctly Googling McFlurry, I learned the McFlurry with Reese’s is somewhat similar to the McRib in that it comes back every so often, people have created Facebook pages dedicated to it, and they both don’t have bones.

While I don’t really care for the McRib, I did enjoy the McFlurry with Reese’s.

If you look at the pictures, the McFlurry is topped with what appears to be a generous heaping of crushed Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and that crushed candy gives the dessert a wonderful peanut butter and chocolate flavor. However, even after mixing the McFlurry, the bottom fourth of it had very little candy pieces, and I was left eating what was pretty much just vanilla soft serve.

Also, there’s something else I noticed about the peanut butter cup bits. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have a distinct peanut butter flavor, but I didn’t quite taste it in this fast food dessert. It’s as if the vanilla soft serve ice cream is a flavor vampire.

But, again, I did enjoy the McDonald’s McFlurry with Reese’s. It’s a satisfying dessert and I definitely prefer it over another limited time only McFlurry variety — the Rolo McFlurry. I can taste why people will take the time to set up and manage a Reese’s McFlurry Facebook fan page.

Now, of course, this begs the question, if people love them so much, why doesn’t McDonald’s permanently add the McFlurry with Reese’s to their menu? Because it’s not as if its availability is based on pork prices. There’s a lot of soft serve ice cream and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the world.

(Nutrition Facts – 12 ounce cup – 610 calories, 220 calories from fat, 25 grams of fat, 11 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 45 milligrams of cholesterol, 320 milligrams of sodium, 85 grams of carbohydrates, 77 grams of sugar, 4 grams of fiber, and 15 grams of protein.)

Other McDonald’s McFlurry with Reese’s reviews
Brand Eating

Item: McDonald’s McFlurry with Reese’s
Price: $2.99
Size: 12 ounces
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Wonderful peanut butter and chocolate flavor. Satisfying dessert. Nice small bits of peanut butter cups. Decent source of fiber. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups make almost everything better. I now know what McFluffys are. No bones.
Cons: Only available for a limited time. Not a permanent menu item. Contains trans fat. Could not really taste the peanut flavor from Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Not enough crushed peanut butter cups. Performing too much McMagic.

Fast Food Ice Cream McDonald's Reese's

REVIEW: Reese’s Spreads

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REVIEW: Sonic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate Waffle Cone Sundae

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REVIEW: Chewy Chips Ahoy Chocolate Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

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REVIEW: Nabisco Chewy Chips Ahoy! Made With Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

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REVIEW: McDonald’s McFlurry with Reese’s

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