Oct 16, 2020

Green Colored Creme?


Reese's Peanut Butter Franken-Cup
Hershey (2020)
I'm not sure what to make of the new Franken-Cup from Hershey.  They look pretty cool, but they don't taste much different than a regular Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.  The package describes the product as having "green colored creme", but I'm not sure what flavor it's meant to have, or if it's even supposed to taste any different than a cup that doesn't have a green bottom.

When I tasted these, I found that the chocolate and peanut butter flavor overpowered the "green colored creme", so I did a little confection surgery to separate the two halves and try to figure out what the green flavor is supposed to be.


I believe this is the same coating that Hershey uses on their White Reese's Peanut Butter Cup with green food coloring added.  It doesn't have a mint or lime or any other distinct flavor that I was able to detect.  It tastes sweet, but that's pretty much it.

The description of "green colored creme" is, in my opinion, a result of the ridiculous over-regulation of the word "chocolate' on food packaging.  In years past, products like this would simply have been called "white chocolate", or in this case "green chocolate".  People would all know what they're buying, and no one would feel cheated because the amount of cocoa butter didn't meet FDA regulations for the standard of identity.  However, in recent years, food companies have had to engage in semantic gymnastics to describe a product that is white chocolate for all intent and purposes, but without using the dreaded "c" word.  The result is ridiculous descriptions like "green chocolate creme".

I wanted to like these Franken-Cups, but there's just not much here to see.  They taste like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.  They look kind of cool, I guess.  I can't really put my finger on why these aren't clicking with me, but they're not.