After three secretive years of research and development, Oreo and Reese’s have debuted a limited-time collaboration mashing up the two iconic treats.
I tried both and found a clear winner between the two.
The snack kingpins officially launched their new products on August 26: an Oreo cookie with Reese’s peanut butter-flavored creme filling and miniature and king-size Reese’s cups with an Oreo creme-flavored chocolate shell and cookie crumbs inside.
Michelle Deignan from Oreo and Dan Mohnshine from The Hershey Company said in a joint statement to Business Insider that the collaboration stemmed from social media. Fans of both brands combined Oreo cookies and Reese’s cups on their own and shared their creations on platforms like TikTok.
“Mixing, stacking, they were creating their own version of this mashup, in fact, Oreo cookies ranks as the most-requested flavor collaboration with Reese’s on social media,” their statement read.
Deignan said Gen Z fans, in particular, have a fondness for Reese’s brand, which Oreo hopes to leverage through the partnership to “help the Oreo brand gain equity, stay relevant and modern, while driving cultural conversation.”
Once leaders from each brand agreed to the partnership, Charlie Chappell from The Hershey Company told Business Insider the goal became to make sure fans “could taste and feel every part of both Reese’s and Oreo in these new treats.”
“We visited each other’s facilities, held joint taste tests, and even decided to use gluten-free Oreo cookies to match what Reese’s fans expect with our products,” Chappell said.
Chappell added: “We also worked with Mondelēz to figure out the best way to achieve the perfect Oreo cookie crumble, so they’d fit perfectly inside a Reese’s Cup and add that satisfying crunch. We also updated our Reese’s Cup production lines to accommodate this new innovation.”
All told, the painstaking process of combining the snacks — including project code names, secret taste tests, and drafting extensive contracts that protected each brand’s iconic secret recipes, The Wall Street Journal reported — took three years to get to supermarket shelves.
I was able to taste test both snacks before they hit the shelves, and it was immediately clear how much care went into the partnership.
The packaging on the products is impeccable, highlighting the shapes and colors of both snacks.
Upon unwrapping, each maintains its iconic look, but with a slight twist that highlights the collaboration: The Oreo cookies have a brown Reese’s peanut butter filling, and the Reese’s cups have a layer of white Oreo creme on top.
I sampled both the miniature and king-size Reese’s cups with Oreo crumbs. I loved the addition of the textured cookie crumb to a classic Reese’s cup, but I found the Oreo creme-flavored layer was drowned out by the chocolate and peanut butter flavors of the rest of the snack.
The Oreo with Reese’s filling was also tasty, and the peanut butter flavor came through more clearly than the creme filling did on the Reese’s cup. Ever a sucker for a chocolate peanut butter combination, I felt this treat better hit its target of capturing the essence of both brands in a single bite.
That said, while both snacks were worth trying, neither one was as satisfying to me as their original versions. If you’re a sweet treat purist, go for your usual favorite of the two, and you won’t be disappointed. If you’re into mixing things up and are looking to choose between the two icons, the Oreos stuffed with Reese’s filling proved to be the real crumb de la crumb.
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