Reese’s Pieces

The remarkable success of the Reese’s chocolate–peanut butter combination encouraged Hershey to test market a new bagged candy—a sweetened peanut butter filling with a hard candy shell—in 1979. While the product was under development, its proposed name was “PB,” but Mars, Inc., already held the trademark on “PB,” so the new product was named “Reese’s Pieces.” The new candy hit the national market in 1978, and within four years was so successful that a dedicated production line was set up for it in one of the Hershey plants. Mars, Inc., later released Peanut Butter M&M’s to compete with Reese’s Pieces.