{"id":9669,"date":"2013-03-31T15:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-03-31T19:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/?p=9669"},"modified":"2014-04-15T16:45:22","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T20:45:22","slug":"happy-easter-the-history-of-reeses-peanut-butter-eggs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/?p=9669","title":{"rendered":"Happy Easter – The History of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CC_Reeses<\/p>\n

To all of CollectingCandy.com’s readers that celebrate the holiday; Happy Easter!\u00a0 It’s been fun counting down to today by sharing various Easter candy goodies and bits of confectionery history this week.<\/p>\n

I wanted to close out the week’s Easter coverage with something extra-special.\u00a0 With that in mind, today I’m taking a look back at the history of an Easter candy classic – Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.<\/p>\n

Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs were first test-marketed in 1966 in the state of Pennsylvania.\u00a0 That test market was a huge success and the following year in 1967,\u00a0 the rest of the nation would finally get their first taste of what would become a delicious Easter candy classic.\u00a0 This trade magazine clipping documents that initial roll-out and features an image of the very first Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs in their display box:<\/p>\n

\"Reese's

Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg trade clipping – February 1967<\/p><\/div>\n

By the early 1970’s, Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs would take on the single Easter-flower design that would become iconic to the brand.<\/p>\n

Here’s an early display box lid, when the wrappers likely had a printed-on 10-cent price:<\/p>\n

\"Reese's<\/a>

Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs display box top – circa 1970 – Image courtesy Dennis Hartwig<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

The earliest wrapper example I have in my collection is a partial or “trimmed” wrapper from a few years after that box lid:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s – Peanut Butter Egg – Easter candy wrapper – trimmed – circa 1975-1976<\/p><\/div>\n

That classic design continued to be used for many years, likely into the 1990’s.\u00a0 The next example I have to show is from the early 1980’s, and it is virtually unchanged from the mid-70’s version:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Egg – Easter candy wrapper – 1983<\/p><\/div>\n

And in 1988, this wrapper design was still in use as you can see in this newspaper circular ad and coupon:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey's

Hershey’s – Reese’s – Easter Circular ad and coupon – Easter 1988<\/p><\/div>\n

At this point I hit a significant gap in my research, as the next wrapper I have to show is from the early 2000’s.\u00a0 This wrapper features an updated look and one which previews the design to follow:<\/p>\n

\"Reese's<\/a>

Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg Wrapper – 2003 – Image courtesy MikesCandyWrappers.com<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Just a couple years later, Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs would have the look they largely retain to this day.\u00a0 Though the design was introduced in 2004 or 2005, the earliest example I have is from 2009:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg – swirl background – Easter candy wrapper – 2009<\/p><\/div>\n

Of note on that 2009 wrapper is the use of Reese’s trademark orange swirl background.\u00a0 The swirl background was something introduced in the mid-2000’s and used across the Reese’s line.\u00a0 By 2011, the orange swirl would be retired:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg – Easter candy wrapper – 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve also got a recent Reese’s White Egg that shares this wrapper design:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s White Peanut Butter Egg – Easter candy wrapper – 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

Since the modern design for Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs arrived, there have been a number of special edition versions released beyond the white chocolate version I have.\u00a0 I don’t have any of those others in my own collection, but I’d like to share a pair of examples pulled from elsewhere on the net.<\/p>\n

First up, from the folks at CandyAddict.com is the Reese’s Fudge Egg:<\/p>\n

\"Reese's<\/a>

Reese’s Fudge Egg – Easter 2008 – Image source: CandyAddict.com<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

And here is a neat-looking double-the-peanut-butter version from Jennifer T. on Flickr:<\/p>\n

\"Reese's<\/a>

Reese’s Double Peanut Butter Egg circa 2007 – Image source Jennifer T. on Flickr<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Back to items from my own collection, here is a six-pack outer pack for the standard Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs – 1.2 oz 6-pack multi Easter candy package – 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

And a King-Size version of the standard:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg – King Size – Keep Easter Easy – candy wrapper – 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

Moving on to the “fun-size” versions of Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs – I’ve always quite liked these because they retain the spirit of the flower-design of the classic wrappers:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg – .6oz mini package – Easter 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

Here’s the outer package for the .6 ouncers:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs – 8.5 oz minis package – Easter 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

That brings us up-to-date on the classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.\u00a0 It’s a rich and delicious history of Reese’s Easter goodness.<\/p>\n

[Edit:\u00a0 I know I have a modern version of the Canadian Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg wrapper in my collection, but I must have misfiled it as I couldn’t find it for today’s post.\u00a0 When I do finally track it down, I’ll drop it in here.]<\/p>\n

I do have a few other Reese’s Easter-related items that I wanted to share today.\u00a0\u00a0 First up, a foil-wrapper Reese’s Egg package:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs – 8oz Easter candy package – 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

This is an Easter package for the Reese’s classic Miniatures:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Miniatures – 8.5oz Easter candy package – 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

And here is an Easter-branded package for the relatively new Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Minis:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Minis – 7oz Easter candy package – 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

Finally, here is the cleverly-named Reester Bunnies.\u00a0 The box for these is kind of plain, as the focus of the package design is to showcase the foil-wrapped, peanut-butter-filled chocolate bunnies:<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Reester Bunnies – Easter candy box – 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

Here is one of the foil wraps.<\/p>\n

\"Hershey

Hershey – Reese’s Reester Bunnies – Easter candy foil wrapper – 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

The Reester Bunnies received a packaging refresh and redesign for 2013.\u00a0 I never saw the new version in any of my Easter candy hunts, but my brother sent me the following pic he snapped a couple of days ago:<\/p>\n

\"Reese's

Reese’s Reester Bunnies – new design for 2013<\/p><\/div>\n

And that’s everything for today’s post.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I’d like to track down the wrapper designs I’m currently missing and return to today’s topic – maybe by next year I’ll find some of the missing pieces of the puzzle.\u00a0 If not by next year, hopefully I’ll have them all in time for 2016 – the 50th Anniversary of that first Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg test-market.<\/p>\n

I hope everyone has a lovely Easter Sunday and that you’ve been able to enjoy some of your own Easter treat favorites this season.<\/p>\n

See you next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To all of CollectingCandy.com’s readers that celebrate the holiday; Happy Easter!\u00a0 It’s been fun counting down to today by sharing various Easter candy goodies and bits of confectionery history this week. I wanted to close out the week’s Easter coverage … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,24,6,158,134,50,119],"tags":[807,157,321,316,328,351,332,14,324,78,333,1219,29,21,17,15,348,11],"class_list":["post-9669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1960s","category-1970s","category-1980s","category-easter","category-hershey","category-holiday-2","category-peanut-butter","tag-bunnies","tag-bunny","tag-candy-collecting","tag-candy-collection","tag-candy-collector","tag-candy-wrapper-collection","tag-candy-wrapper-collector","tag-collectible","tag-collecting-candy","tag-confectionery","tag-confections","tag-easter","tag-holiday","tag-packaging","tag-reeses","tag-sweets","tag-vintage-candy-wrapper","tag-wrapper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2aFGk-2vX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9669"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9714,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9669\/revisions\/9714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/collectingcandy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}