Sometimes I wonder things and I look them up. Today I was watching TV and saw a commercial during the Giants game that made me wonder “Did some real person really create Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or is that just a made up name? If the name is real, who is Reese?
It turns out there really was a Reese and he really did create Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are a brand of chocolate candy filled with peanut butter, marketed by The Hershey Company. They were created in 1928 by Harry Burnett Reese (H. B. Reese), a former dairy farmer and shipping foreman for Milton S. Hershey. Reese was inspired by Mr. Hershey, so he left the dairy farm to start his own candy business. The H. B. Reese Candy Co. was established in the basement of Reese’s house in Hershey, Pennsylvania,[1] and used Hershey chocolate in his confections. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were his most popular candy, and Reese eventually discontinued his other lines. Several years after his death, Reese’s company was sold to the Hershey Company in 1963 for $23.5 million. The H.B. Reese Company is maintained as a subsidiary of Hershey because the Reese plant workforce is not unionized, unlike the main Hershey plant.
Some of you might remember old commercials like these where two people bump into each other (this one includes two guys who would later become well-known, Robby Benson and Donny Most of Happy Days). I get the idea of walking down the street eating a chocolate bar but who the heck walks around eating peanut bar right of the jar? In any case, here is the video: