The peanut butter and chocolate empire has spawned more offspring than a reality TV family, and frankly, not all of them deserve to exist. I've demolished my way through every Reese's variety I could get my hands on, and the results might surprise you. Some of these bastards are pure genius. Others? Well, they're proof that corporate America will slap a Reese's logo on literally anything and call it innovation.

Here's the brutal truth about every Reese's candy variety, ranked from the disasters that make you question humanity to the ones that justify your sugar addiction.

14. Reese's Big Cup with Reese's Puffs

What kind of sick mind decided that breakfast cereal belongs inside candy? This abomination takes everything good about regular Reese's cups and ruins it with stale cereal bits that add nothing but confusion. The puffs get lost in the peanut butter filling, creating random moments of disappointing crunch that feel more like manufacturing errors than intentional design. It's like someone at Reese's headquarters was high and thought, "You know what would make this better? Leftover breakfast." Spoiler alert: it doesn't.

13. Reese's Crunchy Peanut Chocolate Bar

This protein bar wannabe commits the cardinal sin of being dry as hell while drowning you in peanuts. The chocolate coating can't keep up with the aggressive saltiness of the actual peanuts mixed with peanut butter cream, creating a texture that belongs in the gym supplement aisle, not the candy section. Every bite feels like chewing sawdust mixed with nuts, and not in a good way. If you want to punish your mouth for some unknown transgression, go ahead and grab one of these. Everyone else should run.

12. Reese's Caramel Big Cup

Sometimes two good things make something terrible, and this is exhibit A. The caramel and peanut butter fight each other for dominance instead of working together, creating a confusing mess where neither flavor gets to shine. The caramel is decent on its own, but paired with Reese's signature peanut butter, it becomes an overly sweet disaster that makes your teeth hurt. It's like watching two talented actors overact in the same scene—individually good, together unwatchable.

11. Reese's Peanut Butter Flavored Cupcakes

These processed nightmares taste more like artificial peanut butter powder than anything resembling actual Reese's flavor. The cupcake itself is standard convenience store fare—artificially moist and loaded with preservatives that probably extend your life through sheer chemical preservation. The icing tries desperately to taste like peanut butter but ends up tasting like regret mixed with food coloring. If you're craving cupcakes, buy real ones. If you're craving Reese's, literally any other option on this list will serve you better.

10. Reese's Thins Peanut Butter Cups

The diet culture version of Reese's cups that nobody asked for. These paper-thin disappointments offer mostly chocolate with a whisper of peanut butter, completely destroying the ratio that made the original cups legendary. They're marketed as a "lighter" option, which is corporate speak for "we're giving you less of what you actually want." If you want to eat chocolate, eat chocolate. If you want Reese's, these ain't it. They're the candy equivalent of ordering a salad at a steakhouse.

9. Reese's White Peanut Butter Cups

White chocolate divides people into two camps: those who love it and those with functioning taste buds. These cups replace the milk chocolate with white "creme" that adds vanilla notes and a weird artificial tang that fights with the peanut butter instead of complementing it. The flavor profile feels confused and overly sweet, like someone tried to make Reese's cups "fancy" and completely missed the point. They're not terrible, but they solve a problem that didn't exist.

8. Reese's Puffs

The cereal that made breakfast dessert acceptable somehow works better than it should. Yeah, the texture is weird—simultaneously crunchy and stale—but the peanut butter chocolate flavor actually delivers. It's pure sugar masquerading as nutrition, and the nostalgia factor is undeniable. The real tragedy is eating it dry from the box at 2 AM while questioning your life choices. With milk, it's decent. Without milk, it's a cry for help. But damn if that jingle isn't permanently burned into your brain.

7. Reese's Take 5

Five ingredients that should be a hot mess somehow work together in chaotic harmony. Pretzels, peanuts, caramel, peanut butter, and chocolate create a salty-sweet explosion that hits different from other Reese's products. The pretzel adds the perfect crunch, the caramel provides sticky sweetness, and somehow none of it gets lost in translation. It's proof that sometimes throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks actually works. Complex without being complicated, which is more than most candy bars can claim.

6. Reese's Sticks

Kit-Kat energy with Reese's flavor execution. These wafer sticks provide the kind of satisfying crunch that makes ASMR videos popular, while the peanut butter filling adds substance between the crispy layers. The chocolate coating is applied with restraint, creating proper balance instead of chocolate overload. They're suspiciously similar to other wafer cookies, but the Reese's treatment elevates them beyond their generic competitors. Sometimes stealing a good idea and doing it better is perfectly acceptable.

5. Reese's Minis

The convenience factor alone puts these in the top half. No wrappers to fumble with means faster candy-to-mouth delivery time, which matters when sugar cravings hit. The smaller size means more chocolate relative to peanut butter, but somehow it works in mini form where it fails in the Thins. Maybe it's the poppable nature that makes them addictive, or maybe it's because you can eat seventeen without technically having "more than one." Either way, they disappear faster than your willpower.

4. Reese's Fast Break

This chunky beast brings nougat to the peanut butter party, and the addition actually makes sense. The nougat adds chewy texture that contrasts perfectly with the smooth peanut butter, while the thick chocolate coating holds everything together. It's substantial enough to satisfy serious hunger while maintaining the Reese's flavor profile that made the brand famous. The only downside is the king-size format that encourages poor decision-making, but that's a you problem, not a candy problem.

3. Reese's Pieces

The chocolate-free rebels that prove peanut butter doesn't always need its traditional partner. These crunchy shells give way to pure peanut butter centers, creating a completely different texture experience from cup-based products. They're versatile enough for movie theater snacking or baking ingredient duty, and the color scheme makes them more fun than they have any right to be. E.T. had excellent taste, and decades later, these remain proof that sometimes simple concepts executed perfectly beat complicated innovations.

2. Reese's Peanut Butter Tie-Dye Eggs

Holiday shapes hit different, and eggs are the ultimate proof. The increased peanut butter ratio in these oval beauties creates the perfect indulgent experience that regular cups can't match. The seasonal availability makes them feel special, even though they're basically just misshapen cups with more filling. The extra peanut butter transforms the entire eating experience, proving that sometimes more is actually more. The tie-dye wrapper is just marketing nonsense, but what's inside is pure deliciousness.

1. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

The original gangsters that started this whole empire. Nearly a century of perfection can't be improved upon, and anyone who tries is usually disappointed. The ratio of peanut butter to chocolate is mathematically perfect, the size is ideal for portion control (until you eat the second cup immediately), and they're available everywhere civilization exists. They're the baseline against which all other Reese's products are measured, and most fail to reach this standard. Classic for a reason.