Hershey's Kissables

Hershey Kissables were a chocolate candy sold by The Hershey Company from 2005 to 2009. Comparable to M&M's, Hershey Kissables were shaped like miniature Hershey's Kisses and were coated in a thick sugar shell.

Hershey's Kissables

Product type	Chocolate
Produced by	The Hershey Company
Country	United States
Introduced	2005
Discontinued	July 2009

The basic colors were red, orange, yellow, green and blue. Holiday versions were also made in pastels for Easter, pink and white for Valentines, and red and green for Christmas. In mid-2007, Hershey's introduced a dark chocolate version called Kissables Dark, which featured more subdued colors and a semi-sweet interior.

Kissables were discontinued in July 2009.^[1]

Ingredient changes to reduce production costs

In 2007, the Hershey Company began to change the ingredients of some of its products to replace the relatively expensive cocoa butter with cheaper fats.^[2] Hershey's changed the description of the product from "candy coated milk chocolate" to "chocolate candy" and altered the packaging and product ingredients.^[3] According to United States Food and Drug Administration food labeling laws, these modified recipes could not be legally described as milk chocolate.^[4]

The ingredients in 2005 were: milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR, and artificial flavors), sugar, red 40, yellow 5, yellow 6, blue 1, and carnauba wax.

In 2007, the ingredients were changed to: Sugar, vegetable oil (palm, shea, sunflower and/or safflower oil), chocolate, nonfat milk, whey, cocoa butter, milk fat, gum arabic, soy lecithin, artificial colors (red 40, yellow 5, blue 2, blue 1, yellow 6), corn syrup, resinous glaze, salt, carnauba wax, PGPR and vanillin.

References

1. "What Were They Thinking? The Kiss That Lost Its Cocoa". Fast Company. 2012-02-27. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
2. Aggressive Mars breathes down Hershey's neck in US, Associated Press, October 11, 2008
3. "Hershey's "Kissables" No Longer Legally Considered "Milk Chocolate"?". 8 August 2008.
4. Coffey, Laura T. (September 19, 2008). "Chocoholics sour on new Hershey's formula". TODAY.com. Archived from the original on 2008-09-22. Retrieved 2018-04-18.