The Best Peanut Butter Candy Beats Out Reese's With Its High Quality Ingredients

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Since time immemorial, the landscape of peanut butter confections has been ruled by one master: Reese's. Industry research has delineated a clear dominance in the candy maker's field. The famed cups and pieces actually made by Hershey's simply have greater brand recognition than any others, and odds are, if you've ever nabbed a nutty sweet at the movie theater, from a receptionist's candy dish, or from a Halloween pumpkin, it's been enshrined in that iconic orange packaging. But, in spite of its prevalence, another brand beat the behemoth in our ranking of the nine best peanut butter candies.

Justin's organic dark chocolate peanut butter cups actually took the No. 1 spot for their premium quality, balanced flavors, excellent texture, and relative value. That Justin's peanut butter cups happen to be vegan also makes them more appealing to a wider percentage of the population. And yes, this ranking did compare and contrast different configurations of peanut butter treats, pitting bars against bite-sized bits and wafer sticks, but Justin's packed the most punch across all categories.

Reese's Pieces, the candy immortalized in Steven Spielberg's "E.T.", fared the worst among the company's offerings, coming in at No. 8 on our list just ahead of the lesser-known Mr Beast Feastables peanut butter candy bar. Although their nostalgia factor picks up some points, and their crunch and buttery interior are pleasant enough, Reese's Pieces just don't actually taste like much, an unpleasant revelation now stuck inside your mind forever. Sorry. The classic Reese's milk chocolate peanut butter cups did a bit better at No. 5, but they just can't shake off their factory-fresh, mass-produced flavor.

Two more unique treats from the Reese's cinematic universe came in at a respectable third and fourth place. Reese's Take 5 earned its position for the addition of caramel, pretzels, and whole peanuts to chocolate and peanut butter for a more dynamic tasting experience. And Reese's Sticks made it to the top three for a crucial crunch that sent them careening past some of their smoother peers. But still, none of these options could beat Justin's peanut butter cups.

In spite of their gentle price (a little less than $1.50 per peanut butter cup), Justin's peanut butter cups tasted like a more premium product than some of the Reese's candies in contention, where lower-quality ingredients like the oft-derided high fructose corn syrup were evident. Justin's organic dark chocolate peanut butter cups instead use a shorter, simpler recipe. The dark chocolate's evaporated cane sugar, cacao beans, cocoa butter, and sunflower lecithin (all listed as organic) keep potentially adulterating additives at bay for a pure chocolate flavor, where the Reese's varieties landed more generically like "candy" in general.

Justin's peanut butter component similarly eschews pesky extras to prioritize the legume and enhance it with little more than sugar, palm oil, sea salt, and more of the sunflower-derived emulsifier. So you taste what's intended — chocolate and peanut butter — and not detect, say, the saccharine flavor of corn syrup solids or the essence of carnauba wax, like in the case of Reese's Pieces. Now, the meaning of organic in food world lingo only applies to production methods and does not denote superior flavor. So the overlap in Justin's case is incidental, but still notable. And, although we have yet to assess whether this is "the best tasting organic peanut butter in the world," as the company asserts on its website, it did seem more artisanal than the rest.