The market for chocolate and peanut butter, two great tastes that taste great together, has long been dominated by the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. But soon, there will be a new kid on the block.



Nestlé is launching Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups, which they say will change the traditional peanut butter cup forever.

“It’s the classic peanut butter cup,” Jeremy Vandervoet of Nestlé USA told TODAY.com, “only Butterfingerized.”

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The new treat will still have a creamy smooth peanut butter center and the time-honored milk chocolate coating, but also a little dose of Butterfinger for crunch.

Nestlé, however, has some big molds to fill. Reese’s is one of the top three chocolate candies on the market today, raking in more than $420 million in sales each year. Hershey’s, the corporate parent of Reese’s, says they make enough peanut butter cups in one year for every person in the U.S., Japan, Europe, Australia, China, Africa and India to enjoy one.

Despite Reese’s established market supremacy, Nestlé is putting its money where its mouth is and has purchased ad time during Super Bowl XLVIII to introduce its new product.

The aim of the new Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups wasn’t to make them better than Hershey’s, but to make them different, said Vandervoet.

“The traditional peanut butter cup hasn’t changed,” he said. “But now there’s a significantly different alternative that is going to be both smooth and crunchy. It’s a magic ratio of classic peanut butter and chocolate to Butterfinger.”

Hitting that magic ratio took time. Nestlé tested the product on thousands of tasters (note to self: how does one become a candy bar taste tester?), tweaking the proportions of the three main ingredients until they got it just right. The finger-licking goodies are now “scoring through the roof,” according to Vandervoet.

But don’t bother scrounging through your kid’s trick or treat bags later this month in search of the new Butterfinger Cups. Nestlé says your taste buds will have to wait until January 2014 to sample the goods.