Hershey's Kissables
Miniature Hershey's Kisses in a crunchy candy shell — red, orange, yellow, green, and blue, poured straight from the pouch. Hershey's answer to M&M's lasted less than four years before quietly vanishing in 2009, leaving behind one of the 2000s' most specifically mourned candies.
Hershey's launched Kissables in November 2005: tiny versions of the flagship Hershey's Kiss, complete with the flat-bottomed teardrop shape, coated in a thick colored sugar shell. The comparison to M&M's was unavoidable and intentional — this was Hershey putting its most iconic silhouette up against the poppable-chocolate king, in a base rainbow of red, orange, yellow, green, and blue, plus pastel Easter, Valentine's, and Christmas editions. A dark-chocolate version, Kissables Dark, followed in mid-2007 with more subdued colors.
Then came the quiet change that fans still bring up. In 2007, Hershey began swapping the relatively expensive cocoa butter in some of its products for cheaper vegetable fats, and Kissables got the new recipe — sugar and vegetable oil now led the ingredient list. Under FDA labeling rules the reformulated candy could no longer legally be called milk chocolate, so the packaging changed too: "candy coated milk chocolate" became simply "chocolate candy."
In July 2009, not four years after launch, Kissables were discontinued. They've since settled into the discontinued-candy hall of fame alongside the era's other short-lived experiments — a genuinely good idea that came and went before most people realized it was gone, leaving an empty spot in the candy aisle and a very specific memory of cracking that shell.
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