Brad Reese, the grandson of the inventor of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, is criticizing The Hershey Co. for "quietly replacing" the candy's flagship chocolate and peanut butter ingredients.

Reese claimed on LinkedIn last week that the company has replaced milk chocolate with compound coatings and peanut butter with peanut butter?style crème across multiple Reese's products, a move he alleges has eroded the Reese's brand and jeopardized consumer trust.

Reese's, which is owned by Hershey, makes a variety of candies and snacks, including Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Reese's Pieces.

"How does The Hershey Company continue to position Reese's as its flagship brand, a symbol of trust, quality and leadership, while quietly replacing the very ingredients (Milk Chocolate + Peanut Butter) that built Reese's trust in the first place?" Reese wrote in a Feb. 14 LinkedIn post in which he shared an open letter addressed to Hershey's corporate brand manager.

Brad Reese is the grandson of H.B. Reese, who spent two years at Hershey before forming his own candy company in 1919. H.B. Reese invented Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in 1928 in the basement of his home in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Packages of the candy originally sold for between 1 and 5 cents, according to the Hershey Community Archives. Reese's six sons sold the company to Hershey in 1963.

"Reese's became iconic because my grandfather built it on real ingredients and real integrity," Reese wrote in a separate LinkedIn post on Tuesday.

Hershey defends its decisions
In a statement to CBS News, Hershey said it sometimes makes "product recipe adjustments," although it noted that "Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are made the same way they always have been."

"As we've grown and expanded the Reese's product line, we make product recipe adjustments that allow us to make new shapes, sizes and innovations that Reese's fans have come to love and ask for, while always protecting the essence of what makes Reese's unique and special: the perfect combination of chocolate and peanut butter," the company said.

Elevated cocoa prices have led some candy manufacturers to experiment with using less chocolate in recent years. Cocoa prices have dropped in recent months, but, as experts have told CBS News, retail prices remain sticky because of a lag between purchases of raw cocoa beans and when companies produce their candies.

Brad Reese said he thinks Hershey went too far. He said he recently threw out a bag of Reese's Mini Hearts, which were a new product released for Valentine's Day. The packaging notes that the heart-shaped candies are made from "chocolate candy and peanut butter crème," not milk chocolate and peanut butter.

"It was not edible," Reese told The Associated Press in an interview. "You have to understand. I used to eat a Reese's product every day. This is very devastating for me."

Strict chocolate standards
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has strict ingredient and labeling requirements for chocolate. To be considered milk chocolate, products must contain at least 10% chocolate liquor, which is a paste made from ground cocoa beans and contains no alcohol. Products also must contain at least 12% milk solids and 3.39% milk fat.

Companies can get around those rules by using other wording on their packaging. The wrapper for Hershey's Mr. Goodbar, for example, contains the words "chocolate candy" instead of "milk chocolate."

Reese claims Hershey changed the recipes for multiple Reese's products in recent years. Reese's Take5 and Fast Break bars used to be coated with milk chocolate, he said, but now they aren't. In the early 2000s, when Hershey released White Reese's, they were made with white chocolate. Now they're made with a white creme, he said.

Reese said Reese's Peanut Butter Cups sold in Europe, the United Kingdom and Ireland are also different than U.S. versions. On Wednesday, a package advertised on the website of British online supermarket Ocado described the candy as "milk chocolate-flavored coating and peanut butter crème."

In a conference call with investors last year, Hershey Chief Financial Officer Steven Voskuil said the company made some changes in its formulas. Voskuil did not say for which products but said Hershey was very careful to maintain the "taste profile and the specialness of our iconic brands."

"I would say in all the changes that we've made thus far, there has been no consumer impact whatsoever. As you can imagine, even on the smallest brand in the portfolio, if we were to make a change, there's extensive consumer testing," he said.

But Brad Reese said he often has people tell him that Reese's products don't taste as good as they once did. He said Pennsylvania-based Hershey should keep in mind a famous quote from its founder, Milton Hershey: "Give them quality, that's the best advertising."

"I absolutely believe in innovation, but my preference is innovation with quality," Reese said.

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