Hershey's Kissables were a chocolate candy sold by

The Hershey Company The Hershey Company, often called just Hershey or Hershey's, is an American multinational corporation, multinational confectionery company headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is also home to Hersheypark and Hershey's Chocolate World. T ...

from 2005 to 2009. Comparable to

M&M's M&M's are color-varied sugar-coated dragée chocolate confectionery by the Mars Wrigley Confectionery division of Mars Inc.. The candy consists of a candy shell surrounding a filling which determines the specific type of M&M's. Each piece has ...

, Hershey's Kissables were shaped like miniature

Hershey's Kisses Hershey's Kisses are chocolates first produced by the Hershey Company in 1907. The bite-sized pieces of chocolate have a distinctive conical shape, sometimes described as flat-bottomed Drop (liquid), teardrops. Hershey's Kisses chocolates are wra ...

and were coated in a thick sugar shell. 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.

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 Cocoa butter, also called theobroma oil, is a pale-yellow, edible Vegetable oil, fat extracted from the cocoa bean (''Theobroma cacao''). It is used to make chocolate, as well as some ointments, toiletries, and pharmaceuticals. Cocoa butter h ...

with cheaper fats. Hershey's changed the description of the product from "candy coated milk chocolate" to "chocolate candy" and altered the packaging and product ingredients. According to United States

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respo ...

food labeling The packaging and labeling of food is subject to regulation in most regions/jurisdictions, both to prevent false advertising and to promote food safety. Regulations by type Multi-faceted * Codex Alimentarius (international voluntary standard ...

laws, these modified recipes could not be legally described as

milk chocolate Milk chocolate is a form of solid chocolate containing Chocolate liquor, cocoa, sugar and milk. It is the most consumed types of chocolate, type of chocolate, and is used in a wide diversity of chocolate bar, bars, tablets and other confectione ...

. The ingredients in 2005 were: milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milk fat,

lactose Lactose is a disaccharide composed of galactose and glucose and has the molecular formula C12H22O11. Lactose makes up around 2–8% of milk (by mass). The name comes from (Genitive case, gen. ), the Latin word for milk, plus the suffix ''-o ...

soy lecithin Lecithin ( ; from the Ancient Greek "yolk") is a generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues which are amphiphilic – they attract both water and fatty substances (and so are ...

, PGPR, and artificial flavors), sugar,

red 40 Allura Red AC, also known as FD&C Red 40 or E129, is a red azo dye commonly used in food. It was developed in 1971 by the Allied Chemical Corporation, who gave the substance its name. It is usually supplied as its red sodium salt but can also ...

yellow 5 Tartrazine is a synthetic lemon yellow azo dye primarily used as a food coloring. It is also known as E number E102, C.I. 19140, FD&C Yellow 5, Yellow 5 Lake, Acid Yellow 23, Food Yellow 4, and trisodium 1-(4-sulfonatophenyl)-4-(4-sulfonatop ...

yellow 6 Sunset yellow FCF (also known as orange yellow S, or C.I. 15985) is a petroleum-derived orange azo dye with a pH-dependent maximum absorption at about 480 nm at pH 1 and 443 nm at pH 13, with a shoulder at 500 nm. When added to ...

, blue 1, and

carnauba wax Carnauba (; ), also called Brazil wax and palm wax, is a wax of the leaves of the carnauba palm '' Copernicia prunifera'' (synonym: ''Copernicia cerifera''), a plant native to and grown only in the northeastern Brazilian states of Ceará, Piau ...

. 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 Gum arabic (gum acacia, gum sudani, Senegal gum and by other names) () is a tree gum exuded by two species of '' Acacia sensu lato:'' '' Senegalia senegal,'' and '' Vachellia seyal.'' However, the term "gum arabic" does not indicate a partic ...

, soy lecithin, artificial colors (red 40, yellow 5, blue 2, blue 1,

corn syrup Corn syrup is a food syrup that is made from the starch of corn/maize and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to soften Mouthfeel, texture, add vol ...

resinous glaze Resinous glaze is an alcohol-based solution of various types of food-grade shellac. The shellac is derived from the raw material sticklac, which is a resin scraped from the branches of trees left from when the small insect, ''Kerria lacca'' (also k ...

, salt,

, PGPR and vanillin.

References

The Hershey Company brands Food and drink introduced in 2005 Products and services discontinued in 2009 {{Confection-stub