Heating Up the Candy Wars: Butterfinger Announces New Peanut Butter Cup

Courtesy Nestle USA Confections & Snacks Division

It's an all-out peanut butter cup war on the reigning Hershey's Reese's: Nestlé has announced a brand-new peanut butter cup candy featuring Butterfinger as the star ingredient. The Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cup will be available nationwide starting in January, which is the bar's first innovation in its 90-year history.

"We started noticing on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest how many people love recipes like cupcakes, cookies, Rice Krispie treats, cakes, etc. using Butterfinger," Jeremy Vandervoet, brand manager for Butterfinger, said to ABC News. "We just are capturing that momentum really. We want to go beyond the bar and make Butterfinger more broadly appealing, which is very organic to what consumers already want."

After going through 40 to 50 rounds of testing, Vandervoet said they settled on the perfect ratio of a Butterfinger peanut filling with crunchy pieces mixed in, all surrounded by milk chocolate.

"Peanut butter cups have been around a long time, and they've never changed. It was just an 'aha' moment of peanut butter cups are ripe for a dose of Butterfinger," Vandervoet said. "It's very different from Reese's, will be positioned differently, and tastes different, and I think will be a great complement to Reese's, which is a classic, simple peanut butter cup."

To celebrate the launch, Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cup will premiere with a 30-second commercial during the 2014 Super Bowl, touting the new slogan, "The cup just got crunchy." Are you excited for this new candy cup? Tell us in the comments if you're Team Reese's or Team Butterfinger.