Nestle will debut a new candy bar in 2014: The Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cup and the company promises the new treat will change the traditional peanut butter cup forever.
"It's the classic peanut butter cup, only Butterfingerized," Jeremy Vandervoet of Nestle USA told TODAY.
The new treat will have a creamy smooth peanut butter center and milk chocolate coating and also a little dose of Butterfinger for crunch.
But the new candy means competition with one of the top three chocolate candies on the market today, Reese's raked in more than $420 million in sales each year. Hershey's, the corporate parent of Reese's, said 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.
"Butterfinger will have something that Reese's doesn't," Gary Stibel, CEO at New England Consulting Group, said. "There is definitely room for two in this market segment."
A spokesperson for Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cup said the company will be pulling out the big guns to promote their new candy. There will be an ad for the new candy during the second half of the Super Bowl in 2014.
Part of the reason Butterfinger has entered the peanut butter cup market, besides money, is to fix to a common complaint.
"People prefer Butterfinger in small doses," Vandervoet said. People opt for Butterfinger alternatives instead of "gobbling down entire bars."
The aim of the new Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups wasn't to make them better than Hershey's, but to make them different, Vandervoet said.
"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."
Nestle said everyone's taste buds will have to wait until January 2014 to sample the goods.
