Review: Hershey's S'mores Pudding Cups

In my last Hershey's pudding review, I mentioned that I found it peculiar that they were getting involved in the pudding game and taking on some of the stalwarts.  Despite that individual product being tasty, I was still questioning why these were in the store.  Still, I was absolutely willing to try out this four pack of Hershey's S'mores Pudding Cups that I picked up in the same shopping trip for $2.50.  Each campfire treat inspired pudding cup is 3.275 ounces and packs in 110 calories of artificial flavors.  JELL-O also has a S'mores flavor, so this is clearly a shot across their bow.

Being that a S'more typically has a chocolate square, a marshmallow and a graham cracker, I was clearly not surprised to find cup to be constructed as it was (also, these were clear and that's kind of a dead giveaway, don't you think?).  The bottom of the cup was the classic Hershey's milk chocolate in pudding form and it was quite dense and creamy.  It also carried a fine smell of chocolate to it as well.  On top of that was the marshmallow portion which kind of had the texture of a mousse pudding.  It also carried kind of a campfire burned marshmallow smell to it, so that was a nice reminder of what this product was trying to emulate.  The smell was of course entirely manufactured by food science and not real at all, but that's fine with me.  Noticeably absent was the graham cracker component of the S'more, but I can't say that I was surprised by that.  Disappointed maybe, but not surprised.

I first went after the milk chocolate pudding part of this and it was delightful.  Sweet, rich and dense, this is exactly how I'd like milk chocolate pudding to always taste.  Hershey's is chocolate and they did a great job with that portion of this.  Next up was the taste of the marshmallow portion of this and this airy textured pudding was quite an experience.  The texture made it kind of weird to eat, but didn't really cause me to be turned off in any way.  What was interesting is that campfire burnt marshmallow smell carried over to the flavor and that was a nice change of pace as it was not something that I was particularly expecting.  It was an odd flavor, but it was one that I enjoyed.  Lastly, I mixed the two components together and while this certainly would  never be considered a substitute for the campfire treat, it did somewhat remind me of the campfire treat, so I suppose that is a positive as reminding a person of the treat may have been Hershey's only intent here.

Buy It or Fly By It?  There were a lot of parts of this that I would describe as odd.  Flavor, texture, etc.  But, despite being odd in many ways, I still found this an enjoyable enough eating experience to give it a BUY IT rating.  As long as you aren't really expecting the campfire treat and are okay with being reminded of (or inspired by) a S'more, then I think you'll probably like this too.

BUY IT!!