A viral TikTok video is causing serious debate among bakers after showing Hershey Kisses completely failing to melt, leading many to believe the iconic chocolate company secretly changed its recipe. Across the country, consumers are already noticing that their favorite products just don’t look, taste, or feel the way they used to. Sometimes you’re getting smaller portions, and sometimes the entire texture seems off.
TikTok user Liz Pulvy posted a video that’s racked up over 1.9 million views and was covered by BroBible, claiming that the classic Hershey Kiss is the latest product to be impacted by recipe changes. Pulvy was trying to make those popular pretzel squares topped with Kisses and M&M’s. She noticed a major problem almost immediately. Instead of the Kisses softening enough to press the M&M into them, they exploded into powder.
“Has anybody else had issues making the Hershey Kisses with M&M’s and their kisses not melting?” she asked viewers. Pulvy initially thought she just had an old batch of Kisses, so she went out and bought a brand-new bag. Frustratingly, the result was exactly the same. She detailed that the Kisses “literally just came out of the oven, and they are hard as a rock and powdery, like they were old.” She even tried microwaving them for 30 seconds in a glass bowl, but they still refused to melt.
Online bakers have been reporting this problem for years
Three years ago, a user on Reddit noted they were having issues getting both the standard milk chocolate Kisses and the Hugs variety to melt without them becoming crumbly or burning. More recently, last month, another Reddit user trying to make holiday pretzel treats found that the Kisses “didn’t melt right and just crumbled or burned.” They said they hadn’t made the treats in a few years and had never had that happen before, asking if the recipe had changed.
Despite the widespread complaints and viral videos, The Hershey Company is sticking to its official stance: the formula is unchanged. They confirmed directly that they “have not changed the formula for our iconic Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Kisses.” Furthermore, the company still publishes several recipes on its website that require melting Kisses, suggesting they believe the process is absolutely still possible.
The most likely explanation involves the tricky properties of chocolate itself. Melting chocolate correctly is much harder than most people realize. If you bake it too long or at the wrong temperature, you run the risk of drying it out. This rapid drying process causes the chocolate to seize up and crumble into the exact powdery texture Pulvy showed in her video.
There’s also the issue of size. While the ingredient list is the same as it was in 2015, the modern Hershey Kiss is approximately 8 grams smaller than its older counterpart. If you’re using an older, trusted recipe, you might not be accounting for that reduced size, which could mean you’re overbaking the candies.
Of course, skeptics are convinced that corporate overlords are still messing with things. This has been fueled by how frozen desserts have crept their way to replace ice creams, and chocolate candies have replaced milk chocolate.
Published: Dec 24, 2025 05:30 pm