By: Natalia Gercheva & Persephone Pond

Have you noticed that when the holiday season rolls around, there is a much larger variety of Hershey’s Kiss flavors available? This article will go over the different kinds, and our opinions on which ones are the best.

The original Hershey’s Kisses are available year round, but they get special packages for the holiday season. There are 6 other holiday flavors that Hershey’s releases during this time of year, which are: Candy Cane, Sugar Cookie, Cookies and Cream, Cherry Cordial, Hot Cocoa, and Mint Truffle.

The original Hershey’s Kisses have the basic milk chocolate flavor, and are always a favorite among large crowds. The classic taste makes for a lovely treat. Candy Cane Hershey’s Kisses are a white chocolate based kiss with red stripes of candy cane flavoring, and little crunches of candy cane inside. These also seem to be a favorite, and are classics in many families for the holiday season. These are packaged with small candy canes on the wrappers.

Sugar Cookie kisses and Cookies and Cream kisses are both white chocolate based like candy cane, with different flavors. Sugar Cookie kisses have a sweet and artificial flavor of a sugar cookie with chunks of colorful cookie inside. Cookies and Cream has chunks of cookie that add a wonderful texture to the kiss. The Sugar Cookie wrappers are decorated with stars, hearts, Christmas trees and ornaments, and the Cookies and Cream kisses are packaged with wrappers decorated with small snowmen.

Cherry Cordial, Hot Cocoa, and Mint Truffle are the filled Hershey’s Kisses, and Mint Truffle has a dark chocolate base while the other two are both milk chocolate. Mint Truffle has a very strong taste and smell of mint, and the flavor between the creamy filling and the dark chocolate is a perfect balance. These wrappers are decorated with snowflakes. Hot Cocoa kisses have a creamy marshmallow filling that balances with the chocolate very nicely, and the wrappers are decorated with marshmallows. Cherry Cordial has a more runny filling, staying true to classic cordial cherry truffles. The smell and flavor is very strong cherry, but it’s a wonderful balance. These are decorated with small pictures of cherries.

Overall, these flavors are delicious, and help bring variety to Hershey Kisses during the holiday season. Our final ratings (with notes) are:

7. Sugar Cookie: 4/10
● Silly positive wrapper, crunchy bits not evenly distributed, love the crunch, too sweet and artificial

6. Original: 6.5/10
● Nothing special, basic wrapper

5. Cherry Cordial: 7.5/10
● Strong smell, not quite red, very overwhelming flavor

4. Candy Cane: 8/10
● LOVE the little crunchy bits, like the pattern, pretty and fun wrapper

3. Hot Cocoa: 8.5/10
● Nice simple wrapper, creamy filling, good ratio of filling to chocolate, maybe not the most distinct flavor

2. Cookies and Cream: 9/10
● Cute wrapper, stands out, good amount of crunch, flavor so yummy

1. Mint Truffle: 10/10
● Wrapper is cute, very distinct smell, darker chocolate elevates the mint flavoring, love the cream filling

We’re very aware others may not agree with these ratings, so we posted polls on Instagram and here is how the Highland Park community ranks the flavors:

7. Sugar Cookie
6. Cordial Cherry
5. Cookies & Cream
4. Hot Cocoa
3. Mint Truffle
2. Candy Cane
1. Original Milk Chocolate

This was a very fun experiment to lead, and figuring out our favorite holiday flavors was worth the time and effort. We hope our knowledge and opinions are valuable and we strongly recommend everyone to try these flavors if possible, but not Sugar Cookie since, as you can see, no one really likes Sugar Cookie.