What Makes Trader Joe's Peanut Butter Cups So Iconic?

You know them, you love them, you crave them — and they're always on display at the checkout lines, just beckoning you to place a couple in your cart. Whether it's the creamy milk chocolate version or the decadent dark chocolate, Trader Joe's peanut butter cups are one of their biggest sellers. The sweet treats first launched in 2010 and have been a fan favorite ever since. In fact, they were added to the illustrious Trader Joe's "Product Hall of Fame" in 2023, along with the soy chorizo and those addictive peanut butter-filled pretzels. Though there isn't just one factor that makes these chocolate chunks sing, the combination of quality ingredients, superb texture, excellent pricing, and lack of weird, hard-to-pronounce chemicals keep TJ fans coming back for more.

Looking at the ingredient list, Trader Joe's claims their cups are filled with slow-roasted, ground Virginia peanuts and made with quality cacao beans — and it shows. You can certainly taste the smooth, rich chocolate and perfectly salted peanut butter in every bite. Comparing their ingredients to the multinational conglomerate-owned "other" cup we're all familiar with, TJ's is certainly shorter and filled with recognizable food products. The other cup, on the other hand, contains tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), a food additive that has a dubious reputation, to say the least. Yet another reason to go Team TJ.

Trader Joe's truly has a knack for picking out snacks that people crave and putting their own twist on beloved classics. (See their Mandarin orange chicken, habanero lime tortillas, and English-style crumpets, just to name a few.) Of course, they didn't invent the peanut butter-chocolate combination, but damned if they didn't perfect it. The online following for these sweet treats could best be described as fevered, as social media abounds with odes to these PB cups and their variations. Chocophiles swoon over the perfect "snap" of the chocolate shell as you bite into one. Others claim the dark chocolate version is what finally convinced them to leave milk chocolate in the dust. 

The fact that they come in a 16-ounce plastic tub is both practical (great for reaching in and grabbing just one) and dangerous (great for reaching in and grabbing a handful, multiple times a day). Many fans recommend freezing them and adding a sprinkle of sea salt on top to really take it to the next level. Others suggest chopping them up and adding them to vanilla ice cream, melting them into rich hot chocolate, or baking them into homemade cookies. And if you've got a nut allergy, it's no problem, because Trader Joe's also has a sunflower butter option that's just as tasty as the original. Perhaps the best news of all is, at $4.99 a tub, you can afford to try them all.