Hershey added a front-of-pack disclaimer that Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins are not carved like the jack-o’-lantern image, after Florida shoppers sued over blank candy.
Shoppers who open a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins this season will find a blunt new line on the orange wrapper: “Carving not on actual product,” printed right under the jack-o’-lantern face on the package.
The change lands after Florida residents hauled The Hershey Company into court over seasonal candy that looked plainer than the picture, a multimillion-dollar fight a federal judge tossed twice, finding the claimed harm was little more than bruised feelings.
The Sun reported that the old label language was the softer “Decorating Suggestion.” The new wording sits on the front of the iconic peanut butter snack and leaves less room for creative reading at the checkout aisle.
USA Today confirmed the updated text on this season’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins packaging as of October 6. Hershey has not said why it changed the message and has not publicly tied the edit to the lawsuit.
In May 2024, Florida residents Nathan Vidal, Debra Kennick, Abdjul Martin, and Eduardo Granados sued Hershey over Reese’s seasonal shapes.
They alleged advertising that was “unlawful, fraudulent, unfair, misleading and/or deceptive.” The complaint said the chocolates inside were blank pumpkin shapes, no mouth, no eyes, unlike the decorated image on the bag.
Vidal bought three bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins in 2023. Court papers described his claim this way:
"believed that the product contained a cool-looking carving of a pumpkin’s mouth and eyes."
He said he would not have bought them had he known they would not match the wrapper art. The suit also targeted other seasonal Reese’s forms, ghosts, bats, and footballs, plus winter snowmen, stockings, and bells.
The plaintiffs demanded $5 million. They framed that figure as standing in for sales of the Reese’s peanut butter products in Florida dating back to 2021.
Hershey fought the case. The company argued that reasonable shoppers would treat the pictures as decorating suggestions, not a promise of an exact face on every piece.
It pointed to the existing “Decorating Suggestion” text on the packaging. Hershey also argued the candy was neither defective nor inedible, buyers still got Reese’s peanut butter cups in pumpkin form.
That is the core dispute in plain terms. One side wanted jack-o’-lantern detail molded into the chocolate. The other side said the bag already warned that the art was a suggestion, and the product inside was still the candy on the receipt.
District Judge Melissa Damian first dismissed the case in September 2025. She found the plaintiffs had failed to show a financial loss and gave them a chance to amend.
Vidal and Granados filed an amended complaint the following month. On September 16, Damian dismissed the case again.
Court documents, as reported, captured her bottom line on the claimed injury:
"their subjective disappointment"
That phrase does heavy lifting. Three bags of seasonal candy and a picture on a wrapper did not, in the court’s view, turn into the kind of concrete loss needed to keep a $5 million consumer case alive.
Attorney Anthony J. Russo Jr., president of The Russo Firm and counsel for the plaintiffs, said after the ruling that his team was “disappointed” and was considering a possible appeal.
The packaging shift is simple and specific. Under the pumpkin image with the carved-style mouth and eyes, Hershey now states the carving is not on the actual product.
That is clearer than “Decorating Suggestion.” It speaks directly to the exact gripe in the Florida filings: shoppers who expected molded facial features and got smooth pumpkin shapes instead.
Still, the public record in the coverage does not show a court order commanding the new sentence, and Hershey has not announced a link between the lawsuit and the label. The disclaimer change and the dismissed case sit side by side in the same season’s news, not as a proven cause-and-effect chain from the company itself.
What the record does show is a familiar pattern in modern consumer litigation. Plaintiffs cast wrapper art as a bargain they were denied. A judge asked for real financial harm. When the answer was disappointment over candy aesthetics, the case ended, twice.
Seasonal Reese’s products have long used playful shapes and package art to sell Halloween and holiday runs. Most buyers know the chocolate will not look like a craft project. A smaller group turned that gap into a federal complaint and a seven-figure ask tied to years of Florida sales.
Common-sense labeling is fine. Turning “the pumpkin face was only a picture” into a $5 million grievance is how lawsuit culture eats ordinary commerce. When the only injury a court can find is subjective disappointment, the wrapper was never the real scam.