The maker of Reese’s Cups (Hershey) and Oreo (Mondelez) met 3 years ago to collab on their iconic snacks. There was a catch: neither would share trade secrets or recipes. They are top snack competitors with annual sales of $12B (Hershey) and $36B (Mondelez). So, each built a small secretive teams of food scientists to reverse-engineer the other snacks.  Each had a veto on the other team's creation and legal IP agreements were signed to ensure the final products would have enough of the other brand's tastes. Turned out ot be major food science challenge (aka “Manhattan Project of Snacks”): ◽HERSHEY: They thought about putting the Oreo disc on top of the cup but the sizes didn't match. So, they split the cup with top half Oreo and bottom half Reese. Oreo actually sells the basecake on the open market, so Hershey bought it ... but it had to be gluten-free (Reese Cups are). Gluten binds the cookie together, though. So, Hershey had to buy new equipment to make sure that when it crushed the Oreo to inject into the cup, it wouldn't just be finely ground dust (they wanted Oreo chunks).  ◽MONDELEZ: They went with a double-stuffed Oreo, which would mix vanilla filling with Reese's signature Peanut Butter. The challenge was figuring out how to source and roast the peanuts and make the same consistency butter (Hershey sources peanuts from southern America states). Ultimately, Hershey made 35 different versions of its Oreo Reese. Mondelez made 9 versions of its peanut butter-vanilla filling before hitting the right formula.  Both products are coming out this fall. *** Full read via WSJ: