The Reese's Pumpkins Have No Face. The Lawsuit Has No Case — Again.
Two Florida men bought Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins for Halloween and were disappointed to discover the chocolates had no carved faces. They sued Hershey for deceptive marketing. A federal judge dismissed the case. They amended their complaint and came back. The judge dismissed it again.
That's where things stand as of September 16, when Florida District Judge Melissa Damian ordered the case closed for the second time.
Nathan Vidal and Eduardo Granados filed the original lawsuit in May 2024, arguing that Hershey deceived consumers by depicting Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins with carved eyes and mouths on the packaging — only for the actual chocolates inside to arrive completely blank. The men said they bought the candy specifically for the "novelty" value of those "cool and beautiful carved-out designs" and paid a premium they wouldn't have paid if they'd known the pumpkins were faceless.
Damian dismissed the case in September 2025, finding the plaintiffs hadn't shown they suffered a financial loss. She allowed them to file an amended complaint. They did. She dismissed it again.
"Accepting plaintiffs' allegations as true, it is clear that their only injury is their subjective disappointment," Damian wrote in her most recent filing.
Subjective disappointment is not a cognizable legal injury. Case closed. Literally.
Hershey's Defense — And Why It Worked
Hershey's argument throughout the litigation was fairly straightforward. The company pointed to a "Decorating Suggestion" disclaimer printed on the packaging, which it argued made clear that the images were illustrative rather than literal representations of the product inside. Hershey also contended that a reasonable consumer wouldn't genuinely believe a mass-produced Halloween candy would have hand-carved decorative detail — and that regardless of the packaging, consumers received exactly what they paid for: Reese's peanut butter chocolate candy that was not defective, not inedible, and not misrepresented in any material way.
Damian agreed. Twice.
This Is Bigger Than Two Guys and a Pumpkin
The Reese's pumpkin case sits in the middle of a growing category of food packaging lawsuits that test exactly how literally consumers can hold brands to their product imagery.
Hershey has faced similar litigation over other seasonal candies — ghost-shaped chocolates without depicted facial features, football-shaped candies that lacked the laces shown on the packaging, and a seasonal shapes assortment including snowmen and bells. The legal theory is similar across all of them: the packaging shows something the product doesn't deliver, and that gap constitutes deceptive advertising.
Courts have gone both ways on these kinds of cases. Some judges have found that no reasonable consumer would genuinely be deceived by seasonal candy packaging — which is where Damian landed. Others have allowed similar cases to proceed. A 2022 lawsuit against Kraft Heinz over whether the mac and cheese depicted on its box matched the finished product actually survived early dismissal and eventually settled. A Subway case over tuna content ran for years before finally being dismissed. Food packaging litigation is a genuine and growing legal genre, even when the individual cases look ridiculous from the outside.
For Vidal and Granados, the saga appears to be over. For the faceless Reese's pumpkin — which Hershey included in its 2026 Halloween lineup as a "returning favorite" — business is booming. Reese's is the brand of choice for 37% of consumers on Halloween, and the pumpkin shape is the favorite Halloween product for 22% of those surveyed.
The pumpkins don't have faces. They never did. They outsell almost everything else on the candy aisle in October.
Turns out "subjective disappointment" doesn't actually stop people from buying them.
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