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Holiday Hershey’s Kisses are arriving with broken tips, and chocolate lovers are not happy

Hershey's, you're missing the point.

Hershey's Kisses are shown in Philadelphia on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018. The chocolate candy's trademark tips have been mysteriously missing from batches around the country.
Hershey's Kisses are shown in Philadelphia on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2018. The chocolate candy's trademark tips have been mysteriously missing from batches around the country.Read moreMatt Rourke / AP

Hershey's, you're missing the point.

Literally.

Hershey's Kisses, particularly the holiday-themed ones, have been turning up with broken tips - and it's leaving a sour taste for some fans of the foil-wrapped confections.

In fact, Hershey's Kisses are famous for their pointy tips - a tradition that began in 1907, when the little chocolate candies were still wrapped in foil by hand, according to the company. But this holiday season, consumers across the country have reported opening bags of Kisses with flattened tops, prompting bakers and others to point fingers at Hershey's for their less-than-perfect holiday desserts.

"@Hersheys why are all my Hershey kisses tips broken off? My cookies look like someone bit the top off, it was every single one of them," one person wrote on Twitter.

Amid a flood of grim photographs of battered chocolates, Hershey's has tried to reassure the public, saying: "We love our Hershey's Kisses as much as our consumers."

"We make more than 70 million Kisses a day here in Hershey, Pa., and we want each of them looking as great as they taste," the company said in a statement to The Washington Post. "The iconic, conical shape is one of the reasons families have loved Kisses for generations. We shape the tip on our classic, solid Milk and Dark Chocolate Kisses to create that iconic appearance.

"And while there has always been some variability in that process, we are working to improve the appearance because it's as important to us as it is to our fans."

But the pointed remarks continued.

Dozens of people took to the Hershey's Facebook page and, although some made the point that broken chocolate is still delicious, others argued that it makes a difference when using them to bake.

For many years, Hershey’s has ranked among the top chocolate candy brands, with some 32 million U.S. consumers reporting last year that they had eaten one to two servings of Kisses in the past 30 days, according to Statista.

However, not everyone shared the concern.