If I was a kid, these would likely be the only thing I ate. Stuffed… marshmallows?! These things are everything, including magical. They’re a great snack if you want sweets (although, it’s very easy to eat the whole bag), and a way to add more pizazz to the campfire or s’mores experience. So, no matter what you’re going for, if you buy any of these, you’re in for a good, tasty time! Regular marshmallows, watch out!
The Stuffed Puffs company has a relatively short history and has been around since 2012 and was founded by Michael Tierney. His motivation for creating such a product was highlighted in a 2021 Forbes interview where he stated,
What bothered me about the traditional s’more was that the chocolate never melted. It never looked like that TV commercial of that really ooey, gooey chocolatey s’more. It was always ice cold and slid around the graham cracker, like a hockey puck on ice. As I was sitting there, I ripped a marshmallow in half and shoved a piece of chocolate inside and put it over the fire. And of course it melted from the inside out.
Forbes
Stuffed Puffs had grown quickly in popularity and now can be found anywhere, including grocery stores all the way to gas stations. They’re essentially a marshmallow 2.0 and can be eaten both in s’more form or straight out of the bag. According to their product page, they originally came out with Classic Milk Chocolate, Chocolate-on-Chocolate, Cookies ‘n Creme, and Salted Caramel. Due to popularity of these regular Stuffed Puffs, other flavors were released such as the limited edition 2021 Summer Peppermint Bark, limited Classic Chocolate Easter Puffs 2021, and more recently, a 2023 winter holiday Peppermint Milk Chocolate version.
In October 2021, they released flavors in a Big Bites variety such as Birthday Cake and S’mores with other flavors like Cinnamon Toast Crunch launched November 2022. These appear to come in two forms, ‘Big Bites’, which is the same size and filling as the original Stuffed Puffs, and ‘Bites’, a smaller sized puff where the marshmallow size is reduced but the filling size isn’t. These flavors were all reported to be first released in Walmart stores and later introduced to other retailors. Then for Fall 2022, a Halloween themed Monster Marsh was released for a limited time. Two years later for 2024 Easter, a Stuffed Puffs Jolly Rancher Sour Watermelon and Blue Raspberry released.
Before diving into the reviews and rankings, it’s important to point out that are commonalities between each Stuffed Puff. First, the marshmallows themselves are fairly sweet, a little sweeter than your average marshmallow. The texture is also a bit different, but still more or less similar and is that of a marshmallow. Inside of each of these chunky, thick marshmallows is a small ball of flavor. It’s a soft, easy to bite through solid filling that is usually a little sweeter than the marshmallow itself and provides much of the advertised flavor stamped on the packaging. This filling is there should you want to hold them up to a fire as it’s easily meltable and gives you a way to skip putting a bar of chocolate onto your s’more as alluded to by Tierney in the quote above. In addition, many of the Stuffed Puffs has different outside coatings that contributes differently to the taste and texture.
1. Birthday Cake
Score: 9.5 / 10
Why this Stuffed Puff is top tier and one of my all time favorite sweets I’ve ever tried was just how perfect everything was. Overall, it’s pretty sweet, and smells and tastes just like a birthday cake. The soft, thick pliable marshmallow encases a soft, semi-hard yellow center ball. This balled center tastes just like a sweet birthday cake and is where all the birthday cake flavor comes from. The thick layer of sprinks outside gives it a light sprinkles crunch and adds to the complexity of textures nicely. A must try for sweets lovers.
2. Sour Blue Raspberry Jolly Rancher
Score: 8.5 / 10
Compared to the other Stuffed Puffs, these have a ton more filling. Overall, it’s superb sour candy and I’m not even a huge fan of this type of sour stuff! It’s reasonably punchy, and the texture is wonderful! The soft jelly blue inside matches near identically to the equally chewy outside marshmallow, blending all together to form a sweet-sour, blue raspberry candy marshmallow taste concoction. I also love the outside crunchy bits which add further complexity to the experience.
Warning: if you heat these up, it completely collapses and the inside turns to liquid.
3. Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Score: 7.5 / 10
The outer shell as well as the inner core itself gives a taste quite close to Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Together, it’s a very interesting texture experience… I felt like I was eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch but it was a chewy marshmallow with a soft core, it was very unique!
4. Monster Marsh
Score: 7.5 / 10
Identical to the Classic Milk Chocolate Stuffed Puffs except these are both green and have a thick layer of sprinkles on the outside. This layer of sprinkles adds so much to the texture which is something the Classic Milk Chocolate needed and is more forgiving despite the small chocolate center to marshmallow ratio (see my Classic Milk Chocolate for more details).
5. Cookies ‘n Creme
Score: 7 / 10
This chunky, fairly sweet marshmallow has a pretty thick layer of cookie bits on the outside. They aren’t super crunchy, but they do add some texture. On the inside of this marshmallow is a semi-small, very soft, cookie dough-like ball that I suppose is supposed to taste like cookies and cream but the sweetness and taste of the marshmallow and outside cookie bits overshadows it. Basically, the marshmallow, even without the inside filling, already tastes like a sweet cookies and creme marshmallow!
6. Sour Watermelon Jolly Rancher
Score: 7 / 10
A sweet, not really sour, watermelon Jolly Rancher tasting marshmallow. Well, the marshmallow doesn’t taste like it, but the soft-solid inside jelly-like filling absolutely does. The filling in combination with the marshmallow shell comes together nicely, and the outside flakes gives it a little bit of a crunch. Great texture and pleasantly sweet flavor overall.
Warning: if you heat these up, it completely collapses and the inside turns to liquid.
7. Classic Milk Chocolate
Score: 6 / 10
The classic Stuffed Puff. Instead of having a marshmallow coating like some of the Big Bites or newer releases, these are more simple. A thick marshmallow encases a soft and smallish size piece of fairly sweet milk chocolate. I do wish the chocolate piece was a bit larger or more impactful as the Stuffed Puff is mostly marshmallow making the ratio feel off.
8. Salted Caramel
Score: 6 / 10
Similar to the Classic Milk Chocolate, this doesn’t have an outside coating to the marshmallow. And instead of a chocolate center, there is a soft caramel ball. This caramel center is fairly sweet and does taste like caramel but it isn’t overpowering or too artificial either. And also like the Classic Milk Chocolate, I wish the caramel center chunk was a little larger due to the huge size of the marshmallow. Overall, fairly sweet.
9. Peppermint Milk Chocolate
Score: 6 / 10
That outside texture is absolutely perfect. Crunchy little pieces of peppermint and a whole lot of crystal crystals liter the outside. The taste comes across as pretty sweet, not super pepperminty or toothpasty, and with the inner chocolate filling, the combination is just right.
10. S’mores (Big bites)
Score: 5 / 10
A fairly sweet, chunky marshmallow that’s coated in semi-sweet cinnamon and honey tasting graham cracker. The center has a soft circular piece of milk chocolate. I did expect these to be a little sweeter and have more graham cracker overall, as well as for the center to have more flavor like some of the other Big Bites. And frankly, something about this cinnamon tasting graham cracker coated marshmallow just doesn’t mix well with the center chocolate, it’s kind of odd.
11. S’mores (Bites)
Score: 5 / 10
Unlike it’s big brother, the Big bites version, these seem to have less of a graham cracker coating and overall, just aren’t as sweet. This may be due to less marshmallow, I’m not sure, all I know is that everything about this felt underwhelming. From the inside chocolate to the outside, these were hardly sweet like a traditional s’more.