If it’s Valentine’s Day, it’s time for conversation hearts.
Americanscollectively buy abouteight billion of these chalky little tidbits a year, almost all in the six weeks before February 14. Today theyaccount for about 40 percent of the Valentine’s candy market, second only to(far yummier)chocolates.
Conversation hearts have been delivering theirabbreviated and romantic(ish) messages since the turn of the last century, but conversational candy has a far longer and wordier history. According to Tim Richardson, author ofSweets: A History of Candy, candy with appealing and/or seductive messagesdates at least to the 1820s when, on New Year’s Day in France, bonbons wereoftenpackaged in envelopes decorated with “fables, historical subjects, songs, enigmas,jeuxde mots, and various little gallantries”—presumably all more substantive than CUTIE PIE, HUG ME, and SWEET TALK.
By the mid-19thcentury in Britain, boiled sweets—that is, hard candies—were being manufactured with short messages inside (“Do You Love Me?”;“No, I Won’t Ask Momma”), though the trend was somewhat dampened by activists in the temperance movement, who began handing out rival sweets containing such homilies as “Misery, sickness, and poverty are the effect of drunkenness.”
In the United States, conversational candy is rooted in a health craze. TheNew England Confectionery Company(NECCO),producer of Sweethearts and one of the oldest candy companies in America,tracesits originsto 1847, when Boston pharmacist Oliver Chasebecameinterested indevisinga more efficient waytoproduceapothecarylozenges,all the rage in themid-19thcentury for treating everything from sore throats to bad breath.
Making lozenges by hand was a painful and prolonged process, that involved grinding ingredients with a mortar and pestle, kneading the mix into dough, and painstakingly cutting the dough into uniform discs. Chasecame up with ahand-cranked, table-topmachinecapable ofefficiently doing all of the above – and once it wasup and running,hepromptly jumped from pharmaceuticals to confectionery, addingsugar and flavoring to the doughandchurning out the hugely popular candies that would become known asNECCO wafers.
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Necco wafers were a hit. Rumor has it that Union soldiers in the Civil War – who referred to them as Hub wafers – toted them in their haversacks. Being cheap, they were a popular treat during the Great Depression; being portable, they appealed to Admiral Richard Byrd, who included over two tons of them in the supplies for his expedition to the South Pole. During World War II, the American government requisitioned much of the output of the Necco factory to supply the sweet teeth of the military.
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In its early days, NECCO also produced scallop-shaped candies called co*ckles, each containinga catchy message printed on colored paper. In the 1860s,Chase’s brother Daniel found a way to bypass the paper and stamp wordsdirectly onto the candy with vegetable dye. The results—clearly heftier than today’s Sweethearts—were popular among courting couples and wedding parties, with messages such as “How long shall I have to wait? Please be considerate”;“Married in satin, love will not be lasting”;“Married in pink, he will take to drink”;and—my favorite—“Please send a lock of your hair by return mail.”
At the turn of the 20thcentury,NECCObegan producing their chatty wafers in the shape of thumbnail-sizehearts, which necessarily meant paring messages downtotheirbare bones. Originally known as “motto hearts,” these carried such skimpy, but still-popular, bon mots as BE TRUE, KISS ME, and MARRY ME.
Today, each year’s run of conversation hearts includes about 60 different short-and-sweet messages, which often serve as capsule portraits of the times.In 1998, for example, with the rise in popularity of the home computer, the company pumped out such high-tech hearts as EMAIL ME and WWW.CUPID; in2000, up-to-date additions included GIRL POWERand a peace symbol.Various yearshave also celebratedsports (DREAM TEAM, ALL-STAR, #1 FAN); animals (COOL CAT, BEAR HUG, TOP DOG); and food (TOP CHEF, SUGAR PIE, HONEY BUN).
Mottoes come and gowith popular culture and jargon. Now shelved are the antiquated DIG ME and HEP CAT, and gone is OCCUPY MY HEART, a reference to the Occupy Wall Street movement that sprang up in 2011. Also mercifully defunct are Sweethearts’ nod to fans of theTwilightseries, which included LIVE 4 EVER, DAZZLE, and BITE ME. Latest on the market these days are LUV 2 DANCE, BFF, and a markedly non-conversational mustache emoji and smiley face.
One thing you won’t see on a NECCO conversation heart: mean messages. Though Bart Simpsonfamously came up with the endearments U STINK and PRIZE PIGin the 1993 episode “I Love Lisa,” NECCOsteadfastlyrefuses periodic public requests for such disillusioned messages as GET A PRENUP and CALL MY LAWYER.
But should you receive a conversation heart that doesn’t strike your fancy, there’s a surefire way of dealing with it.When redheaded orphan Anne Shirley,heroine of L.M. Montgomery’s classicAnne of Green Gables, ispresented by Gilbert Blythe with a candy heart reading YOU ARE SWEET, shepicks it up with the tips of her fingers, drops it on the floor, and grinds it to dust beneath her heel.
Want to make your own conversation hearts? See a recipe and instructionshere.
Or invent and send your ownvirtual candy heart.
