Feb. 10, 2010 - Issue #747: Abnormal Growth

Provenance

History of candy hearts

Before Valentine’s Day, those little candy hearts bearing messages like “Be Mine” show up in stores everywhere. These candies actually go back nearly 150 years—so while they’re everywhere in February, they’re hardly a flavour of the month. Indeed, in the same decade as Canadian Confederation, a few of our neighbours to the south were also writing proclamations about getting together, except in candy form.  

Conversation hearts have a history that extends back to the 1860s, when an American inventor, Daniel Chase, created a machine to print messages onto candy hearts. These initial messages, however, were primarily wedding-related and much longer than the ones with which we are familiar.
    
By 1902, the succinct love messages that we recognize began appearing on conversation hearts, called Sweethearts, made by the New England Confectionary Company (NECCO). Initially, candies in a number of shapes—hearts, watches, horseshoes, baseballs—invited the recipient to offer a kiss or to be true. Eventually, these other candy shapes became history, but the hearts have remained.  

These days, the Sweethearts candies also contain modern messages, such as “e-mail me.” V

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