Chapter 11: Conversation Hearts
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Chapter 11: Conversation Hearts |
In 1866, Daniel Chase made and attached a printing device to the lozenge cutter. Now the mottoes, conundrums and sayings, which were previously tucked inside the shell of the very popular Cockle Shell candy or wrapped around French Secrets on flimsy paper, were printed directly on the candy. The printed candies were an instant success when they reached the glass candy cases of confection sellers as Untermeyer has told us. The Chase Brother's Boston based candy company thrived.
In 1901, the Chase Brothers merged with three other New England candy manufacturers to form the New England Confectionary Company, the familiar NECCO. Of the four founding companies, Chase Brothers was the principle.
Their motto lozenges continued to carry messages that had to do with love and courtship. They were a great success at gatherings of youngsters and adults alike, Untermeyer[1]. Around 1901 or 1902 (the time of the merger) a change in the shape of the Motto lozenge was proposed. NECCO experimented with several shapes: the post card, the watch, the baseball, the horseshoe and the heart. The heart shape was their final choice possibly because it so admirably suited the love and courtship mottoes they had been in the habit of putting on their Motto Lozenges and which, they already knew, were marketable. Untermeyer reckons differetly. Because Daniel Chase was lame and because he was also an inordinately shy man, Untermeyer proposes that his purpose was to create an ice breaker for meeting and courting young ladies. He was trying to perfect his "come on" in contemporary slang, and the choice of heart shapes with printed endearments on them was the perfect solution, according to Untrmeyer. The choice for the new shape was good because the heart shape has been a strong seller for the last 100 years, and is the shape of choice among other conversation candy makers. It is currently trademarked under the name Sweethearts™.
While the trademark/name escagraph was showing its business acumen in advertising, ordinary people were using the new heart shapped candy,from NECCO with its increasingly direct mottoes (like "BE TRUE" "BE MINE", and "KISS ME") to hijack a Holiday, one which celebrated two lovers whose affection was thwarted), and an appropriate day, the day birds collect to build nests, according to Chauser's[2] Parliment of the Fowels, and, it is called, Valentine's Day.
I can be more forthcoming about why this hijacking took place than how. It used to be that, on Valentine's Day, you could send your beloved a card full of endearments and personal hopes for the future on flimsy piece of colored paper, which bore thoughts about the recipient, which could put him in the way of additional attention from the sender. They could be identified across a room, and certainly across a classroom, where they caused enough emotional and social stir that they were outlawed by schoolboards. It was not long before every girl or boy who wanted to send a special Valentine's missive to any one person in a class, was required to send one to every other member of the class before being allowed to send a Valentine to the person who mattered - hooding the cobra to protect it from the weasel.
But wait, it's only getting interesting. The adults
and children so anxious to buy NECCO's were compensating, I believe, for a loss.
the satisfaction of saying exactly what they thought to a colleague but since
the straightforward valentine was gone, what should they do? Exactly what
they did, they toyed at playing the waiting game, I think, until they were
satisfied that there were enough differences to be made to begin to create a
jocund and agreeable holiday. But, what differences were they waiting for?
They were waiting for enough colors and enough flavors and enough succinct
mottoes to make participating in the event worth while so that a sassy, ironic
sender might just compose a green sour apple heart with the flattering
invitation "DARE YA" while more demur recipient might come back, matching
sentiment and shape to request with a pink, sweet heart reading "KISS ME".
Valentine's day became a time for disguised messages, and yes everyone could
play.
NECCO now produces 8 billion Sweethearts™ a year which amounts to 100,000 pounds of them a day in peak periods and to approximately 20 million pounds of sugar a year to make their Sweethearts,™ Conversation Hearts and their familiar wafers. NECCO is currently one of several companies that make and distribute conversation hearts: there is also Brach's in Woodbridge, IL, Farley and Sathers Co., distributed by Favorite Brands International, Inc. in Lincolnshire, IL and Gateway, located in St. Louis.
NECCO has maintained the tradition every year of
re-printing for inclusion in the bags for sale some of the messages which
appeared on their conversation hearts when they first made them. They are:
"BE MINE", "BE GOOD", "BE TRUE", "KISS ME" and "SWEET TALK" -they obviously had
realized the market value of more succinct mottoes. The company also makes
an effort to address social or cultural conditions like meeting the demands of
the Latin community, the fastest growing minority in the U. S.. "Since
1981 Hispanic Sweethearts™ Conversation Hearts have been available within large
Hispanic communities in the United States. In 2002, NECCO launched them
nationwide"[3].
They have continued the practice of being socially responsible. In 2003,
NECCO worked with the
Boston Public Library and children's author
Barbara McGrath to emphasize the importance of reading and learning.
Ten new mottoes were added to the collection that year: "LET'S READ", "WRITE
ME", "CLASS ACT", "WHIZ KID", "WISE UP", "TEACH ME", "LOVE LETTER", "PEN PAL",
"BOOK CLUB" and "SCHOOL MATE". And, in 2001 they made a concerted effort
to respond to
Arthur C. Clarke's
2001: A Space Odyssey by soliciting sayings from teenagers by way of
American Girl and
Seventeen. The solicitation yielded the following sayings which
they delivered to their 2001 buyers: "LOVE 2001", "ODYSSEY", "MOON BEAM", "URA
STAR", "VENUS", "STAR DUST" and "RISING STAR". To further their Space
Odyssey theme, they worked with the
Hayden Planetarium who "found" a new constellation for them, the stars of
which could conceivably mark the outline of a valentine heart in the southeast
quadrant of the night sky[3].
For several years, I have watched the sayings of both NECCO and Brach's Candy Companies. During the 1980s, Brach's, keeping pace with what they learned of our language use by listening to us, printed cryptic, tough and negative sayings on their conversation hearts but have, in the late 80's and 90's, begun to replace them with sweeter ideas. Some of the sayings that were cryptic, tough and negative were: "NO", "GO AWAY", "NOT NOW" and "BUZZ OFF". From 1983 trough 1985, I found not one single conversation heart in the supply I purchased (Brach's) which read "I LOVE YOU", "LOVE YOU" or any other such plighting of affection. Those endearing mottoes have returned, fortunately.
During the Valentine's season, conversation hearts are ubiquitous: they are in candy dishes at home or in the office; they are on the teacher's, the secretary's and the clergyman's desk; they are in book bags and backpacks; they are carried in pockets, purses and ...dirty hands. Everybody has one. You can pick one up casually or you might have one slipped surreptitiously into your hand. When we take a conversation heart from a receptionist's desk while waiting for an appointment, we seldom fail to glance at the writing because we are curious about what it says; it might be better to leave it alone, it just might be ill advised to eat it. We reached for it because we knew it would be sweet and we all like that. But, once in the hand, we read it because we are curious, intrigued by the possibilities, careful, as Alice was, that it isn't labeled poison.
If its message is figuratively poison, we customarily do not put it back in the dish but palm it until it can be dropped unnoticed, we hope, into a waste can but we are, almost without fail, made aware of the futileness of any such attempt. When we manage to drop it in a waste can, their is usually an outcry from the person or persons who saw to its getting into our hands, even if the person or persons only put the dish of candy where it could be reached by any passer by. The cry goes up "Ah, come on. Eat it," or "Come on, wha'd it say?" which opens up endless interpretations of what "Eat it" might mean: it could be anything from "take your medicine" to "make it one with yourself."
Those kinds of reactions point out how much like a cultural toy the conversation heart is and how like play our behaviors are with conversation hearts.
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