How Candy Hearts Became a Valentine’s Day Staple

Life may be like a box of chocolates, but only a box of conversation candy hearts can spark a romantic chat in just a few words. In school, you could drop a hint with them on Valentine’s Day to tell your crush how you really felt. “Be mine.” “I’m yours.” “Kiss me.” It was candy crush before smartphone gaming was even a thing. Now, these phrases are just part of our candy lexicon and have been since the early 1900s.

Whether you love or hate Sweethearts’ trademark chalky flavor, Ohio-based Spangler Candy Company makes just over 600 million of the original conversation candy hearts leading up to Valentine’s Day. But these little hearts didn’t start out as the cupid candy for middle schoolers. Their story begins in a Boston apothecary as a medicinal lozenge.

In 1847, Boston pharmacist Oliver Chase invented a machine that industrialized how he could make lozenges used for everything from sore throats to stomachaches. At that time, lozenges were made from a sugary dough, but before Chase’s innovation, that dough had to be rolled out and cut by hand. Chase’s lozenge cutter automated that process, leading him and his brother Silas to open a candy business that eventually became the New England Confectionary Company, or NECCO.

The Chase Lozenges, as the brothers first called them, were immediately popular because they tasted good, had a long shelf life and were affordable. Later, the candy entrepreneurs changed the name to NECCO Wafers.

It wasn’t until 1866 that the company released “conversation candies” after another Chase brother, Daniel, designed a letter-stamping system that used vegetable dyes. The new confections were similar to the company’s signature treat, just with a more playful feel. Even so, there were no hearts, and no “Marry Me” or “Date Night” phrases on the candies then known as Mottoes (much later, they became Sweethearts). Instead, the candymaker printed lengthy expressions like “How long shall I have to wait? Please be considerate” on bigger scallop shells, horseshoes and baseballs.

Smaller heart-shaped Mottoes appeared in 1902, and the messages got shorter and, well, a lot simpler. “There are classic sayings that have just been a part of the Sweethearts brand almost since the beginning,” says Evan Brock, vice president of marketing for Spangler, which now owns Sweethearts. “‘Kiss Me’ and ‘Be Mine’ [are] a couple of them, but there are others, like ‘Sugar Pie,’ ‘Sweet Pea,’ ‘Cutie Pie and ‘Crush on You’.”

Adding new messages has been one way the candy brand has remained current, whether the phrases reference the latest mode of communication or tie-in to pop culture. Sweethearts’ collaboration with the Twilight franchise resulted in themed sayings like “Bite Me” and “Live 4 Ever.” In 2021, Spangler used phrasing from classic love songs like “At Last,” “IGotU Babe” and “Lean on Me.”

“Each year, we try to introduce some new sayings that reflect the times [and] reflect modern dating and relationships,” Brock says. In 2024, the Valentine’s Day theme was Situationships, and per the tagline, Sweethearts featured messages “as blurry as your relationship.” In 2026, the candies get totally real with a Love in This Economy theme. Potential Valentines better be able to “Split Rent” or “Buy N Bulk” to win over cash-strapped hearts.

“We like to play with dating trends, even when they are a little bit uncomfortable,” Brock says. In one particularly poignant example, Spangler offered a limited run of Ghosted Sweethearts for Halloween 2025 that played on the idea of being “ghosted.” The candies were all white with no sayings.

People who love Sweethearts are very particular about their taste—and texture. Even as the shape of NECCO’s conversation candies and their phrases changed, the signature chalky flavor and snappy texture have mostly remained the same. That is until 2010 when NECCO decided to update the recipe.

That year, the company replaced longtime favorite flavors banana and wintergreen with green apple and blue raspberry and added phrases like “Tweet Me” and “Text Me” based on consumer suggestions. Diehard fans weren’t having it. Sentimental Sweetheart lovers wanted their candy back, and they let NECCO know it.

“They got a lot of hate mail, and sales tanked,” Brock says. “They were down like 40 percent when they tried to make that change in 2010.” In 2011, NECCO tweaked the flavors and made the texture chewier and softer. Gone was the snap and crunch that made the candy what it was. But at least they were still available.

In 2018, NECCO went bankrupt after facing mounting debt. Spangler wasn’t about to let Sweethearts get ghosted and purchased NECCO that May.

“We’re candy people, right?... We know the brands that are key parts of our candy culture here in the United States,” Brock says. “We knew we had to save Sweethearts... It was important that the brand lived on.”

The biggest problem was Spangler didn’t have enough production time to make the millions of candy hearts before Valentine’s Day 2019. That meant for the first time ever in more than 100 years, there were no Sweethearts on the shelves. (Candy hearts from competitor brands like Brach’s Candy were still available.)

Sweethearts fans didn’t take the void lightly. Candy bloggers cried foul; national press wrote about where to find the last batches; and even “Saturday Night Live” poked fun at the situation.

When Spangler rereleased the Sweethearts on the shelves in 2020, they were available with their original colors, flavors and texture people had known for nearly a century. Undoubtedly, for some customers, absence made their hearts grow fonder.