When you’re shopping for your sweetheart in the coming days, you’ll be sure to see the bright red, heart-shaped boxes full of chocolates and other goodies on the store shelf. It wouldn’t be Valentine’s Day without them, right? Coming from the paperboard packaging industry, these heart boxes are certainly near and dear to our hearts. But how exactly did they come about?
Surprise! The heart-shaped box wasn’t invented by a swooning lover. Actually, it was a really smart marketing idea. Our industry knows just how well paperboard packaging can help to sell products, and so did Richard Cadbury, of the famed chocolate company, who created the first Valentine’s Day heart box.
Rewind to mid-nineteenth century England. By this time, the commercialization of Valentine’s Day was in full swing, and it was common practice for Cupid-struck Victorians to shower each other with gifts for the romantic holiday.
It just so happened that Richard Cadbury found himself in a position to take advantage of this cultural phenomenon. The chocolate company had recently improved its process for making drinking chocolate, and as a result, had excess cocoa butter that could be made into more varieties of what was called “eating chocolate” at the time. What better way to market the company’s new chocolates for Valentine’s Day than with a heart-shaped box? So he made it happen, handcrafting the first of the boxes we know so well today. These original Victorian package designs, adorned with images of roses and cupids, are sought out by collectors today.
Similar to how we think about luxurious rigid boxes, Richard Cadbury marketed the first Valentine’s Day boxes as having two purposes: first as a container and marketing tool for the product, and second as a keepsake after Valentine’s Day. One might keep special mementos from their lover in the boxes. A love letter? A lock of hair? The beautiful box would stick around well after the chocolates had been consumed, serving as a reminder of love and loved ones—and perhaps as a subtle appeal for the consumer to buy more Cadbury chocolates!
Richard Cadbury hit the nail on the head: paperboard packaging is sturdy and beautiful enough for the most important of occasions, and it can be useful in many ways after the fact. It’s easy to see how the art and craft of exceptional package design has lived on ever since the Victorian Era and into today.
Enjoy Valentine’s Day—and remember how the paperboard industry makes it just a bit sweeter every year!
Sources:
https://www.history.com/news/celebrating-valentines-day-with-a-box-of-chocolates
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-chocolate-and-valentines-day-mated-life-180954228/