Say it with sweets

Love Hearts: forget Tinder, in the 70s and 80s all you needed was a packet of sweets. There are currently 105 different Love Hearts messages according to the manufacturer, Swizzels, who started making the sweets in 1954.

There have been some short-lived messages that haven’t stood the test of time: both ‘FAX ME’ and ‘PAGE ME’ came and went in the 80s and, in the last 66 years, Love Hearts have evolved. There was brief rebranding when Swizzels collaborated with YoungMinds, the UK’s leading charity fighting for young people’s mental health. Called ‘Kind Hearts’, there were eight new messages including: ‘STAY STRONG’, ‘LOVE YOURSELF’, and ‘BE KIND’.

Then at the start of 2024, the US equivalent, called ‘Sweethearts’ started selling limited-edition ‘Situationship Boxes’, with, “messages as blurry as your relationships”.

Oxford University Press, named ‘situationship’ a finalist for 2023 word of the year and defines it as, “A romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established”. Those in situationships are more than friends, but less than committed romantic partners. Sweethearts said that the messages in the new boxes are just like today’s dating landscape whereby your dating app matches can also be hard to read.

What was your favourite Love Hearts message?

More importantly, in 2023, Swizzels set out to discover the answer to the burning question: what is the UK’s favourite Love Hearts message? The number one Love Hearts message favoured by UK seets fans was: ‘BE HAPPY’!

These are the UK’s top 5 Love Hearts messages:

1. BE HAPPY
2. I LOVE YOU
3. BE MINE
4. ALWAYS
5. LOVE YOU