Sweethearts, the famed brand behind America’s conversation hearts, is launching Situationship Boxes for Valentine’s Day, featuring misprinted candies reflecting the complicatedness of Gen Z relationships. These boxes embrace imperfections in line with modern dating trends, specifically the situationships that more and more Gen Z’s tend to find themselves in. The packaging is a bright cherry red, featuring the misprinted candies front and center in a confident, yet blurry, design.
Sweethearts, the beloved brand of America’s iconic conversation hearts, is leaning into dating trends with a limited-edition release of Situationship Boxes just in time for Valentine’s Day. The specially designed boxes contain blurry, misprinted candies that are as hard to read as Gen-Z relationships. Perfect for gifting, Situationship Boxes will be available to purchase at SweetheartsCandies.com starting Monday, January 8 at 9 a.m. ET. The brand is encouraging confused singles everywhere to get them while they last and give the gift as blurry as their relationships.
“Singles are taking ‘situationships’ to the next level this year, and Sweethearts is here for them,” said Evan Brock, vice president of marketing for Spangler. “The printing on Sweethearts isn’t always perfect. This is our way of embracing those imperfections in a way that taps into pop culture.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, situationships are romantic entanglements where the participants haven’t established the nature of their relationship. From a relationship with “that one person you meet up with whenever they happen to be in town” to “your go-to ‘plus one’ for couple-y events,” situationships have no labels, exclusivity or boundaries.
Research from Tinder, the world’s most popular dating app, indicates that young singles now consider the situationship to be a legitimate relationship status. The undefined and noncommittal situationship continues to evolve as people are less concerned about relationship outcomes and more interested in enjoying the process, according to Tinder data.
The word “situationship” recently ranked in the top four terms considered for the Oxford University Press’ 2023 “Word of the Year.” Hence the Situationship Box from Sweethearts, filled entirely with sweet, muddled nothings and literal mixed messages.