Feeling cheated on Valentine’s Day? Popular chocolate boxes look big but have more plastic than ever

Pariah Cavilanz, CNN

Get ready for a heartbreak in the candy department.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, so does the annual rush to buy or gift classic Russell Stover and Whitman’s Sampler chocolate boxes that cost less than $12 or so at Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Target.

But shoppers may be disappointed this year when they open those big heart-shaped red or pink boxes, according to one consumer advocate. That’s because packaging is misleading, said Edgar Dworsky, a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general who is editor of the ConsumerWorld.org website.

According to him, sometimes there are precious little candies inside.

Dworsky said his research shows that large boxes fool consumers into believing there is more chocolate inside when there is actually none.

Consumer watchers have a name for this tactic called “soft padding” and it’s not allowed by federal law. Regulators assess whether a product is empty by comparing the capacity of a package to the amount of product it actually contains, he said. They then determine if the extra space in it is non-functional and does not serve a legitimate purpose, such as protecting the product.

This is different from “shrinkflation,” a food packaging practice that typically kicks in when inflation spikes and companies’ costs rise. To keep these costs down, companies are putting products in packaging that looks smaller, lighter in weight, and adorned with less vibrant colors.

Dworsky said a reader alerted him to the chocolate boxes a few days ago and sent him evidence of a box of heart-shaped Whitman chocolate samples.

The box, 9.3 inches wide and 10 inches high, had a net weight of 5.1 ounces. “Pretty decent size,” Dvorsky said. But when the box was opened, there were 11 chocolates inside.

So, Dworsky bought several boxes of this year’s Whitman ($7.99 each) and removed all of the inner packaging materials and liners. “Chocolate pieces only filled one-third of the box.”

Dworsky had no evidence that brands were actually saving on chocolate compared to previous years. But CNN did find one heart-shaped box of Russell Stover chocolates – with an expiration date of June 10, 2006 and kept as a memento by one of our employees – the same size, 9 inches wide and 10 inches high.

It contained 24 pieces.

Dworsky also found a 5.1-ounce Russell Stover heart with nine pieces of chocolate inside. “That’s almost double the size of a 4-ounce box of Russell Stover that has seven,” he said.

“Imagine you get a big box. If you give it to your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day, they think it’s a big, decent-sized box of chocolate, but then it only has nine pieces,” he said. “It’s horrible.”

Both brands list the weight and approximate number of candies inside on their boxes. Swiss chocolate company Lindt & Sprüngli, which owns the Russell Stover, Whitman’s and Ghirardelli brands, sent requests for comment to Russell Stover Chocolates.

Russell Stover Chocolates said it “works to clearly indicate to our customers what’s in our packaging.”

“This includes separating the weight of the product and how many are in all of our Valentine’s Day chocolate boxes,” Patrick Khattak, the brand’s vice president of marketing, said in an email to CNN Business.

In the past, chocolate makers have been prosecuted by regulators for so-called deceptive packaging. In 2019, California District Attorneys filed a lawsuit against Russell Stover and Ghirardelli for allegedly using false bottoms and other deceptive tactics in some boxes and bags of chocolate, making the package look fuller than it really was.

Prosecutors also accused Ghirardelli of using less cocoa in its products than advertised.

The Santa Cruz District Attorney settled the case and the companies paid a $750,000 fine, admitting no wrongdoing but agreeing to make changes to the packaging.

Edward Brown, assistant district attorney in Santa Cruz, said he would look into this recent example of potentially deceptive packaging by companies. He said that Dvorsky had contacted him about his own report regarding boxes of Russell Stover and Whitman chocolates.

“Unfortunately, this situation is still ongoing. It’s also disappointing,” Brown told CNN. “We will take a look and see if companies are taking advantage of any exceptions to the law. After our case in 2019, many exceptions were added and they are absorbing the rule.”

The-CNN-Wire
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