Romantics shopping for Valentine’s Day treats this year have been forced to pay premiums as high as 803% for candy that’s adorned with holiday-themed hearts and Cupids, according to a recent report.
As of Feb. 2, a heart-shaped, 3.45-ounce container filled with black raspberry-flavored Sour Heart gummy candy is going for a hefty $10.96, according to food and cooking website Pantry and Larder.
That’s a heart-breaking 803% more than Sour Patch Kids’ standard box of the popular sweet, which goes for $1.24, the website found.
Meanwhile, Sour Patch Kids’ watermelon-flavored heart box is $3.96 — more than double the price of a regular box.
Hershey-made Reese’s, meanwhile, is charging $10.98 for a heart-shaped box of its Valentine’s Day-themed miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups — 174% more than its typical $4.56 price for chocolates that come in a resealable bag, per Pantry and Larder.
Gummy bear-maker Haribo is also jacking up prices more than 100% for its Valentine’s Day offerings, while Ferraro Rocher is selling its standard 12-pack of milk chocolate truffles in its same packaging at 251% more.
Lindt, too, put its popular milk chocolate truffles into a heart-shaped box and, as a result, tacked on an extra 119% in costs, Pantry and Larder found.
The culprit is “greedflation,” Edgar Dworsky, the founder of ConsumerWorld.org, told The Post.
“Greedflation is just somebody piling on knowing that prices are high and that consumers are expecting higher prices because they keep hearing about the inflation rate,” Dworky said in an interview with The Post.
Stubbornly-high inflation in recent months has made greedflation a talking point for President Joe Biden.
Earlier Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the cost of everyday goods and services rose 3.1% in January. The bigger-than-expected advance dimmed hopes that the Federal Reserve will begin cutting interest rates this spring.
“Even if the company hasn’t experienced some of the price increases others have, they say, ‘Well, we might as well do it,’” Dworsky added of candy-makers during the Valentine’s Day season.
“They’ve picked categories where consumers just shrug because they have to make these purchases. It’s Valentine’s Day — your sweetheart is expecting chocolates,” Dworsky said.
According to Pantry and Larder’s observations, if a consumer opts for Dove’s themed “Love Notes” caramel-filled milk chocolates — which are in red and white foil that spell out “LOVE” — they can expect to shell out $7.29 this Valentine’s Day.
The same candies when it’s not February, when they’re wrapped in gold foil and simply labeled “Milk Chocolate & Caramel,” are $4.98 for a nearly 8-ounce package — 77% less.
Dworsky, who previously worked as an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts, also told The Post that themed packaging could have something to do with the outrageous surcharges.
Cardboard, heart-shaped packages is a prime example of “over-packaging, deception [and] slack fill,” which “makes the consumer think they are getting more than they really are,” Dworsky told The Post.
In addition, “manufacturers would say it costs more to ship a cardboard box than the little bags,” Dworsky said, noting that companies also charge more because themed offerings are considered “a specialty product.”
“But does that necessarily justify a five-time price increase? Probably not.”
CVS, a drug-store chain where many of these themed popular candies can be found, told CNN that the “prices of Valentine’s Day candy may vary based on cost or quantity.”
This story originally appeared on NYPost
