Heart-Shaped Deception Box

Ah, the perfect Valentine's Day gift: a lovely bouquet of red roses coupled with a wonderfully generic heart-shaped box of mystery chocolates. Maybe throw in a teddy bear for good measure. . Aww, how absolutely boring--I mean, obligatory--er, romantic!

Seriously, can we really get much more unoriginal and impersonal than that? Well, the Heart-Shaped Deception box will begin to put both the personalization and originality back into this holiday by pinpointing the least thoughtful and careful gift-givers. At first glance, these festive-looking heart-shaped boxes look like any ordinary Valentine's chocolate boxes, and are in fact intermixed with them on store shelves. But really, these boxes contain rather unappetizing morsels such as rocks, dead batteries, dried fish heads--you name it. And the contents of each box are even listed on the box itself in clearly legible text which one can locate with just a little effort.

A chocolate-seeking customer who encounters one of these boxes while browsing the Valentine's section has two options: (1) check the box's contents to verify that the chocolates that the box is assumed to contain sound appetizing and hopefully are of a variety that the recipient will enjoy or (2) snatch the box off the shelf and buy it because, after all, it's a heart and it's Valentine's Day so that makes it good enough, right?

Customers who select option 1 will likely find the contents rather unappealing and move on to select a box that contains actual chocolates which meet their standards (and hopefully their recipients' standards, for that matter). Meanwhile, customers who pick option 2 are obviously in for quite the surprise--and of course so are the recipients of their gifts. When an unwitting recipient opens their box of fishheads from their date and then discovers that the box clearly states that it contains fishheads, they might question the thoughtfulness of a date who would put so little effort into selecting their gift as to carelessly get them a box of fishheads. The date, in turn, will likely feel like a complete doofus and learn to try a little harder next time--regardless of whether their current date decides to stick around or if they're hoping for better luck with date #2.

However, regardless of how each individual situation turns out, face it--receiving a chocolate box that defies all expectation will certainly make for a one-of-a-kind Valentine's Day to never be forgotten!