Tedium - Heart Of Mold ❤️🍕

Today in Tedium: It doesn’t matter that the heart symbol doesn’t look like an actual human heart, and never has. It nonetheless has become our general symbol for what we think of as love. The symbol is everywhere—on greeting cards, in emoji. But there’s one particular heart-shaped thing that I can’t stop thinking about right now: The heart-shaped pizza. It seems like the most crass of romantic gestures, to put tomato sauce and cheese on bread, but in a way, it’s genius. And seemingly every major chain that’s not Domino’s is offering a heart-shaped pizza. (Hey, if two people are sharing, it makes splitting it kind of easy, I guess.) I can’t stop thinking about the fact that lots of people are expected to buy cheap, rubbery Papa John’s pizza as a way to show off their love. (Papa John’s doesn’t even use heart-shaped pepperonis!) Today’s Tedium, in our first Valentine’s-themed post in our seven-year history, talks about our cultural tendency to make heart-shaped food. Especially pizza. — Ernie @ Tedium

So wait, you’re saying that this greasy pile of pepperoni, cheese, and sauce doesn’t scream romance to you!?!?! (Faye Harris/Flickr)

Where the heart-shaped pizza first came from

To those of you who think that making pizza look like a heart symbol is fairly novel, it’s worth noting that it’s a phenomenon that’s been around a little while, and dates almost to the earliest days of frozen pizza and pizza delivery in the 1950s, a period when many Americans were coming to appreciate pizza for the first time.

In a lot of ways, reshaping dough to look like a heart makes sense; after all, it’s not that complex a shape, and financially, you may be making up for the slight amount of extra work by giving the consumer a slightly smaller pie. It’s not the least obvious thing to do with a pizza, and as some not-particularly romantic people will remind you, it’s not a financially sound investment of your food-consumption dollars.

So where did it come from? Doing a search through one of my favorite sources, Newspapers.com, uncovers examples of heart-shaped pizzas from at least the mid-1950s, which is at least as long as a good portion of American consumers have been eating pizzas. (World War II gave them a boost of attention, see.)

The earliest reference to heart-shaped pizza I can find is from 1955, when the Villa Capri, a famed Los Angeles restaurant that claimed Frank Sinatra among its frequent visitors, served heart-shaped pizzas on Valentine’s Day that year, according to a gossip column of the era.

Hearts and pizzas were a common combination of that era, though they didn’t always take the modern traditional shape; either. Some early mentions of the heart-shaped pizza come from recipe pages in newspapers, with some of them recommending smaller, personal-pan-sized pizza designed for hungry kids.

It’s kind of dark that someone goes to the trouble of making a heart-shaped pizza and the first thing they do with it is cut it into little pieces, right? (Muskogee Times-Democrat/Newspapers.com)

These recipes also seemed to be built around the idea that one specific type of person would be making the pizza. As one recipe about heart-shaped pizzas from the era, published on the Associated Press wire, put it:

I low about a pizza pie party for Valentine’s Day? Not romantic you say? Just serve ’em and see how popular you become with the boys.

Your invitation and pizzas could he heart-shaped. The pie is pretty gooey, so it’s a good idea to serve apron-bibs to your guests. Make them out of wax paper or newspaper. A quickly made type may be pinned to dress or jacket or you may roll string around the neckline, fastening it with tape. It you want to do the apron up chic, make initials of colored tape and fasten to each apron giving them out when guests arrive.

(Yes, even the newspaper was trying to enforce gender-normative standards on your pizza-making abilities. Side note: Apron-bibs are the official uniform of pizza-driven romance.)

The concept of the heart-shaped pizza got a notable boost of attention from television host Dinah Shore, who featured it on an Italian-themed episode of her namesake television show in 1960, and again in 1962. (Sadly, episodes of television shows from this era can at times be hard to come by, so I unfortunately don’t have the specific episode, but there is a photo of Shore and Italian actor Rossano Brazzi holding a heart-shaped pizza on Getty Images.)

But slowly, heart-shaped pizzas became a common way for restaurants to stand out during romantic-themed days of the year, for local pizza shops and mega-chains alike. New York Magazine first reported on the trend in the early ’70s, which of-the-era “pizza king” Larry Goldberg specialized in.

The balloon exists to reinforce the point of the pizza. (Kenosha, Wisconsin Sunday News/Newspapers.com)

Chains like Rocky Rococo and Pizza Haven were selling heart-shaped pizza as early as the 1980s, with Rocky Rococo even packaging the pizza with a balloon, in case the pizza didn’t scream “this is romantic” enough on its own.

One particular chain that has had a lot of success with the novelty pizza variant is Lou Malnati’s, a popular Chicago-style pizza chain that started serving the pies in the mid-1990s. As CNN Business reported in 2012, the son of the namesake founder, basketball coach Rick Malnati, came up with the general idea, which ended up becoming a prominent hit for the restaurant and even one of its most popular options for cross-country shipping.

“Valentine’s Day is now our second-busiest event behind the holiday season,” said Meggie Eck, the company’s marketing person, in the article.

Soon enough, even larger chains got in on the gimmick, with Papa John’s first doing so in the late 2000s, and even megachains like Pizza Hut later following suit. But it should be known by the fact that these chains are selling them is a sign that this is not some hot new trend in pizza-making. Much the opposite, in fact.

Likely helping to make the heart-shaped pizza ubiquitous among pizza chains: it’s incredibly easy to make, and it’s a symbol that has a universal appeal.

I can’t be the only person bothered by this branding laziness, can I?

Why do we let Reese’s keep getting away with the same molded holiday gimmick multiple times each year?

If we’re going to talk about specially molded holiday stuff, we have to spend a little time discussing the fact that we’ve let a company get away with selling random blobs of chocolate and peanut butter shaped like random seasonal things.

I’m, of course, talking about Reese’s selling of four seasonal holiday goods: the heart, the egg, the pumpkin, and the tree. Each of these candies are basically the same—just chocolate-covered lumps of peanut butter that vaguely look like a holiday shape.

I’m not saying that Hershey’s-operated purveyor of peanut butter can’t repeatedly print money using its peanut butter candy factories, but it’s clear that the company is leveraging a small amount of creativity to produce objects that it is convinced will sell.

You’ll be pushed to switch to these instead in like a week, just an FYI. But don’t let them fool you! Get the hearts on discount starting on the 15th!

It’s not that the symbolism isn’t appreciated. Really, it’s more that the symbolism is barely there. In the case of the peanut butter hearts, for example, the design is long and narrow for some reason, despite the fact that mot people associate hearts with being rounder and wider. You could make the same case that some make about heart-shaped pizzas: By making the heart long and narrow, you’re seemingly giving us less than we might get with the pumpkin or the egg, which use up a slightly larger proportion of the packaging.

It’s clear that they’re using the same machines to produce these candies, changing the settings slightly, and hoping we, as consumers, won’t notice that you’re selling us the same thing in slightly different forms throughout the year.

But we’re onto you, Reese’s—and perhaps you’ve figured that out, because in recent years, you’ve at least had the guts to create pink peanut butter hearts, which implies that there’s at least some room for growth there.