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Heartbreaker: Some Valentine’s Day boxes skimping on chocolate this year

If you're picking up chocolates for your Valentine this holiday, you might want to take a close look at the fine print. Some say one major candymaker only made a halfhearted attempt to fill their boxes, which could be a violation of federal law.

A well-known Boston-based consumer advocate says the 5.1 ounce versions of Russell Stover and Whitman's Sampler heart-shaped boxes contain a paltry number of chocolates in an overly-large box, which may mislead buyers.

"The boxes are 9 inches by 10 inches roughly. You could get double or triple the number of pieces of candy in those boxes," says Edgar Dworsky, who runs Consumerworld.org. "You're paying $8 and you're getting nine little pieces of candy?"

The Russell Stover box contains nine chocolates, while the Whitman's Sampler has 11. If you remove the plastic holder, the chocolates only fill about a third of the space in the heart-shaped box.

Both Russell Stover and Whitman's are owned by global chocolate giant Lindt. A spokesman said the company believes it clearly indicates what's inside the packaging by listing the net weight and the number of chocolates on the label. The number of chocolates is only found in small print on the reverse.

"We buy with our eyes," Dworsky says. "You look at the size of the box and that [is supposed to give] you kind of a sense of what's inside."

For that reason, Dworsky says the oversized hearts could be a violation of the slack-fill law. That's a federal rule which says food packaging is misleading if it contains unnecessary empty space.

"How you package the item is important, and you can cross the line if you make a package look much bigger than it really is based on what the contents actually are," he says.

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