Christmas is over so it’s time to move on!   Valentine’s Day is right around the corner.  Well, not really, but it is the next holiday from a retail standpoint, unless you count the champagne and noisemaker displays put out for New Years.

There’s always some poor sucker who has to start setting the Valentines candy to fill the empty Christmas aisles, and in the past it’s always been ME.  If I had a dollar for all the times I’ve heard “Valentine’s ALREADY?”,  I’d be retired by now.  (It’s also usually followed by “You’ve got to be kidding me!” or “We just recovered from Christmas!”)

This shelf of Valentine’s Day-themed cakes was seen at a SuperTarget. I bet those Conversation Heart cakes don’t even taste anything like chalk.  I wonder how many customers are aware of how many preservatives are packed into these things to keep them sellable for 7 weeks or so.

Here’s a display of Easter candy at a Stop & Shop.  At some point about 5 years ago, it was decided that since people love Cadbury Eggs so much, why wait until Easter to sell them?  So they started coming in at the same time as the Valentine’s candy and yes, people bought them. They bought them so much, in fact, that soon we were also getting in Peeps, Reese’s Eggs and so on and we built an entire endcap of Easter candy–in DECEMBER.

The worst part is, that by the time Easter finally rolls around, the Cadbury Eggs are usually sold out and there will be people asking “How can you be out of Cadbury Eggs? It’s not even Easter yet!”  So attention customers–if you want to make sure you get some, buy them now and stash them away.  They aren’t going to be any fresher if you wait to buy them in March.  They were all made at the same time.  Honest.