Pressing the Prime Surprise Sweets Dash button will automatically deduct $18 from your account, and in exchange, Amazon will send a surprise box of confectionaries, chocolates, or something else sweet within 48 hours (you have to be a Prime member to receive the free two-day shipping option, though). To promote the button, the company is employing enough sexy food marketing terms—”handcrafted,” “artisan,” “small-batch”—to make you want to legally wed a cupcake shop in Park Slope.
The surprise of receiving something unknown is the novelty here, if you’ve got enough expendable income to wager $18 on a mystery candy roulette. But what should ideally be satisfying about this concept is that with a press of a button, chocolate would appear on your front steps within minutes. Or how about this: Amazon engineers develop a button with a picture of a bong on it that promises to deliver sausage pizza, a six-pack of Michelob, and a Spongebob Squarepants DVD within 60 minutes. Amazon just might achieve their global domination strategy even quicker that way.