Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Niche market, all right.
From Huffington Post (more pix):
Watermelon, or giant green dice?
From The Associated Press: ANTON, Panama (AP) — A company in Panama is hoping to join in a small niche market of the fruit export business: square watermelons. The Panama Fruit Producer company has started “rounding up” the square fruit, sending its first shipment of 120 boxy melons to New York.
The company expects to produce about 3,000 of the molded melons this year, and will send them to the Netherlands and Germany as well.
Operations manager Gerardo Diaz said Wednesday that people are surprised at first because “it is not what they were expecting.” “Later they ask if it is a genetic experiment,” he said.
Diaz said the watermelons are natural. They are made to grow inside cube-shaped glass boxes and conform to the mold as they get bigger. The first melons cost about $75 apiece, but producers hope to bring the price down.
It’s all a plot to replace grocers with minimum wage slaves. If oranges and apples were shaped like that, anyone could stack the damned things.
Either that, or it’s a devious plan to convince us we need to spend $75 for fruit. Hey, they’ve convinced we need to buy water from bottles, right?
D.
well, in the boston area right now, you DO have to buy water in bottles, or else boil it for a minute every time you want some tap…lol. there was a water main break. boil-water order in 38 communities. crazy people deprived of their coffee roaming the streets…
anyways. $75 for ONE watermelon is absurd. ABSURD. why should it cost more to buy something just because it grew differently? it’s still the same product, and just about anyone could do this, right? grow a watermelon in your backyard, and put a cardboard box around it before it gets too big?
crazy.
If I remember that article, aren’t they sending these to Japan? And the Japanese are notorious for their extreme fads. I suspect that’s what’s fueling watermelon-in-a-bottle.