Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Bananas!

Earlier this week, I walked by a bank of vending machines in Tameike-sanno station and stopped dead in my tracks when I realized one of the machines was full of fresh bananas (and packages of dried mangos).


Dole, I have so many questions.  Is the machine refrigerated?  How do you keep the bananas from bruising terribly during the vending process?  How often does an attendant need to visit the machine to make sure none of the bananas are too brown?  How does the convenience store that sells bananas just steps from this machine feel about this?  You realize Japanese people don't snack as they walk around the subway station, right?  Who buys an entire bunch of bananas from a vending machine?

Then I got to thinking about whether I've seen Dole bananas in my local grocery store.  I have not.  Thankfully, I had not seen this commercial either:


Take a moment to soak that in.

But, seriously, while I thought it was strange to run into a banana machine in a subway station, I think this could be genius in schools and workplaces in the US.  Having a fresh fruit machine (maybe add in some whole apples?) option would be a step in the right direction.  I love junk food as much as the next American, but, given equal access, I would pick fresh fruit for a snack at least half the time.

The following video isn't mine and, sadly, the videographer doesn't buy a banana so we don't see the machine in action.  Still, it's interesting to hear his reactions.

3 comments:

CP said...

I remember being surprised to find beer vending machines in Japan. This is just as funny/odd!

Paragon2Pieces said...

Yup, reminds me of the first time I saw a Sephora vending machine in DFW.

E. McPan said...

Omg, this is like all my worst nightmares (I really hate bananas) come true and about 10 nightmares I had never thought of.

Here's a YouTube of someone actually buying a banana out of the machine.

http://youtu.be/bVfc3fK1B28