Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (26 page)

• Bananas are believed to have originated in the rainforests of Southeast Asia, where a wide variety of species still grow.

• Arab traders brought the banana to the Middle East and Africa in the seventh century. But these weren't the large fruit we know today—they were just a few inches in length. In fact, some historians believe “banana” comes from
banan,
the Arabic word meaning “finger.”

• By the late 1400s, bananas were a staple food along the western coast of Africa where Portuguese sailors collected plants and brought them to the Canary Islands, between Africa and Spain.

• In 1516 Tomás de Berlanga, a Spanish priest, brought banana stalks to the New World, to the island of Hispañiola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic). And he took plants with him to the mainland when he was made bishop of Panama in 1534.

• Another priest, Vasco de Quiroga, brought banana plants from Hispañiola to Mexico in the mid-16th century. From there, bananas spread and flourished throughout the Caribbean basin, leading many to believe—erroneously—that they were native to the region.

Despite the banana's popularity in the tropics, it remained virtually unknown in the United States until the late 1800s. It was formally introduced to the American public at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which included a 40-acre display of tropical plants. A local grocer sold individual bananas, wrapped neatly in tinfoil, for 10¢—an hour's wage at the time. The fruit would remain an expensive luxury for years.

But bananas never would have become a popular snack food if
it hadn't been for a few enterprising entrepreneurs. Cape Cod sea captain Lorenzo Baker was the first merchant to successfully capitalize on the banana when he discovered the curious fruit in Jamaica and brought a load of them to New Jersey in 1870. He sold 160 bunches for a substantial profit and soon began shipping them back to the East Coast on a regular basis. In 1885 he and Boston businessman Andrew Preston formed the Boston Fruit Company.

At about the same time, an ambitious 19-year-old from Brooklyn discovered bananas too. In 1871 Minor Keith and two of his brothers went to Costa Rica to work for their uncle, who had won a government contract to build a railroad line from the capital, San José, to the port city of Limón. It was a treacherous project over miles of dense mountainous jungle and ultimately claimed the lives of some 5,000 workers, including Keith's brothers and uncle.

In spite of the hardship, however, Keith persisted. And as the railroad construction proceeded, he planted banana plants on any and all nearby land. Why? The quick-growing fruit was a cheap way to feed the workers.

The railroad was completed in 1890, but Keith was in financial trouble. The Costa Rican government refused to pay him, and there weren't enough passengers to support the line. What could he do? Forced to find another source of revenue, Keith decided to experiment with the bananas he'd planted: his railroad could cheaply transport them to Limón, where they could be shipped to markets in the United States. The experiment was so successful that the banana business quickly overshadowed his meager passenger service.

Despite a decade of success, in 1899 Keith once again found himself in trouble. His financial partner went bankrupt, leaving him without enough money to run the railroad. So, as a way to preserve his business, he went to Boston and arranged with Lorenzo Baker and Andrew Preston to merge their two companies. (The company they formed, the United Fruit Company, still exists as part of United Brands.)

By the end of the century, advances in refrigerated steamship
and rail transportation made it possible to ship bananas to all parts of North America. As improved production led to lower prices, the United Fruit Company was poised for a banana boom. Now affordable, the banana quickly became a popular snack, and production shifted into high gear. But there was a dark side to the business that the American public knew little about.

Behind the scenes, the banana business played a huge part in the economy and politics of Central America. The United Fruit Company, as well as other banana companies such as Standard Fruit (today part of Dole), made sweetheart deals with Central American dictators, buying or leasing vast tracts of land at bargain prices and paying little, if any, taxes.

While bananas created wealth in Central America, it mostly enriched government officials—without benefitting the common people. In 1910 American author O. Henry coined the term
banana republic
, and by the 1930s, it was commonly used to describe the corrupt Central American countries controlled largely by banana companies.

U.S. foreign policy stood firmly behind the banana companies too. Under President William Howard Taft (1909–1913), the goal of diplomacy was to support (or create) stable governments favorable to U.S. interests. And later, when “dollar diplomacy” failed, the U.S. government resorted to “gunboat diplomacy.” American troops were sent in to ensure the pro-U.S. outcome of elections in Honduras, Nicaragua, and other Latin American countries.

In the 1950s, for example, Jacobo Arbenz, a progressive Guatemalan president, proposed reclaiming lands owned by the United Fruit Company and other large landowners and distributing them to landless peasants. It never happened—in 1954, citing the threat of communism, the United States backed a military coup that ousted Arbenz and ended the immediate threat of land reform.

But times were changing for the banana companies. Worker strikes led to labor reforms. The monopoly of United Fruit Company was broken by an antitrust suit in 1958 that forced it to sell parts of the company to competitors and Guatemalan entrepreneurs.

Today, imperialist politics have taken a backseat to more modern business practices. But bananas are still big business, and remain America's most popular fruit.

• Americans eat an average of 75 bananas a year per person.

• The banana split was invented in 1904 by Dr. David Strickler, a drugstore pharmacist in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

• Technically the banana is a berry.

• Ever wonder why bananas have no seeds? Because of natural mutations, the kind we eat don't have any. The dark dots in the center are all that's left. (They reproduce by underground stems, or rhizomes.)

• There are several hundred varieties of bananas worldwide, but the one that most of us slice on our cereal is the Cavendish. The Cavendish is favored by commercial producers for its size, flavor, and, most importantly, resistance to diseases.

• A banana has about 110 calories and is high in fiber, potassium, and vitamin C.

• The banana has never been a Fruit-of-the-Month selection.

• The song “Yes, We Have No Bananas” was an enormous hit in 1923—selling at the rate of 25,000 copies of sheet music per day. The popularity of the song spurred a new craze: dancing the Charleston on banana peel–covered floors.

• A few forgotten banana products: banana wine, banana flour (cheaper than wheat flour), banana ketchup, banana pickles, banana vinegar, and Melzo, a powdered-banana drink mix.

• To let the public know that bananas should be allowed to ripen at room temperature, not in the refrigerator, in 1944 United Fruit commissioned a song and a character: Chiquita Banana. The song was so popular it was once played on the radio 376 times in one day. And Chiquita herself was named “the girl we'd most like to share our foxhole with” by American servicemen.

“Great men never feel great. Small men never feel small.”

—Chinese proverb

Lots of companies have ad campaigns that flop, but Pepsi seems to have more than its share. Here are a few classic bombs.

For its “Pepsi 400” contest in the summer of 2001, Pepsi offered to send the holders of five winning tickets on an all-expenses-paid trip to Florida's Daytona 400 auto race. One of the five would get to drive home in the grand prize, a brand-new Dodge truck; the other four would each get $375 worth of free gas. There was just one problem: contest organizers accidentally printed 55 winning tickets instead of five. Rather than risk alienating the winners—not to mention millions of Pepsi drinkers—Pepsi sent all 55 winners to Daytona, gave away five trucks instead of one, and spent $20,625 on free gas instead of $1,825. Estimated cost of the error: about $400,000.

In April 1996, Pepsi canceled its “Pepsi Stuff” merchandise giveaway campaign months ahead of schedule. Reason: Too many winners. The company underestimated how many people would redeem the points by 50%, forcing it to spend $60 million more than expected on free merchandise. “We're outpacing our goals on awareness,” a company spokesperson explained.

Another disaster from the “Pepsi Stuff” campaign: 21-year-old John Leonard tried to redeem seven million award points for the Harrier fighter jet he saw offered in a Pepsi Stuff TV ad. The rules stipulated that contestants could buy points for 10¢ apiece, so that's what he did. Leonard (who studied flawed promotions in business school) raised $700,000 to buy the required points and then sent the money to Pepsi, along with a letter demanding they hand over the $50 million jet. When Pepsi refused, claiming the offer was made “in jest,” Leonard filed suit in federal court. Three years later, a judge ruled that “no objective person could reasonably
have concluded that the commercial actually offered consumers a Harrier jet.” Pepsi lucked out…case dismissed.

Even Pepsi's biggest successes can become colossal flops. In 1983 they signed the largest individual sponsorship deal in history with pop singer Michael Jackson. It was a multi-year deal and Pepsi made millions from it…only to find itself linked to one of the most lurid scandals of the 1990s when Jackson abruptly cancelled his Pepsi-sponsored “Dangerous” tour in 1993. Jackson's reasons for quitting: (1) stress generated by allegations that he had sexually molested a young boy, and (2) addiction to painkillers he took “to control pain from burns suffered while filming a Pepsi ad.”

In 1983 another Pepsi contest ran into budget trouble when the company offered $5 per letter to any customer who could spell their own last name using letters printed on Pepsi bottle caps and flip tops. Pepsi hoped to control the number of cash prizes by releasing only a limited number of vowels…but it failed to take into account people like Richard “no vowels” Vlk, who turned in 1,393 three-letter sets and pocketed $20,985 for his efforts. Vlk, a diabetic who does not drink Pepsi, collected the letters by taking out classified ads offering to split the winnings with anyone who sent him a matching set. “I don't even remember making one whole set myself,” he says. “I didn't buy any Pepsi.” (The company got even by mailing him his winnings in $15 increments, one check for each winning set.)

In 1992 Pepsi introduced Crystal Pepsi, an attempt to cash in on the booming popularity of see-through soft drinks like Clearly Canadian. Sales were less than half of what Pepsi projected, even after the company reformulated the product. Marketing experts point to two critical flaws that they say doomed Crystal Pepsi from the start: (1) customers balked at paying extra for a product that, because it was clear, was perceived to have fewer ingredients than regular Pepsi, and (2) after more than a century of conditioning, consumers
want
colas to be dark brown in color. “Clear colas are about as appetizing as brown water,” an industry analyst explains.