1954-ish magazine ad for United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Brands International) that I found in a box of scraps.

It starts off innocently enough. Vague, nice-sounding, feel-good advice on how to live better and longer. And then… BANANAS! EAT BANANAS! DID WE MENTION BANANAS?

It’s a double-truck ad from United Fruit Company, one of the companies quite literally responsible for bringing the term “Banana Republic” from fiction to the real world.

(Her yellow gloves were a very nice touch.)

So eat lots of bananas, kiddos, or Miss Chiquita will cut ya.

Banana Fun Facts: There is no such thing as a banana tree. Bananas come from a herbaceous flowering plant with a pseudostem often mistaken for a tree trunk.

The tiers of a banana cluster are called hands, and each banana is also known as a finger.

If you hate those gross stringy things you find on a banana after peeling it, then you hate phloem bundles.

Lastly, bananas are naturally radioactive. Yay! Continue reading →