Rubber trees laid bare as Closer flashes the plastic

The Diary is aware that many readers are harassed parents, most of whom are no doubt scouring the toyshops for this year’s must-have item. But they’re hard to come by, aren’t they, dear reader/breeder? It seems that whatever store you fight your way into, whichever online shop you spend hours trying to load, you’re met with the same, heart-sinking message: “Yes, we have no plastic bananas.”

But far from being one of those cynical restriction-of-supply-to-drum-up-media-interest ploys so beloved of consumer electronics companies – this is a genuine shortage of polymer-built fruit, and the Diary knows precisely who is to blame.

Experiential agency Closer has been running sampling campaigns for fruit-and-veg drink Vie Shot, using an enormous display unit filled with plastic fruit. Unfortunately, the thing is so big that the agency exhausted the UK’s stocks of plastic fruit (many plastic-fruit orchards having been grubbed up in recent years for housing development).

So, on Christmas morning, when your child is screaming for its polypropylene pomegranate, bakelite blackberries, perspex peas, celluloid celery or golden delicious, you know who to thank. It’s Knorr that pipped you to the acetate apples.