Is it a turd? is it a brain? no it’s Waitrose’s new mutant fruit

Christmas has come early!

Today on my desk, I received a delightful surprise. The offering (see picture), from Waitrose, resembles a mouldy turd, but is in fact  a delicious fruit; a kiwi fruit. Or, more precisely, several conjoined kiwi fruit, locked together in an eternal symbiotic embrace. It is, presumably, for when one kiwi fruit is just not enough to sate your hunger and only a giant mutated kiwi fruit will do.

A press release from Waitrose says the odd appearance of the ineptly-named “butterfly kiwi” is not due to Frankenstein-like experimentation, but they are in fact  ”grown naturally on sun-kissed vines in Southern Italy and their remarkable shape is created by a disruption during pollination.”

Possibly the most disturbing element of the fruit, is the nobbly spine that runs across its curved length, with the texture of gravel, and resembling a badly-stitched wound. yummy. Butterfly Kiwi will be available in selected Waitrose branches from 5 December, priced at 90p each. Thank you Waitrose, I hope Santa puts some in my stocking.

But it doesn’t stop there, Father Christmas’ sack excreted several other treasures this morning, including this delightful Christmas card / advent calendar (see below). Infinitely more preferable to the Kiwi of Doom, it features a Christmas tree and a jolly Mario with Santa hat to promote the new Paper Mario game (which I played very briefly last week and it’s quite retro and fun). There’s nothing that says Seasonal Greetings quite like a mid-Eighties cult platform game character.

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• roger_darce

  Looks like a mouldy human embryo at 3 weeks.

• SchnitzelSnatcher

  Kiwifruit is one word, not two; like grapefruit. It’s something simple that the UK never seems to grasp, much like the fact that a kiwi is a bird and a kiwifruit is a fruit, never shortened to kiwi unless you’re stupid.

  Italian kiwifruit are rubbish BTW. They grow the NZ cultivated Hayward and they taste nothing like a true NZ kiwifruit.

• Wendy

  Is that what they are called? I had one the other day, I thought they were like conjoined twin fruits.

• http://www.facebook.com/brian.vickers.750 Brian Vickers

  And, of course Kiwifruit is just an invented marketing word for Chinese Gooseberry

• yellowbenzene

  nice byline. enjoyed that.

• trottitout

  My, my aren’t you just the knowledgeable one (not)? There is nothing stupid about referring to a kiwifruit as a kiwi- this is done in many parts of the world and you don’t get to arbitrate on this because no one is listening, and it’s not for you to do so.

  You think Italian kiwifruit are rubbish- I do not. Again, you only get your own opinion and not to construct your own ” facts”. Who cares about a ” true NZ kiwifruit”? You couldn’t pay me to waste even a small part of my life visiting that boring part of the world, and care less about its kiwi fruit. My opinion.

  And, as for the spelling of ” kiwifruit”? Well, that will be according to our choice and not your diktat. You are privileged to comment on our newspaper threads and should stop behaving like a Little Whatever.

• SchnitzelSnatcher

  Brilliant diatribe clearly lacking intelligence and a fine example of why some people should be cut off the Internet at the elbows. Go easy on the meth.

• SchnitzelSnatcher

  Indeed. Call it hairy bush fruit or Macaque peach if you like but spell it correctly.