Bunker mentality
A fresh (and welcome) idea: the banana protector
Riding the Red Line home from the airport recently, I was tapped on the arm by a woman who turned out to be the bearer of very bad news.
``Excuse me," she said, with a pitying look, ``but I think you've put your bag on some food."
A downward glance confirmed it: my backpack was smeared with a gooey, chunky, yellowish substance that, to my mortification, also coated my pants, my shoes, the floor of the train, and the seat next to mine. The muck, I realized, was the remnants of a banana I had tucked into the side pocket of my backpack earlier that day. It had slipped through a tear in the mesh and -- during two flights, one layover, a shuttle bus ride, and a subway trip -- been smashed to oblivion.
Which leads to a question: Where was Paul Stremple when I needed him?
Stremple is the creator of the ``BananaBunker," a lightweight, cylindrical plastic container that transports individual bananas while protecting them from bruising. It also guards the contents of knapsacks, purses, and briefcases from the sticky ooze of a damaged banana, preventing misfortunes like mine. Because despite its thick peel, the banana is surprisingly delicate; in a brief trip from home to work, it can go from perfectly ripe to pocked with black, leaky soft spots.
The BananaBunker is made of two pieces that snap together easily, and it has holes at each end that let stem and base poke through. An accordion-like center contracts and expands, allowing the container to fit bananas of various sizes. The maximum-length banana it holds is about 8 inches, since Stremple's research (which involves hanging around grocery stores to watch shoppers select bananas) shows that people consistently select the smaller-sized fruit.
``Nearly every single person leaves the larger bananas on the table," said Stremple, 44, an artist and inventor who also works as an architect with Breuker Design in Manchester by the Sea. ``They don't buy the 9- or 10-inch ones because it's simply too much food at once."
Now, through a company he founded called Cultured Containers, Stremple has several similar products in the works, including the AppleAttache, PeachPurse, PearPouch, and GrapeShape, each of which, like the BananaBunker, will hold individual pieces of fruit. He estimates it will be at least 18 months before they hit the market .
Much of the containers' appeal, Stremple believes, is that they're ideally suited to on-the-go, health-conscious professionals, who want to eat well but have little time to prepare healthful foods. ``In today's culture, with people eating organically and going so fast, it's the right product at the right time."
Stremple created the BananaBunker five years ago after his exasperated sister told him she had again obliterated a banana in her briefcase. ``She said, `There's got to be a container out there so we don't get our food crushed all the time,' " recounted Stremple, who lives in an artist's studio at Fort Point Channel, ``and I said, `You know, I don't think there is.' "
With that, the BananaBunker was born. Available in four tints (blue, green, orange, and yellow) and a clear version, it's sold online (www.bananabunker.com ) for $5 apiece, or five for $20, and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which featured the BananaBunker in an exhibit of product designs that guard against danger. Stremple is in talks with distributors in Europe and Japan, too.
The BananaBunker's biggest consumer hurdle may be that it's comically phallic-looking. When I use it to carry bananas to work, I hide it from my colleagues lest they think I've brought a sex toy to the office. Indeed, at a trade show Stremple attended to market his invention, ``one woman looked at it and said, `That's obscene,' " he recalled. ``So obviously there are some individuals who might not want to buy it for that particular reason. But, you know, that's their problem." 