Dole Printed Some Very Special Bananas for 200 Runners of the Tokyo Marathon

Kudos to Dole and Denstu Y&R for making what might be the coolest bananas in the world.

At this year's Tokyo Marathon, 200 runners received personalized Dole bananas with information like finish times and praise from Facebook friends all printed in edible ink (though hopefully nobody tried to eat the peels).

The idea manages to be pretty sweet, even if it is a little silly … not altogether unlike a banana. It aimed to amplify Dole's broader role of handing out some 91,000 bananas to participants in the race, and by the agency's measures, it was a roaring success, earning some $1.1 million in media coverage.

Dole determined the winners of special trophy bananas by lottery, but even the boring, textless bananas available to all the runners were still "Gokusen," or the high-end kind that can cost $12 a bunch—or as much as $6 per banana with special gift packaging.

Then again, in a culture where gift giving is prevalent, and where supermarkets therefore tend to carry $300 cantaloupes—and where even more special melons have sold for  $16,000—a pricey banana starts to sound like a total steal.

Via Design Taxi.