Sweden’s minister for gender equality and work life allegedly suffers from an irrational fear of bananas that prevents her from coming anywhere near the popular fruit.

Paulina Brandberg first mentioned her banana phobia in a since-deleted 2020 tweet, describing it as “the world’s weirdest phobia,” but the issue recently resurfaced and made national news in Sweden after The Expressed newspaper published a series of leaked emails that revealed the strength of her aversion to the yellow fruit. Brandberg’s staff have been going to great measures to ensure that the 41-year-old politician does not come into contact with the fruit, messaging people and venues she was scheduled beforehand to inform them about her phobia, and making sure no rogue bananas make an appearance.

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Remember those funny banana hammers we featured a few days ago? Well, they recently went viral in Taiwan and the Japanese manufacturer is struggling to keep up with demand.

Iron Factory Ikeda, a typical precision metal manufacturing plant in Hiroshima, Japan, started making banana-shaped mallets in 2019 and followed it up with steel banana hammers a year later. Over the years, the company developed different variations of the wacky product, including smaller versions modeled after baby bananas. They were popular enough to remain in production, but last month, banana hammers went viral online and sparked newfound interest among consumers not only in Japan but around the world. For example, people in Taiwan are apparently ordering them like crazy…

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A Japanese precision part manufacturing factory recently went viral for its bizarre new product – a line of hammers shaped like realistic bananas.

Hiroshima-based Iron Factory Ikeda is not your typical precision metal manufacturing plant. They specialize in precision metal processing for creating original products with the potential to go viral online. Over the years, they created all sorts of geeky products, from anime-inspired robot masks, figurines, and realistic metallic replicas of various fruits and vegetables, from pineapple to broccoli, but their most popular product so far has to be the banana hammer. It has been around for a while but the company recently launched a new variant and it went viral on social media again.

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A Japanese man planted three banana trees in the median strip of a major road in Kurume City and watered them daily for two years before anyone noticed their existence.

A 50-something man from Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, was recently ordered to remove three banana trees he had illegally planted and cared for in the median strip of a busy city road for a couple of years. It’s unclear why the man chose to plant the trees on public property, and in a median strip of all places, but they eventually got so big that they began affecting motorists’ field of view. It wasn’t difficult for authorities to identify the man responsible for the trees, as he had been watering the tropical plants at least twice a day for the last two years. He was ordered to remove the trees, or risk spending up to a year in jail or pay a fine of 500,000 yen ($3,350).

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An international team of scientists has reportedly created a genetically-modified ‘superbanana’ that contains significantly more nutrients, especially vitamin A.

Vitamin A deficiency has been plaguing poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia for hundreds of years, inhibiting children’s growth, causing blindness and significantly weakening their resistance to deadly treatable diseases such as diarrhea and measles. The World Health Organization estimates that 190 million preschool-aged children worldwide are deficient in vitamin A and that malnutrition accounts for 6% of early childhood deaths in Africa alone. Luckily, a cheap and viable solution to malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency, in particular, may be available in the very near future…

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The Covid-19 lockdowns have had a very different effect on people. While the boredom made some depressed, it actually helped others discover hidden talents. Take Anna Chojnicka, who started creating adorable banana peel artworks.

To pass the time and keep her creative juices flowing, social entrepreneur Anna Chojnicka started experimenting with banana peel oxidation as an art medium. Instead of doodling on canvas or paper, she decided to simply bruise bananas with thin, blunt objects and let oxidation do the rest. The bruised peel becomes darker as the hours go by, revealing the design etched into it.

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We think ‘Bananas Gone Wild’ beats Potato Parcel hands down in terms of most ridiculous business idea ever. But hey, what do we know – both services, started by Texas entrepreneurs, have proven to be insanely successful. While the latter involved sending people messages inscribed on raw potatoes, this newer venture is all about decorating bananas and selling them for $10 apiece.

Davonte Wilson, the brains behind Bananas Gone Wild, first came up with the idea during his stint as an electrocardiogram technician at a hospital. He became popular at the workplace as ‘that guy who draws funny faces on bananas’, with some co-workers going as far as to making fun of his bizarre hobby. But it’s Wilson who is laughing all the way to the bank now, as his business is apparently projected to earn him a whopping $100,000.

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Dutch artist Stephan Brusche is an expert when it comes to transforming humble bananas into stunning artworks. The 37-year-old graphic designer carves the skin and flesh of the fruit to transform it into a variety of characters and animals – right from Marilyn Monroe and Homer Simpson to cute animals like giraffes, elephants or fish, and even biblical scenes.

Stephan says he began working with bananas on a whim. “It all started a few years back when I just started using Instagram. I was at work and I just wanted to post something,” he told the guys at Bored Panda. “I then noticed my banana and I figured it would make a nice post if I just drew a little happy face on it. I took a ballpoint pen and just started drawing. I was pretty amazed how pleasant a banana peel is to draw on. So the next day I did it again, now a pissed-off face.”

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I don’t know what the real challenge is – people eating bananas through pantyhose, or having to watch them do it. The disgusting trend is back and the internet is flooded with videos of men and women shoving bananas into their pantyhose covered mouths.

‘The banana challenge’, according to BuzzFeed, has been around for about five years. Videos of people taking part in the challenge have always been there to watch, but nobody really paid them much attention before. We’re not sure why, but these old videos are going viral now.

I tried watching a few and honestly, it gives me a sinking feeling that there is no hope for humanity. There’s more banana going out than in, thanks to the pantyhose barrier. I suppose the fabric acts as some kind of mesh to strain the fruit through. But it obviously doesn’t do a very good job of letting the bananas in, which is the whole point, I suppose.

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Up until a few years ago, people rarely looked at bananas as anything more than delicious fruits, let alone as an art medium. But that was before artists started taking advantage of the banana peel’s oxidation process to create amazing artworks. Today, more and more artists are becoming specialized in banana oxidation art, also known as banana tattooing.

Banana peel may seem like a strange canvas too some, but it’s also one that can yield some pretty impressive results. Case in point, the amazing artworks of End Cape, a young Japanese artist who specializes in bruising bananas. Using a sharp tool like a simple needle or a thumbtack, he spends up to five hours puncturing the peel of the tropical fruit and creating breathtaking masterpieces inspired by popular anime, traditional Japanese art and famous landmarks. The process is very similar to that used by regular tattoo artists, only without the paint. In contact with air, the bruised sections of the banana turn brown, revealing artist’s designs. Apparently, the colder the fruit is, the faster it oxidizes. By controlling the density of needle holes, End Cape is able to create different textures and shades of brown.

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Keisuke Yamada is a self-taught Japanese artist who takes plain bananas and turns them into edible masterpieces. Using only a spoon and toothpicks the talented food artist works against the clock, trying to finish his pieces before the fruit begins to oxidize.

Sculpting bananas is not easy. The fragile texture of the fruit and the fact that you can’t add more material to cover up a mistake like you would with clay makes it a very difficult material to work with. And that’s exactly what makes 26-year-old Keisuke Yamada’s art so special. It all began little over two ears ago when he peeled a banana and thought it would be interesting to carve something into it. His first creation was a simple smiling face, but he received such a positive reaction from art fans that he felt inspired to pursue the idea further. Using only a spoon to prime the banana by smoothing its surface and toothpicks for carving its flesh, Keisuke created an entire series of banana sculptures that won him international acclaim after the photos he uploaded to Japanese art site, Pixiv, went viral. In his interviews with some of the largest sites in the world, Yamada revealed he works as an electrician by day, and becomes an expert banana carver during the night. He described the artistic process as a race against time, trying to finish his creations in less than 30 minutes after the peeled banana has been exposed to air. Taking too long causes the fruit to turn brown ruining the whole piece. Once he’s finished, he quickly takes a photo after which he eats the banana.

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Honey is a talented graphic artist and designer from the Philippines, who occupies her free time by turning bananas into organic works of art. Her only tool – a common safety pin.

Even when she’s not working with big names like Mercedes Benz, Seiko, Yamaha, Takamine, Carrows, or Volvo, Honey likes to be creative. Constantly trying to expand her range of abilities, she came up with a way of making art from household fruit. “When I’m not sitting in front of a computer, I’m always looking for something creative to do,” she says on her blog. “We always have bananas in the house so then, I thought maybe I could draw on them but it wasn’t easy as I thought it would be. I kept puncturing the skin with my pen.” After noticing that the  peel turned brown after being exposed to air, she decided to use this oxidation process to her advantage, and replaced the pen with a the first sharp and pointy thing she could get her hands on – a safety pin. Using the same technique as tattoo artists, Honey pierces the skin of the banana peel hundreds of times, in specific patterns, creating beautiful ephemeral portraits of celebrities.

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Multimedia artist Phil Hansen uses a technique similar to pointillism to turn ripe bananas into organic canvases, recreating some of history’s most famous artworks.

If this offbeat art doesn’t make you go bananas, I don’t know what will. Hansen’s works are just so detailed it’s hard to believe all he uses to create them is a common pushpin and the banana’s natural oxidation process. The talented artist just punctures the peel repeatedly with the pushpin and the banana, and as the the banana browns, his intricate designs are revealed. Phil Hansen is currently promoting his book, Tattoo a Banana: And Other Ways to Turn Anything and Everything into Art, due next month. In it, he explains how to create art from anything at hand – – like a piece of toast, your own fingerprints, or a stack of marshmallows – using offbeat techniques.

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Australian artist Jun Gil Park has found a way of turning regular bananas into awe-inspiring works of art by drawing on them with a toothpick.

I’ve seen some pretty amazing banana artworks since I started Oddity Central, like the banana wall, or Jacob Dahlstrub’s banana boats, but Jun Gil Park’s oxidation art just makes me go bananas. Using a simple toothpick he scratches the designs into the banana, and the harder he presses/scratches, the darker the bruised part gets. It usually takes about five minutes for the oxidation to start showing, and after a day or two it gets really dark.

You’re probably wondering how Jun Gil Park came up with this simple-yet-impressive technique of turning bananas into organic works of art. It was pretty simple actually- he was just sitting at the table one day, talking to his family, holding a toothpick in his mouth, when he noticed a banana in front of him. He began scribbling on it as they talked and noticed what was happening to the banana. That’s when he decided he should try something more detailed next time.

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Danish artist Jacob Dahlstrup loves to build miniature boats, but instead of using wood, he builds their hulls out of ripe bananas. His works were recently on display at the Shoreditch Town Hall, in London, and you can see his entire portfolio on his official site. While I’m pretty sure they don’t float (not the way a boat is supposed to, anyway), Jacob Dahlstrup’s banana boats make great, nutritious snacks.

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