Why are clementines sold in crates?

[Rhythmdvl]

Tradition? How'd it start? Vast conspiracy? Who's behind it? Alien invasion plot? How does that make sense?

Why are they in crates?

[kayaker]

Situations like this almost always are marketing ploys that worked (per my gf, who is in advertising). I'll ask my local grocery store produce dude when I stop later. You'll likely have an answer by then, though.

[LurkerInNJ]

I always thought it was so they don't roll around.

[Machine Elf]

Originally Posted by LurkerInNJ

I always thought it was so they don't roll around.

When we buy them, they're in a mesh-plastic bag, inside the aforementioned crate. You could eleminate the crate, and the bag of oranges still wouldn't roll around.

When we go through checkout the cashier always asks us if we want to keep the box or not; we always say no.

[Swallowed My Cellphone]

Originally Posted by Joe Frickin Friday

When we buy them, they're in a mesh-plastic bag, inside the aforementioned crate. You could eleminate the crate, and the bag of oranges still wouldn't roll around.

Here we have some plastic mesh just stapled over the top of the crate so the Clementines don't fall out. They do anyway. There's no mesh bag.

Come to think of it... I suspect the mesh is to prevent people from adding more and more clementines into a heap in the crate more than to keep the roundlings from escaping.

ETA: Pic of box with mesh just overtop.

[Rhythmdvl]

My apparently dangerous kitchen is full of round fruit: apples, oranges, grapefruit (go banana!). What makes clementines so special? Peaches are subject to rolling too and suffer worse in a fall, but you don't see them boxed up.

[gotpasswords]

I've always assumed it's because they're a bit fragile. They peel very easily, and the weight of a standard case or sack of fruit is probably more than enough to start splitting them open.

Putting them in those mini crates provides some stacking framework so they're not crushed.

Digging in Google finds the real reason for the crates - it's clever marketing.

Originally, clementines were sold loose. People would buy them onesey-twosey and stores were left with piles of oranges not selling. Back in 1990, the marketing director for a growers' co-op tried packing them in 5-pound boxes with gift bows. They started flying off the shelves, and the rest is produce marketing history.

[Kyrie Eleison]

Isn't it obvious that they're sold in crates to appeal to people like me who use the crates as kindling? No? Really?

[Rhythmdvl]

Originally Posted by gotpasswords

Originally, clementines were sold loose. People would buy them onesey-twosey and stores were left with piles of oranges not selling. Back in 1990, the marketing director for a growers' co-op tried packing them in 5-pound boxes with gift bows. They started flying off the shelves, and the rest is produce marketing history.

Genius.

[Polycarp]

Obviously, Clementines are sold in crates because only their feet will fit in #9 shoe boxes.

[Huerta88]

Originally Posted by Rhythmdvl

Genius.

The guys at my work developed quite a craving for the clementines a few years ago. They do make a handy snack and you can go through the small crate in not too much time. I still spot a crate or two in various offices.

[maladroit]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

Obviously, Clementines are sold in crates because only their feet will fit in #9 shoe boxes.

You almost made me laugh out loud at work and my boss is sitting right behind me He's working while I'm reading SDMB .

[MikeS]

When I visit my parents in Western Canada for Christmas, they have proper Satsumas (usually just called "mandarins") around Christmas time rather than Clementines. The Satsumas are usually sold in one-kilo or two-kilo cardboard boxes, with each fruit individually wrapped in tissue paper. No bows, although the boxes are usually printed with colorful designs and/or pictures. Unless my later experiences are seeping into my earlier memories, such boxes predate 1990.

[Ann Hedonia]

Originally Posted by MikeS

When I visit my parents in Western Canada for Christmas, they have proper Satsumas (usually just called "mandarins") around Christmas time rather than Clementines. The Satsumas are usually sold in one-kilo or two-kilo cardboard boxes, with each fruit individually wrapped in tissue paper. No bows, although the boxes are usually printed with colorful designs and/or pictures. Unless my later experiences are seeping into my earlier memories, such boxes predate 1990.

Oh yeah

I can find the Satsumas for a few months each year and they kick the butts of the clementines.

And my take on the clementine crates is that there are always some crappy pieces in each crate and if people got to hand pick them the crappy ones would never sell...........actually sometimes my Whole Foods has loose clementines, the price per pound works out to more than the crate price though. I do that if I can't find Satsumas.

[Duckster]

Oh my darling, oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine!
Thou art lost and gone forever
Dreadful sorry, Clementine ...





whut?

[LurkerInNJ]

Originally Posted by Joe Frickin Friday

When we buy them, they're in a mesh-plastic bag, inside the aforementioned crate. You could eleminate the crate, and the bag of oranges still wouldn't roll around.

There is no mesh bag here. Just the crate.

[74westy]

Where I live, what we used to call "Christmas" oranges come in sturdy cardboard boxes that can be stacked high without damaging the contents as another poster described. It wasn't very long ago though that wood orange crates were standard (ok, 30-40 years ago). They didn't look much like the pictures that were linked but I wonder if there's any nostalgia marketing involved in using wood where cardboard will do.

[Malleus, Incus, Stapes!]

I thought it was so you could make a playground for your pet mice once you're done wiith the clementines.

No?

[salinqmind]

Well, I set aside my little wooden crates because a) they're "too good to throw away" and b) someday I'm going to make....something... rustic and crafty....with them.

[Rhythmdvl]

Originally Posted by salinqmind

Well, I set aside my little wooden crates because a) they're "too good to throw away" and b) someday I'm going to make....something... rustic and crafty....with them.

I tried finding the answer on Darling Clementine's (a distributor) site. Didn't find it, but did find this page of crate ideas.

[Smeghead]

What I want to know is why they're only available around Christmas time? They're damned tasty - why can't I have some clementines with my Fourth of July BBQ?

[Anachronism]

Originally Posted by gotpasswords

Digging in Google finds the real reason for the crates - it's clever marketing.

Originally, clementines were sold loose. People would buy them onesey-twosey and stores were left with piles of oranges not selling. Back in 1990, the marketing director for a growers' co-op tried packing them in 5-pound boxes with gift bows. They started flying off the shelves, and the rest is produce marketing history.

There have been plenty of times when I wanted to grab a couple of clementines but a crate was to much, so I didn't buy any. Apparently I am in the minority.

[UncleBill]

The vast majority of Clementines imported to the US are from Spain, and their harvest season begins in November, therefore that are tied by the calendar to Christmas time.

[glowacks]

Originally Posted by Smeghead

What I want to know is why they're only available around Christmas time? They're damned tasty - why can't I have some clementines with my Fourth of July BBQ?

There is a box sitting in my home right now that was purchased last weekend. It's not Christmas, it's winter.

Also, the ad from the store said that they had "California" clementines, when the packaging indicated they were from Spain like usual.

[Polycarp]

Originally Posted by glowacks

There is a box sitting in my home right now that was purchased last weekend. It's not Christmas, it's winter.

Also, the ad from the store said that they had "California" clementines, when the packaging indicated they were from Spain like usual.

Clearly they were exported from a cavern or canyon excavated for a mine, probably by one of those San Francisco football players.

[Aspidistra]

I'm not exactly sure of the relationship of various orangey citruses to each other (especially as nomenclature varies from region to region) but here we don't have Clementines, but do have mandarines which are probably similar.

They are about the only fruit we choose to buy in a box rather than individually, primarily because a) they slide down the throat very easily, so you can do half a dozen at a time without hardly noticing, b) they store best in a cool dark cupboard, which the box is ideal for c) they last up to a month so we don't have to worry about them going mouldy before they're consumed, and d) they're light enough you can actually carry a box around without doing your back.

I can think of no other fruit that applies to. Mind you, I'm talking 5-10 kilo boxes, not 1 or 2, so that's a slightly different marketing strategy again. But we're a big household

[Polycarp]

Clementine is one variety of mandarin orange, according to Wikipedia. See here.

[Tamex]

Originally Posted by 74westy

Where I live, what we used to call "Christmas" oranges come in sturdy cardboard boxes that can be stacked high without damaging the contents as another poster described. It wasn't very long ago though that wood orange crates were standard (ok, 30-40 years ago). They didn't look much like the pictures that were linked but I wonder if there's any nostalgia marketing involved in using wood where cardboard will do.

The "Cuties" they are selling around here this year are in cardboard boxes. I have also seen them in 3# mesh bags.

[stinky2]

i would say because of bruising. as a person who likes good clementines, i've noticed the ones at the bottom of the pile go bad faster (my store sells them in mesh bags only.)

always thought it had to do with the weight they were under. just my conjecture.

[friedo]

Originally Posted by Swallowed My Cellphone

Here we have some plastic mesh just stapled over the top of the crate so the Clementines don't fall out. They do anyway. There's no mesh bag.

Come to think of it... I suspect the mesh is to prevent people from adding more and more clementines into a heap in the crate more than to keep the roundlings from escaping.

ETA: Pic of box with mesh just overtop.

The real conspiracy is that the orange mesh makes the clementines look more orange than they actually are.

[Fried Dough Ho]

The real pisser is for us single people who like them but have a hard time eating FIVE POUNDS of them and thus never buy when forced into the bulk scenario.

[Lynn Bodoni]

My husband and I like them well enough, but we aren't about to buy five pounds at a time. We rarely buy more than a pound or so of any given fruit at one time. Even if we keep the clementines in the fridge, if we buy the five pound container about half of them will spoil before we eat them. I prefer not to feed my compost bin with pricy food.

This is also the reason why we buy a half or quarter of a watermelon at a time. We like fruit, but we like a variety, and there's just the two of us. So we don't buy clementines, even though I love them.

[psychonaut]

Originally Posted by Fried Dough Ho

The real pisser is for us single people who like them but have a hard time eating FIVE POUNDS of them and thus never buy when forced into the bulk scenario.

Move to Europe then. I've never seen crates of clementines or mandarins here; they always seem to be sold singly, like any other fruit. Bags, nets, and shrink-wrapped packs of some fruit and vegetables are available too, though that's always alongside rather than instead of singles.

[dzero]

Originally Posted by Aspidistra

They are about the only fruit we choose to buy in a box rather than individually, primarily because a) they slide down the throat very easily, so you can do half a dozen at a time without hardly noticing,

I know what you mean. I like to line the little sections up on a mirror and suck them up with a straw.

What? Am I doing it wrong?

Originally Posted by Fried Dough Ho

The real pisser is for us single people who like them but have a hard time eating FIVE POUNDS of them and thus never buy when forced into the bulk scenario.

Originally Posted by Lynn Bodoni

My husband and I like them well enough, but we aren't about to buy five pounds at a time. We rarely buy more than a pound or so of any given fruit at one time.

Y'all need to get a competitive eating coach on retainer stat! Training. That's what makes the difference. Eat, eat and eat some more. And when you're so stuffed you think you're going to pop, go for that last wafer-thin section . . . C'mon! You can do it!!!

[Savannah]

Mandarin oranges are "Christmas" oranges to me, and somehow seemed special. Always in a little box (cardboard, though, not wood), and usually individually wrapped in the tissue paper. (Western Canada born and raised.)

When the grocery stores started selling mandarin oranges in bulk, I was very pleased. Our two-adult household can't get through a whole box of mandarin oranges. (Especially by two, I mean "me", as the primary fruit-eater.)

I didn't notice "clemantines" being sold until the last few years. It was either ordinary oranges or special mandarin oranges that arrived in November. But I'm a fan, whether they be mandarins or clemantines. Fruit, tasty, easy to peel, and so easy to take in my lunch.

Off to check the Wikipedia links to sort out what's a mandarin and what's a clemantine and what's an orange...

[kaylasdad99]

Don't forget to ask it what's a tangerine...

[Savannah]

More:

When I was a wee lass, my mum always put a single, paper wrapped mandarin orange in the toe of my Christmas stocking. It was to be a special treat, because when she was a little girl in the 40s, a mandarin orange was a very special, expensive Christmas treat. (She grew up in very small-town BC.)

She always said that the Japanese mandarin oranges were the best, and looked down upon the inferior Chinese mandarins that we could get in the 80s and later.

Clover the dog also wanted to add that as a dog, she heartily approves of both mandarins and clemantines and finds them delicious.

[Savannah]

Originally Posted by kaylasdad99

Don't forget to ask it what's a tangerine...

Ack! All this citrus will confuse me forever.

Don't *get* me started on my beloved tangelos, which I hold to be a cross between a tangerine and pomelo and nothing else, but apparently are no longer those two citrus species exclusively...

[Rhythmdvl]

Originally Posted by Savannah

Ack! All this citrus will confuse me forever.

Don't *get* me started on my beloved tangelos, which I hold to be a cross between a tangerine and pomelo and nothing else, but apparently are no longer those two citrus species exclusively...

Here, have a delicious plout.


(No, really. They are delicious!)

[Ximenean]

Surely a better solution that forcing people to bulk buy (five pounds of clementines? It would take me weeks to get through them) is to make loose clementines a little more expensive? That's how they do it here-- you can buy mesh bags of them if you like, which are cheaper per unit weight, or you can buy them individually. I've never seen crates of them. Even the bags are less than a kilo (maybe 1.5 lb).

[gotpasswords]

Well, the gift crate idea came out of an era when fresh fruit that wasn't grown within about 100 miles of you was a special treat. That five pound box of fruit may be the only chance you had to taste them each year.

Today, people find the idea that things like apples and tomatoes are not grown year-round to be foreign. but, back when I was a kid, we didn't have oranges throughout the year - they made a brief appearance in the winter, then went away for another year. Unless you had a friend going to Hawaii for vacation, you could go for years without seeing a whole pineapple.

Cheap air freight has changed this forever. Now, it's commercially viable to fly produce all over the planet and either compete with locally-grown product, or be an affordable year-round staple. I just took roll call in my kitchen, and found bananas from Ecuador, apples from New Zealand, onions from Peru and lemons from Chile.

[SmackFu]

Originally Posted by Rhythmdvl

My apparently dangerous kitchen is full of round fruit: apples, oranges, grapefruit (go banana!). What makes clementines so special? Peaches are subject to rolling too and suffer worse in a fall, but you don't see them boxed up.

They are shipped boxed though. The boxes are pretty big; you wouldn't buy a whole box of peaches. It's probably got four or five layers of 20 pieces of fruit.

[kaylasdad99]

I suspect that some type of nostalgia for the old orange crates might be getting evoked by the marketing folks. The labels on those were beautiful.

[LouisB]

Originally Posted by Fried Dough Ho

The real pisser is for us single people who like them but have a hard time eating FIVE POUNDS of them and thus never buy when forced into the bulk scenario.

I love the things but couldn't eat five pounds in a month.

[Ludovic]

Originally Posted by Rhythmdvl

My apparently dangerous kitchen is full of round fruit: apples, oranges, grapefruit (go banana!). What makes clementines so special?

I take it you've never been set upon in a dark alley by a man intent on causing you harm with a clementine. Then you'll realize what the crate is for.

[Rhythmdvl]

Why, as a matter of fact, that did happen to me! Fortunately, I had trained for this. (I simply pulled the lever and the 16-ton weight fell on the assailant.)