Why are clementines sold in crates?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.)