Just look at this banana cream pie ad.

Just look at it.

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Paul Renault

“In Five Army Surveys”…

Yeah..and in fifty OTHER Army surveys, rhubard crisp rates as a Top G.I. Favorite.

/Mmm, rhubard crisp.
PhosPhorious

I have never been as happy about anything as that man is about banana cream pie.
- http://www.geekman.ca GeekMan
  
  “Hello, my name is David. While I am not capable of TRULY enjoying a banana-cream pie, but I CAN understand, and accurately replicate, the joy that humans receive from consuming such a pie.”
  - euansmith
    
    I believe you, because that’s what I choose to believe…
- EH
  
  How YOU doin’?
- Preston Sturges
  
  Coconut cream pie is pretty good
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW3WWCXDT_0
  
  http://youtu.be/TW3WWCXDT_0
  - http://twitter.com/wilmcdaniel wilmcdaniel
    
    Yes, but there is nothing like a pie with banana and cream in it.
- ocker3
  
  I have, and it was also while eating pie…
  
  I think it was Pecan!
Preston Sturges

In the American South, bananna pudding is also served topped with vanilla wafers. It’s pronounced “nannapuddin”
- joeposts
  
  And southern American rock bands dedicate songs to this delicacy.
- bcsizemo
  
  But this is banana cream pie..?
  
  But you are right…I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone make a banana cream pie over nannapuddin here in NC. Best if left to “meld” for a day or so.
Jay Converse

There’s something about that GI’s photo that says “don’t ask don’t tell”.
- Guest
  
  deleted
  - malindrome
    
    The international banana conspiracy has sapped all of our precious bodily fluids.
- Preston Sturges
  
  I love a man in a uniform with a banana.
- chaopoiesis
  
  You’re referring, presumably, to “man on pie”?
Sniffles

When was the Five Army surveyed? And which part of one’s man does one try it on?
- ldobe
  
  I was tempted to say the pie hole. But we all know that United Fruit Co’s bananas are only useful when mashed up and used as a lubricant to sodomize the natives.
delfinclutch

It is impossible to look at this man without picturing him with Patrick Warburton’s voice.
- http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb
  
  I see a young Richard Moll.
SomeGuyNamedMark

They are part of the army’s elite banana cream pie unit.
- Felton / Moderator
  
  One banana, two banana, three banana, four
  The bloody Red Baron was rollin’ out the score…
http://www.facebook.com/durkee.david David Durkee

Not sure what Cory wants us to see. What I see is that the pie pan where the slice has been removed is impossibly clean, the cut edge is impossibly perfect, and no banana slices were cut through to remove this slice, despite them overlapping each other all the way around the remaining pie. Conclusion? THIS PIE WAS MADE WITH THE SLICE MISSING!
- bcsizemo
  
  I know, right. It’s like when I see pies cut like that on TV, it makes me rage a little inside. Not because they look so good, but HOW THE F DID THEY DO IT? I make pies from time to time and I swear I’ve never gotten one to come out nearly that clean. Outside of having a springform pie pan I don’t see how it’s possible (that or really really solid filling).
  - http://twitter.com/LennStar_de LennStar
    
    Possibly plastic. And if that, propably imported from Japan where you can buy every meal in plastic for showing it in your restaurant. I always thought that was a very practical thing.
    - Preston Sturges
      
      It seems like most Tokyo noodle shops have plastic (wax?) prop food to illustrate their menu items. Because of this there is actually a wax food district in Tokyo.
  - jwkrk
    
    Laser cutter?
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Wet knife.
    
    Pro-tip for cutting cakes: dental floss.
    - bcsizemo
      
      Alright that’ll give you a clean cut, but what about the filling oozing into the now empty space?
      (Let me guess, semi frozen pie?)
      - social_maladroit
        
        The pie pictured in the ad’s probably inedible. The food stylist probably put lots of gelatin in it, and got that puppy very cold, before the picture was taken.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        That looks like a cheesecake in the ad; the texture’s sort of pebbly.
- Preston Sturges
  
  Was alien technology involved in Allied victory of WW2? Did aliens give us the A-bomb and pie related technology?
  - social_maladroit
    
    In space, no one can hear you cream.
    
    Uh…
- http://twitter.com/Thraxamer Thraxamer
  
  Maybe they cut out the piece of pie, _then_ added the bananas and whipped cream?
  
  Or did I just kill the fun?
  - malindrome
    
    But that poor, smiling guy in the picture is clearly eating pie with a slice of banana on it! Unless you think he’s in on the con … ?
  - http://www.facebook.com/durkee.david David Durkee
    
    Sure, but what about the clean pie pan? Taking out the first piece is always a disaster.
    - ocker3
      
      mini vacuum cleaner! (or perhaps a moist cloth)
      - bcsizemo
        
        Wait…you don’t just use your finger and then lick it clean?
- http://www.facebook.com/lisa.brennan.357 Lisa Brennan
  
  Besides which, they clearly didn’t follow the recipe. It calls for alternating banana slice layers with cream layers. IT’S THE WRONG PIE.
- pKp
  
  “Food stylist” is not the same job as “cook”. I’ve got an uncle who’s a food photographer (for microwave meal packages and cookbooks), and the food you take a picture of is usually rendered inedible in the process.
  - ImmutableMichael
    
    eg, the boiling water-soaked tampon secreted about the dish to give off steam. I’ll just have the salad thanks.
    
    http://foto.worth1000.com/discussions/47480/tips-for-beginners-food-photography
- voiceinthedistance
  
  Also, the cut leans from vertical in the center, to an angled cut at the rim to make the pie seem deeper and more banana-licious. Not much new in the food stylist’s bag of tricks.
SpaceOtter

The Five Armies surveyed: Men, Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, and Wargs. All fighting over Smaug’s delicious pile of banana cream pies. I haven’t read The Hobbit in some time, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.
euansmith

“Banana Creampie”? There are website dedicated to this type of euphemism.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  There are a lot more for “chocolate creampie”.
  - bcsizemo
    
    I hear there is one for something called “cake farts”….perhaps that’s TMI.
    
    -and if your, umm, creampie is chocolate…yeah someone needs to see a doctor.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      -and if your, umm, creampie is chocolate…yeah someone needs to see a doctor.
      
      I guess you didn’t google it.
      - bcsizemo
        
        Urban dictionary’s meanings are all over the map…and most of the videos I found seemed to reference more chocolate as the person, not the location. Maybe I’m just not searching with the right terms.
        
        -apparently someone believes it involves chocolate milk…
    - social_maladroit
      
      Do a search on google images with “safe search” turned off and you’ll get an interesting mixture of two kinds of pics. One is of food.
euansmith

Actually, isn’t that smiling GI actually actor, Michael Conrad? “Let’s be careful out there…”
- $19428857
  
  I was thinking a well-fed Billy Bob Thornton on Ecstasy.
http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

A seven nation army survey couldn’t hold us back.
jbwillard

The pie itself looks like Pacman.
Palomino

‘Commercial Pudding Mix’— Pukes! No wonder they don’t say that anymore.
GoshJosh

I’m going to go out on a limp and say the studies were independent and conducted at 5 random times, but voice my sadness at that ingredient list. The process of simplicity in America.
semiotix

The soldier in question appears to be a major, from his collar insignia. So what we’ve learned here is that banana cream pie is not some grubby infantry grunt dessert, but more suited to the refined palate of the career officer. Hausfrauen of enlisted men should take note and prepare desserts more appropriate to their husband’s station, like sugared potato peelings, I guess.

CORRECTION: As noted below, that is not a major’s golden oak leaf. This soldier’s rank is therefore indeterminate, meaning that banana cream pie is for communists, utopians, and other such levellers.
- silkox
  
  That’s just a ‘US’ insignia in round brass. My dad, who was a grunt-rank and very reluctant soldier in Korea at about the time of the ad, had a set.
bananaface

Is that a young Steve Martin shoving pie into his face?
- BobRH
  
  It’s Billy Bob Thornton.
  - Preston Sturges
    
    With Robert Mitchum’s hair.
http://msmith13.wordpress.com/ Mark

I don’t know either how they do it, but if you want a pie exactly like that one you have to pay somebody $500 or so to make it for you. Then you take a portrait-quality photo of it and throw it away before someone eats it by mistake.
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  Could you throw it in somebody’s face?
  - http://msmith13.wordpress.com/ Mark
    
    That would be the only constructive use for it.
jasongnc

Am I the only one to see sexual innuendo in the banana and pie slice?
- Boundegar
  
  Sometimes a banana cream pie is just a banana cream pie.
  - Wreckrob8
    
    You’re both sick!
    - http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood
      
      Do a Google Image search for “cream pie” to find out just how sick.
      - malindrome
        
        oh god please no don’t do that
- BobRH
  
  YES (shudder)
pebird

Looks like some kind of map, a space where the cream is supposed to go. Hmmm…
- malindrome
  
  It’s not a map … it’s an invitation.
snagglepuss

I see, “Mmmmm – Nanner Puddin’ Pie. My FAVORITE, And as soon as I’m done, I’m going to slaughter every living soul in this room.”
- http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood
  
  “Banana Cream Pie. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.
Hakan Koseoglu

In the WWII, when England was rationing food, you yanks were eating all of the bananas! That’s why there was such a shortage! I knew it!
- eldritch
  
  Actually it’s probably post-war, when rationing was over and all the G.I.s had returned home to settle down and fuel a massive consumer culture. (Just clicked the source link, yep, 1952! There were still soldiers trickling home even then, mostly from rebuilding efforts and whatnot.)
  
  Fun fact, it’s an ad for United Fruit Company, pretty much the most evil people who ever sold fruit. They all but raped, pillaged, and slaughtered Central and Southern America in the name of imperialistic commercialism.
  - http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood
    
    Look at this book about bananas and the United Fruit Company. Just look at it.
  - euansmith
    
    How can you say such unpatriotic things about the CIA Front Organization that kept South America safe for Dictators.
    
    Banana Republic Creampie? You don’t want to go there…
    - bcsizemo
      
      …only if she’s legal…
- Preston Sturges
  
  “With a clattering of chairs, upended shell cases, benches, and ottomans, Pirate’s mob gather at the shores of the great refectory table, a southern island well across a tropic or two from chill Corydon Throsp’s mediaeval fantasies, crowded now over the swirling dark grain of its walnut uplands with banana omelets, banana sandwiches, banana casseroles, mashed bananas molded into the shape of a British lion rampant, blended with eggs into batter for French toast, squeezed out a pastry nozzle across the quivering creamy reaches of a banana blancmange to spell out the words C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre(attributed to a French observer during the Charge of the Light Brigade) which Pirate has appropriated as his motto … tall cruets of pale banana syrup to pour oozing over banana waffles, a giant glazed crock where diced bananas have been fermenting since the summer with wild honey and muscat raisins, up out of which, this winter morning, one now dips foam mugsfull of banana mead … banana croissants and banana kreplach, and banana oatmeal and banana jam and banana bread, and bananas flamed in ancient brandy Pirate brought back last year from a cellar in the Pyrenees also containing a clandestine radio transmitter …”
  –Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon, p. 10 – 11
- Walt Guyll
  
  The Yanks were also short on bananas. That’s why Twinkies shifted a vanilla creme filling.
  - euansmith
    
    Twinkies? Vanilla creme filling? When will these appalling double entendres end?
http://twitter.com/PeterNGreen Peter Green

The recipe says “Add alternate layers of ripe banana slices and filling” but the photo shows a homogenous filling – no layers, just decorative slices on top.

Also, this advert answers the question “How did Jesse Birdsall make a living before he starred in “Bugs?”

http://thefloatingworld.org.uk/images/BananaBirdsall.jpg
jwkrk

If you spin the pie at 78 rpm and put a pickup in the whipped cream ring you’ll hear secret messages detailing troop movements.
Loose lips sink ships, and what better way to loosen those lips than with a delicious slice of banana cream pie?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jasper-Huxley/100001713326211 Jasper Huxley
  
  The Rolling Stones directly referred to this method of passing messages embedded in round desserts on the front and back cover of the Let It Bleed album.
eldritch

So many boingers are guessing who this man must be, but the truth is obvious.

He’s clearly the father of the Pork and Beans boy!

http://boingboing.net/2010/05/07/cant-sleep-pork-and.html
http://twitter.com/nowmoreepic NOwMoreEpic

it’s wonderful to think about the hand measured type setting/kerning and letter design of vintage ad’s… with out the aid of tools like adobe indesign, illustrator and photoshop. these folks really had a craft and skill, it gives the lettering so much charm…
RaidenDaigo

It’s an abstract Vulva, withe missing slice representing the vagina.
- Preston Sturges
  
  No that would be an Infiniti hood ornament
wendyfr

I want to eat some banana cream pie so bad right now.
Doctor Macintosh

How about the skull face in the center of the pie
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

So that’s not a Cavendish. Must be a Gros Michel, right?
bo1n6bo1n6

Guy looks like he’s 13 beers deep.
- malindrome
  
  “You don’t have to be drunk to enjoy our pie … but it helps.”
junglephysicians

Christopher Nolan invented time travel and is enjoying dessert.
Greg Van Antwerp

(looking over his shoulder) Don’t tell anyone, but in the helmet-cam footage of Seal Team Six attacking Osama’s compound in Pakistan, they can clearly be seen taking Bin Laden out with one of these pies. I’m telling ya, they are killer pies!

By the way I had to strain my eyes to see the rest of the fork supporting the pie…it is either floating in front of his mouth..or he is regurgitating it.
Bokonon

I would like to point out the overtly Constructivist graphic design of the Ad. Probably made by a Russian sympathizer.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_P4LFJFV6F6WGV6FR62ILAXKKMA I P Freely

93 comments in and I’m the only one who sees Ancestor Pac-Man?

Wakakakakakakakakkakakakkakaka……
Culturedropout

Damn you all to hell. Now I want banana cream pie. It’s 11pm Sunday night, and I’m 5 miles from the nearest possible source. FML.
apoxia

I’m so intrigued by American recipes that call for “pie filling” of various varieties. This just doesn’t exist in New Zealand, we have to make our own filling from scratch!