Fellow fruit industry insiders, close your eyes and picture the most popular fruit. Do you see an apple? Yikes. An apple pie? Embarrassing. An apple on a teacher's desk? Get real, Brad. The hottest fruit in town is—brace yourselves: Pears.
I know what you’re thinking: “Those little green freaks wedged between a package of Moose Munch® Premium Popcorn and Rogue Creamery® Oregonzola Blue® Cheese in a Harry & David gift basket?” But times have changed. Apples are over.
Too raw for you? Do I offend you? Deal with it. I’m the guy who convinced the public that melons belong in fruit salad. I’m the Fruit King, baby, and I’m here to introduce you to my next big idea and best friend, pears.
Pears have all the qualities you love in an apple, but with a fresh, edgy, devil-may-care attitude. If someone calls you “pear-shaped,” you’re asking, “Wait, was that a compliment, or…?” Pears keep you guessing.
They’re versatile. You can shave pears over a nice arugula and parmesan salad. You can shave them over a nice radicchio and lemon vinaigrette salad. You can shave them over a nice kale and quinoa salad. I dare you to name a nice salad you can’t shave a pear over.
Let’s talk texture. If I have to hear one more apple zealot talk about the crisp snap of biting into an apple, I swear to God. How about the sloppy, cushy feeling of biting into a pear? It’s the kind of sensation that makes you say, “That’s a pear, alright.” If you bit into a soft apple, you’d wish you were dead.
Not enough for you? Two words: pear cider. The best nights of my life never would’ve happened if I hadn’t been drunk out of my mind on pear cider. Stumbling back to my place with an attractive stranger, feeding them slices of pear until they say, “Schmorple marphle,” which is what it sounds like when a person says, “pears are perfection” with a mouthful of pear.
And then there are the licensing deals. Any idiot can name a type of apple. Red Delicious. Granny Smith. Honeycrisp. But try to name just one type of pear. Just try. You can’t. Golden Daddy. Butter Baby. Sweet Avalon. Are those real pear varieties or just some made-up nonsense? You have no idea. The branding opportunities are endless: Bank of America Bartletts. Amazon Red Boys. Verizon Brown Ones.
People love to go on and on about the legend of Johnny Appleseed. But get ready to meet American hero and pioneer, Percy Pear Stem, played by Timothée Chalamet in a gritty and tastefully erotic biopic streaming soon on Paramount+. That cross-promotional IP will spew out brand awareness dividends for years to come!
In terms of longevity, pears have no brand weaknesses. Sure, apples have Isaac Newton, but they also literally caused the Fall of Man. Between original sin and the association with your phone’s dwindling battery life, the PR team for apples is in a waking hell. At the end of the day, apples are just waiting up in their trees for the chance to drop right on your head and kill you. The gentle pear respects you. An apple would watch you die in the street and do nothing.
Finally, everything comes back to sex appeal. The pear is the sexier fruit. There’s no contest. Let’s be real, which fruit would you rather get down and dirty with? Obviously a pear. They’re fine as hell. You’re gonna take an apple out to a nice dinner and seduce it? Yeah, right. You want a romantic rendezvous with a soft green juice baby, which is one of the many sexy nicknames for pears people will start using any day now. Mmmm… pear emoji, pear emoji, pear emoji, water squirt emoji.
The ad copy writes itself: Shocking. Sexual. Confusing. Pears.