TV ACRES: Miss Chiquita Banana – Female banana character (first drawn by artist Dik Browne) who wore a headdress of fruit and sang the trademark Chiquita Banana song (voice first provided by singer Patti Clayton) that began “Hello Amigo…I’m Chiquita Banana and I’ve come to say/You eat the banana in a special way/And when it’s fleck with brown and has a golden hue/That’s when bananas are the best for you….” (Music © 1945 Shawnee Press Inc.)
The Chiquita Banana jingle was created in 1944 for the United Fruit Company by a BBDO advertising team headed by Robert Foreman. The song’s lyrics, written by Garth Montgomery and music composed by co-worker Ken MacKenzie, instructed Americans on how to ripen and properly use this golden tropical fruit, for example, putting them in pies, or salads and to never to put the equator grown fruit in the refrigerator.
In 1945 and 1946, Puerto Rico-born Elsa Miranda portrayed Miss Chiquita in numerous personal appearances in the movies, in radio commercials. June Valli (popular for her 1954 hit song “Crying in the Chapel) was the singing voice of Chiquita Banana in the TV commercials in the 1950s.
In 1987, the image of Miss Chiquita changed from a banana character when artist Oscar Grillo, creator of the Pink Panther, transformed her into a beautiful brown skinned woman with a teasing smile who wore the traditional fruit-filled sombrero, gold loop earrings along with a blue dress adorned with ruffled sleeves and hems edged in yellow.
I’m Chiquita Banana, and I’ve come to say
Bananas have to ripen in a certain way.
And when they are flecked with brown
and have a golden hue,
Bananas taste the best, and are the best for you.
You can put them in a salad. You can put
them in a pie – aye.
Anyway you want to eat them it’s
impossible to beat them.
But bananas like the climate of the very,
very tropical equator.
So you should never put bananas in the refrigerator.
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