For those Britons with modest expectations, it is exciting enough to see home produced apples finally back on the shelves after months of woolly textured imports. But Tesco clearly doesn’t think the return of the russet is enough to get customers to open their wallets. Instead, it is trying to shock them into shelling out with a new hot-pink variety named the Surprize.

Tesco says that the apples taste as good as they look.

In fact, this may not be the first quirky fruit to grab headlines, only to disappear without trace.

The pineberry, for example, was an unnervingly pale, pineapple-flavored strawberry stocked by Waitrose for a few short weeks back in 2010. M&S countered with the papple, a pear that looked a bit like an apple and the grango, a painfully named grape which tasted “a bit like a mango.”

None actually seemed to have taken off with consumers who would come in looking for strawberries that tasted like strawberries, or pears that didn’t sound like something you would only resort to after major dental work.

That said, there is a fine history of mucking about with the genetics of fruit. No doubt the grapefruit, a cross between the bitter pomelo and the sweet dessert orange, caused quite a stir when it first appeared in the 18th century.

But such lasting successes are few and far between. The developers of the pluot, a cross between a plum and an apricot, or the limequat, which you can probably guess the ancestry of, have yet to see their creations strike it big with supermarkets.

Red bananas, yellow raspberries — the novelty seems to wear off as quickly as the color of those pretty purple carrots you paid a premium for, only to find that, once peeled, they are still orange.

特易购超市惊现粉红苹果

对于对生活没有太高期望的英国人来说，吃了几个月干巴巴的进口苹果后，看到本国的苹果上架已经足够让人兴奋了。但特易购公司显然认为这还不足以让顾客掏腰包。因此，特易购试图出售艳粉色的苹果，希望大吃一惊的顾客买单。这种苹果名叫“惊喜”。

特易购公司说这种苹果的味道和它的外表一样美好。

实际上，这也许不是第一种上了头条但很快就消失无踪的奇葩水果了。

例如菠萝莓，那是一种颜色苍白的、菠萝味的草莓。2010年，

维特罗斯超市只售卖了短短几周。M&S超市出售过苹果梨，一种看起来有点像苹果的梨，还有芒果葡萄，一个名字很别扭的葡萄，吃起来味道“有点像芒果”。

这些水果在普通顾客当中不成功，他们只想买吃起来像草莓的草莓，或者普通的梨，而不是那种名字听起来像在一个大的牙科手术后才会吃的东西。

尽管如此，人们摆弄水果的基因有悠久的历史。无疑，苦柚和甜橙杂交出的葡萄柚，在18世纪出现时引起了很大轰动。

但这种成功的尝试寥寥无几。

创造杏李或青柠枇杷的人尚未看到他们的产品在超市大卖。杏李是杏和李的杂交，而青柠枇杷，从名字你大概可以猜到它的家谱。

红色的香蕉，黄色的树莓，它们带来的新鲜感很快就会消失，就像你花了大价钱买来的美丽的紫色胡萝卜，削了皮你就会发现里面还是橙色的。

Words to Learn 相关词汇

   【付钱】

    fùqián

    shell out

    pay out or hand over (money) 

    【瞎弄】

    xiānòng

    muck about

    interfere with, annoy, or waste the time of