Americans have the most peculiar obsessions, not least when it comes to melons. And when the melons are cubical, well, their rigid little brains just explode. Take the square watermelon, which, as of this writing, went on sale last year in Japan. Only 400 are grown each year. They cost 10,000 yen each (about $80-90). And they’re only sold in specialty shops in Tokyo and Osaka. For good reason, most Japanese people have never heard of them. And yet they pervade American pseudo-literati culture; another symptom, I guess, of the shallow Japanese fetish which is slowly infecting this country. The square watermelons even appeared in an episode of The Simpsons where our favorite family goes to Japan, Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo.

As George Benard Shaw is often paraphrased, the only difference between England and America is the language. So it goes without saying that homeomorphisms of fruits and vegetables would appeal to them, too. And the English being on the whole rather smarter than Americans, and yet not endowed with a sunny southern clime, it’s inevitable that they would invent spherical carrots.