About
Iwata Holding Bananas refers to a pre-recorded clip of Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata staring intently at a banana bunch that was screened during Nintendo’s 2012 E3 press conference. The random placement of Iwata silently looking at the bananas struck a chord with the E3 audiences and many viewers on the web, triggering a series of photoshopped images, parodies and remix videos on various gaming forums and imageboards.
Origin
On June 5th, 2012, Nintendo held a press conference[8] at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), officially unveiling the Wii U’s tablet controller GamePad and launch titles including the New Super Mario Bros and Nintendo Land, a theme-park party game made of 12 minigames based on multiple franchise characters. The conference event was immediately followed by Nintendo’s preview reel of upcoming releases, which opened with a gag clip of Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata staring at a bunch of bananas in silence.
Spread
Later that afternoon, the indie video game blog Destructoid[2] featured the banana clip in a post titled “Bananas Win E3.” a thread titled “Iwata Banana” was posted on the international gaming community GBA Temp forums[3], which included a screenshot of Iwata staring at the bunch of bananas. Soon, the usual photoshop threads based on Iwata’s banana video followed on Giant Bomb[1], Neo GAF forums[7] and the /r/gaming subreddit.[11]
On June 6th, the gaming blog Lazy Gamer[6] highlighted an edited video of Iwata staring at Nintendo America’s president Reggie Fils-Aimes, who acknowledged his quote My Body is Ready during the pre-conference event earlier that week. As of 10:30pm, approximately 20 derivative videos based on Iwata’s banana have been uploaded to YouTube.[10]
Later that day, gaming news blogs Kotaku[5] and Lazy Gamer[6] wrote about the parodies of the clip and heralded it as an internet meme.
Notable Examples
Images
Videos
Search Interest
Not yet available.
External References
[1] Giant Bomb – Iwata Bananas Dad Chasers Photoshop Thread
[2] Destructoid – Bananas win E3
[3] GBATemp – Iwata Banana
[4] Neo GAF – Iwata holding bananas
[5] Kotaku – Nintendo Proves There’s Nothing as Bananas as Holding…Bananas
[6] Lazy Gamer – E3 2012 the Best Memes So Far
[7] Neo GAF – Nintendo E3 2012 Conference Thread
[8] Washington Post – E3 2012: Nintendo details Wii U, focuses on third-party games
[9] DeviantART – Consider… the banana
[10] YouTube – Search Results for Iwata AND banana
[11] Reddit – And thus Sauro Iwata created a meme
[12] Quickmeme – Nintendo Banana
