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>
> I remember well when they were first introduced. Then, they weren't called
> vine tomatoes, or tomatoes on the vine, they were *vine-ripened* tomatoes,
> and that's what they were: tomatoes that had - god forbid! - actually been
> allowed to ripen on the plant before being harvested and sold, so the
> fruit you got had a discernable level of flavour. They were fabulous!
>
> Now, these cost more to produce, since they have to be handled more
> carefully, and there's more spoilage, but supermarkets found that people
> were willing to pay a premium for them, so they were a viable product.
> Soon after, however, supermarkets discovered that actually, people would
> pay the premium even for unripe tomatoes, as long as they were on a vine,
> having built up a Pavlovian cargo-cult response. Since rock-hard,
> tasteless, unripe tomatoes are much cheaper to produce, selling 'vine
> unripened' tomatoes (with the name changed to protect the guilty) was
> money for old rope. Supermarkets do love a bit of money for old rope, and
> since most shoppers are thick enough to buy said second-hand cord, vine
> tomatoes have completely displaced vine-ripened tomatoes on the modern
> shelf.
>
> Oh, for the sunlit uplands of the late 90s, when ripe tomatoes could be
> had on every high street!
>
> tom now you're under control and now you do what we told you