![]() “The brand conveys a pejorative, degrading and racist image towards people of black color whom it portrays as ill-educated, inarticulate and barely able to string together three words of French,” according to the writ from the Collective of Caribbeans, Guyanese and Réunionnais. Slowly but surely, the slogan and the character became inseparable as the expression was coined: l’ami y’a bon (“the y’a bon buddy”). The slogan Y’a bon (“It’s good”) derives from the pidgin French supposedly used by these soldiers (it is, in fact, an invention). The brand’s yellow background underlines the banana ingredient, and the Senagalese infantryman’s red and blue uniform make up the other two main colors. Pierre Lardet took it upon himself to distribute the product to the Army, using the line pour nos soldats la nourriture abondante qui se conserve sous le moindre volume possible (“for our soldiers: the abundant food which keeps, using the least possible space”). At the outset of World War I, the popularity of the colonial troops at the time led to the replacement of the West Indian by the now more familiar jolly Senegalese infantry man enjoying Banania.
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