The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2022
Kadoya's I (Eye) am MIKAN sells bruised mandarins by giving them eyes and plasters
Kadoya's Wakayama mandarins get eye stickers and plaster band-aids, turning blemished fruit into characters that sell — with no extra packaging.
Kadoya
What it had to solve
Kadoya, a mandarin producer in Japan's Wakayama region, sells citrus unshiu where perfect appearance decides whether fruit becomes a gift. Oranges with scratches or bruises went to waste even though the fruit tasted fine.
How it works
Wakayama is one of Japan's leading mandarin-growing regions, yet its oranges face a brutal aesthetic market: fruit destined for gifts must look flawless, so mandarins with scratches or bruises were unsold and wasted. Kadoya, the producer behind the MIKAN brand, wanted to create new value from the imperfect fruit the region already grows.
The design idea was to stop disguising the flaws and instead give every orange a face. Koichi Sugiyama and Minako Endo designed eye-shaped stickers that bring each mandarin to life with a cheeky personality — the stickers double as a quality proof recognised by connoisseurs. Fruit with a bruise or scratch gets a plaster band-aid, as if the orange itself had a small injury, and the handle hole of the transport box is cut as a pair of eyes so even the crate makes eye contact.
The effect is food salvage sold through emotion: imperfect fruit becomes a character you want to meet. D&AD's 2022 jury said the solution made bruised mandarins 'not just appealing but desirable', and did it without adding a single extra package. The work entered the D&AD Annual 2022 and was written up by packaging design publication The Dieline.
Why it lands
- Eyes are the organ of emotion, so eye contact makes a box of blemished fruit feel alive and friendly rather than second-rate.
- The plaster re-frames the flaw: a bruise stops being a defect and becomes a story, turning what would be sorted out of the market into the product's charm.
- The stickers are applied to the fruit itself, so the food-waste fix adds no new packaging — the solution matches the problem it solves.
- Cutting the transport box's handle as a pair of eyes extends the identity beyond the label, so even the crate reinforces the brand's single idea.
What it did
D&AD's 2022 jury praised it as 'food salvage that goes straight to the heart': a pair of eyes and a plaster made bruised mandarins not just appealing but desirable, without adding packaging. The project entered the D&AD Annual 2022 and was featured by packaging magazine The Dieline; no sales figures are recorded.
What you can take
Do not hide a product flaw, make it the character: when a bruise becomes a story buyers smile at, 'imperfect' fruit stops being waste and starts being a brand.
Since then
I (Eye) am MIKAN entered the D&AD Annual 2022, where the jury quoted it as a model of food salvage, and packaging press including The Dieline covered the design in April 2022. The sources read record no sales or scale figures; the case survives as a demonstration that the cheapest design move — a sticker — can carry a waste-reduction story.
Sources
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