By Elena Zanone
Last week Internet comedy site CollegeHumor.com launched a Facebook campaign to recoup Henry Gribbohm, the man who lost 2,600 dollars in his life savings at a carnival game only to score a stuffed banana, for the full 2,600 bucks. In classic CollegeHumor style, the site said it would only buy back Gribbohm if he sold them the giant fruit – with dreadlocks and all.
The 30-year-old New Hampshire resident quickly rose to interweb fame with his tale of misfortune. He had been aiming to win an Xbox Kinect, valued at about 100 dollars, but instead quickly lost 300 dollars and went home to get the remainder 2,300 dollars more, which was also tragically lost at the same carnival game. Photos of a defeated Gribbohm, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and sadly clutching his consolation prize rocketed around the Internet at viral speed, leaving with it a trail of tweets and Facebook Shares in its wake.
Catching wind of the news, CollegeHumor editor-in-chief Streeter Seidell rallied fans of the site on Facebook because he “felt bad” for Gribbohm.
“We here at CollegeHumor were so touched by this story — and also, we really want that giant banana with dreadlocks — that we’ve decided to launch a campaign to buy back Henry’s banana for the exact cost of the life savings he lost,” read the statement on the site. “So everybody do their part and LIKE THIS POST! Henry gets his money back, we get to look like good Samaritans when really we just want a giant stuffed banana with dreads sitting in our office, commenters can be like ‘How Stoopid waz this guy SMH,’ etc., so everybody wins!”
The outlandish campaign was straight forward. For every Facebook Like that this post on the site acquired, College Humor would put ten cents towards purchasing the massive stuffed banana. If the post reached 26,000 Likes, CollegeHumor would pay Gribbohm back in full. If it got 30,000 Likes, the site would buy the stuffed dread-lock-sporting fruit and pay for the Xbox Kinect that Gribbohm was originally trying to win for his kids.
Needless to say, the weird and wacky campaign was a huge success all around. On Monday CollegeHumor posted, “Success! We now have a giant Rasta Banana in our office forever€ and with the post eclipsing the 30,000 Like benchmark, Gribbohm has his life savings back and the Xbox Kinect is at home with the kids.
You can watch “the dramatic conclusion to the ‘Save Banana Man’ saga” here.
BONUS: The site also stated that if this post gets 20,000 Likes CollegeHumor claims that their interns will eat the stuffed banana. The Facebook post is currently at 2,679 Likes at the time of this writing.
Source: Mashable
