Only dusty brodequins suggest war in this landscape that seems to ignore everything from the trenches. In the background, the vast plain under a banana-yellow sky evokes ripe wheat and the african savannah. He is dressed as a parader: red pompom fez, short blue vareous, puffy panties. 'poster, designed by giacomo de andreis, depicts a senegalese gunner sitting under a tree, his rifle at his feet, enjoying a bowl of banania. Leaving the west indian from its first posters, she identified herself as a hilarious senegalese gunner in 1915 and adopted the phrase 'y'a bon' as her slogan, associated with the summary practice of french. The banania brand, created in 1914, seeks to transform its cocoa with banana flour into a patriotic product. The Martiniquan psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon, in his 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks, mentions the grinning Senegalese tirailleur as an example of how in a burgeoning consumer culture, the Negro appears not only as an object, but as 'an object in the midst of other objects'.Publicity affiche 'y'a bon banania' created in 1915. Some French black people connect this stereotype with aggressive colonialist policy in Africa of the global group Unilever, the former owner of the brand. Some feel that the advertising slogans and images are racist and colonialist as it reinforces the old clichГ© of a friendly yet stupid African. The company started using this illustration in 1915.

This brand of chocolate drink is recognized by its trademark the 'bonhomme Banania': a black man wearing a fez. In France the Banania brand is now owned by the newly founded French company Nutrial, which acquired it from Unilever in 2003. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Banania sponsored the Yellow Jersey of the Tour de France. Posters and reproduction tin-plate signs of the pre-war advertising continue to be sold. However, the original advertising has become a cultural icon in France. The form of the character has since evolved to more of a cartoon character. 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 colours. 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'). ДЄt 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. Her image was replaced in 1915 with the drawing of a widely smiling Senegalese man.

When he returned to Paris, he started its commercial fabrication and, in 1912, began marketing Banania with the picture of an Antillaise. During a visit near Lake Managua, Nicaragua in 1909, the journalist Pierre Lardet discovered the recipe for a cocoa-based drink.

Banania advertisement