Is Ralphs Selling Rotten Rambutans?

While walking through the produce section of Ralphs at Irvine's Woodbury neighborhood the other night, we were stopped cold in our tracks. This is what we saw. Rambutan.

At first I didn't believe my eyes. But as I refocused my vision on the familiar fur on the golf ball-sized fruit, it confirmed it. These were, indeed, rambutan! But they were not well, my friends. These looked like rambutan corpses. Dead, hard, brown mummies of the fruit I ate and loved as a child, and it was sad.

Unless I'm mistaken and these were some weird variety that looked like they're the zombie version of the fruit or even dried rambutans (which I've never heard of), I am flabbergasted that Ralphs would even stock them. Who's going to buy these? Do they know what they're selling? And do they know that it's rotten?

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What's even more unbelievable is the price! Look at it! $0.99 a pound?! NO! It's $0.99 EACH! I repeat: 99 CENTS EACH! A buck for one of these dried, shriveled up things!

A woman, who saw us examining the poor specimens asked, “What is that?” And of course, I took it upon myself to explain what it was and what it should be. It's supposed to be red and fresh, looking like a hairy tribble, with a pliant rubbery skin and inside, it tastes like a more tart and more delicious lychee. Not like this. Not as hard as a pine cone. The picture below is of a fresh rambutan. Quite a difference, no?

Which brings me to this request, if anyone has seen fresh rambutan (i.e. not like Ralphs but like the picture I have above), do let me know. And perhaps also let Ralphs know that they need to throw out this batch before someone actually buys one and complains.