Meatball eggplant?

I just got an e-mail from Burpees advertising their 'Meatball' eggplant.  Their description:  "Meet the mightiest, meatiest eggplant ever. Imagine fresh, home-grown, vine-ripened meat: that’s ‘Meatball’. Fruit’s dense, moist, flavorful flesh captures the flavor and texture of meat as no other eggplant—or any vegetable—can."

I really want to try it....but $8 for a pack of seeds.  So I'm posting here to see if anyone has tried it or knows anything about this variety.  Go ahead, egg(plant) me on to get some seeds :)

link to 'Meatball'

Agreed.  The price is a little high.  I seem to remember seeing, at some point in history, potato seed and some kind of onion that looked related to garlic ( cloves).   As with those, the price is going to have to drop before inexperiment.

Price is high. Probably because the seeds are few and don't ripen well,which increases the flavor profile (although I don't find any eggplant bitter,) but makes seed saving difficult. Kind of why seedless watermelon seeds cost a lot. But it's hybrid, so not sure saving it's seeds would be very useful anyway. I'm vegetarian and LOVE eggplant, but I think, after reading all I just did, that I'm skipping that one. I still like the long oriental ones better than black beauty type hybrids, they grow easier for me, producing when the weather is weird as they ripen faster and have less time to get damaged, and put out more if they do get damaged.
Do it Greg! Find out for us all! Collect data, you KNOW you want to!!
I egg egg egg(plant) on Greg  :D

I'm completely with you Pearl....I should get some :)  Then I should report back as well as save seeds, try to dehybridize them and report back on that too!  

Actually I really meant that I'm with you on the long oriental varieties, they're all I grow and I love them.  They also tend to not have too many seeds.

I started to search for dense low seed varieties to see what's out there in non-hybrids as I suspect that this can't be new.  So far I found this one:

With this description:  White, compact flesh with a few seeds.  $2.99
Lake Valley
Which seems kind of promising.  Hmm.  Not much time to dilly dally as I should be starting these seeds very soon....what to do, what to do!

It looks similar in size and shape to the Aswad heirloom eggplant from Baker Creek found here for $3. https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/eggplant/aswad-eggplant


source

Thank you James.  I ran across that one and thought "They must have made that dog's eye's green when they touched up that picture!"  Do dogs have green eyes like that?  

The thing I'm trying to figure out is when they say "tender" is that counter to "dense" or are they independent of each other.  I can picture a dense tender vegetable.  Maybe Burpee bred something like Aswad with something like Long of Naples and got the best of both???

Greg Martin wrote:Thank you James.  I ran across that one and thought "They must have made that dog's eye's green when they touched up that picture!"  Do dogs have green eyes like that?  

The thing I'm trying to figure out is when they say "tender" is that counter to "dense" or are they independent of each other.  I can picture a dense tender vegetable.  Maybe Burpee bred something like Aswad with something like Long of Naples and got the best of both???

I think the photo is a total photoshop job. Eggplant pasted in, colors retouched.... dogs sometimes have blue eyes, like huskies. Never seen green.