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Pooja Vora

Pooja Vora

Product Designer | Illustrator

The Tomato Theory

2 min readFeb 25, 2026

Ever noticed those tomato icons with rating percentage along with the movie title?

It’s actually a rating scale that shows what percentage of viewers enjoyed that movie!

When the majority of people love the movie, the rating is towards 100% indicating it as a fresh, juicy tomato that’s perfect to eat.
When the score is below 50% and more towards 0%, it means the tomato’s getting rotten and spoilt, which means that viewers didn’t like the movie and probably wouldn’t recommend spending time on it.

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Tomato icons used for Tomato-meter. Fresh and rotten variation.

That’s basically how the Tomato-meter works — it’s there to help you pick great movies to watch!

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But here’s a fun twist to think about: What if we look at this from a different angle?

Imagine yourself at a live show, drama, or theater performance.

If you do not enjoy the show, you might throw tomatoes to express your disappointment. But if you love the show it will not receive any tomatoes. In this case, the show that gets the most tomatoes would be the one to avoid.

So here, more tomatoes = not-so-great show. It’s actually the complete opposite of the movie rating system, where more tomatoes = awesome movie! But the tomatoes to measure the likeness remain the same.

The tomato count as a rating parameter is a clever idea, it helps the user connect with real-life relevance in the digital situation. However, the meanings flips completely depending on the context.

What’s you take on how the rating should work?

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Pooja Vora
Pooja Vora

Written by Pooja Vora

Product Designer | Illustrator