Hormel Foods is celebrating the 70th Anniversary of SPAM this year with special edition cans of "SPAM Lite", "SPAM 25% Less Sodium" & the original "SPAM". Collect them all!

You can tell they're poking fun at themselves. They just launched a new website to commemorate this.

Visit the SPAM Museum! See the SPAMmobile! Buy a SPAM T-Shirt at the SPAM Store and more!

http://www.spam.com/

And if I remember correctly, Spam is still the #1 meat product sold in the world. Someone out there is lovin' that stuff.

I "had to" work in Hawaii some last year.
Once you get away from the tourist areas,
Spam, Eggs & Rice as a breakfast is huge there.

Anyone have some favorite Spam recipies to share? (I'm actually interested - going on a long-term camping trip this summer with no refrigeration, and Spam will be in my food stores. Need to know what to do with it)

It makes a pretty great hash. It's scary stuff, but if you just ignore that, put the SPAM in a cast-iron pan, sprinkle your favorite seasonings in, chop some green onion, maybe peppers, etc... Fry, until the SPAM has some texture and that quick-fried singed on the edges taste, then add egg, rice, stir until egg is firm, serve!

Chopped already baked potatoes, from the night before, add to this in a pinch.

One pan camping meal. --my favorite kind.

On your camping trip, do take a nice radio for some late night listening. You never know what's gonna come in.

When we do this (and it's been a while now), no gadgets, other than the radio, binoculars, lens, etc... are permitted. It's amazing the stuff you end up doing!

Another camping fave:

Marinate some sliced or diced meat, in your favorite sauce. Once fire is buring well, wrap these in foil, set near coal bed and wait. After 15 - 20 min, unwrap and eat. Small bits of butter, garlic and veggies can be added for very tasty night time fire treats.

I like spam, fried, or mixed with eggs some tobasco sauce. The old c-rations had lots of spam in them.

Cut it upo, and mix it with rice and some vegetables.

A different Spam song. From Save Ferris, not Monty Python!

Spam
Its pink and its oval
Spam
I buy it at the Mobil
Spam
Its made in Chernobyl
Spam

Now when I was a child
My family was so poor
They didn't have the finer things in life to eat
So we had a plan
In a big blue can
The government substitute for meat

(repeat chorus)

To get me to eat it at dinner
They said Id grow up like Bruce Jenner
He was a winner that never knew defeat
And when he got hungry
When he got hungry
He cracked open that special treat
It was

(repeat chorus)

S-p-a-m
Don't you know its my best friend
S-p-a-m
Again and again and again

S-p-a-m
Don't you know its my best friend
S-p-a-m
Again and again and again and again

So go and forget your o-s-c-a-r
There's one meat by-product that's best by far
Its

I would have thought my spam filter would have caught this one.

(You knew it was just a matter of time 'til someone posted this)

Spam was a major factor in our victory in WWII, it was at least as important as any one weapons system.

Thanks to Spam, our troops had a nutrious meal, regardless of weather conditions or environment.

You could carry it for days, or months for that matter, and it was still good to eat.

Military cooks came up with all types of ways to serve it, but if you had to, you could eat it out of the can.

Okay, okay, okay....consider this celebration showing up on our next morning show. Web site is hilarious.

Don't forget Hormel company going through the five stages of healing over the whole e-mail SPAM thing.

In their stage one denial phase, they more or less ignored the SPAM branding implications.

Once the term became a public meme, anger set in, as Hormel was seriously worried about the already questionable thoughts about SPAM would be too much, when combined with the unpopular e-mail term.

It was understood that big name recognition was happening, but it's value perception was a high risk for Hormel.

They sent out the attorneys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(electronic)

Somewhere in here, they hit depression. A whole lot of people are saying spam, not a lot of it good. The brand is doomed...

Then we reach barganing. Ok, so people are gonna say spam, could we at least reserve the upper-case spam for references to our fine meat product? Please?

This sorta-mostly works, Hormel lets out a few press releases, people think it's funny, purchase some fresh cans of SPAM to put on display, etc...

And it ends up all good! Acceptance at last. Hormel is ok with the world of SPAM, having realized their brand isn't in any serious danger.

Whew!

I wish I had pictures of the outside of the Spam museum and the billboards that start about 100 miles away in any given direction from the museum ... it's in southern Minnesota. I wanted to stop and see it on the way back from Michigan, but the rest of the brood shot me down. It's a piece of Americana!

There has been a SPAM website in one form or another for a number of years, and 1-800-LUV-SPAM mail orders and catalogs prior to that. For awhile they even had SPAM email-greeting cards. I like the new animation though.

I stopped collecting SPAM cans when they did away with painted-on labels in favor of fragile plastic shrink-wrap labels.

Chris: I used the SPAM website on my Sunday night show also. It's good fun.