Spam sales are up in America
Posted on December 6th, 2008 by fizzle in Current Events
And not the type of spam you’d think we’d be talking about here at our mostly tech-related website. No, in fact we’re talking about the pseudo-food seen here, not the annoying links for v!@gr@ or c!4l1s that you find in your spam box all the time, and once in a while one will sneak through to your inbox. No, not that spam. Here are the facts: Sales of Spam®©™ are on the up, at least in the United States, as of recently.
In fact, Spam sales are up 10% in the last 3 months. Why is that so insane you ask? Well, just take a look at the sales numbers for basically every end-consumer product in the world. They’re down. Way down. It’s no secret our economy is quickly taking a knife to it’s wrists, successfully going down the street and not across, but as everything else goes down, including Vegas hookers for a much less cost, Spam takes a “pff, whatever, I do what I want” attitude and its sales are rising, hard.
So much so that the Hormel factory in Minnesota has had to instate a double shift 7 days a week to meet the demand of the fakemeat. Of course people at Hormel, and specifically the Spam division of Hormel insist that “sure, it’s the tough times helping our cheap product to sell, but it really is the taste that keep people coming back!”. Yeah, no. Nice try though. It’s because your pink block of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-in-a-can only costs about $2.50, and will keep on our shelves for as long we live, not because it’s just so gosh dang tasty.
At any rate, is this what we’ve come to? We’re riding our bikes in 2 feet of snow because we simply can’t afford to pay for gas for our 50 gallon monster SUV. Ok. We’ve put a stop to our thermostat above 66 degrees because, once again, we can’t pay for the gas to heat our massive 3,600 square foot home, that we also can’t afford the mortgage on. So the result? We save money in the kitchen too, by forcing our family to eat food that most County Jails won’t even serve, fearing a nasty riot complete with pork, ham, sugar, salt, water, potato starch, and even some of that tasty sodium nitrite!
Here’s some history on Spam, just in case you’re curious:
1936 Jay C. Hormel develops a spiced ham and pork luncheon meat
1959 One billion tins of Spam sold, enough to go around the world twice
1970 Spam becomes a food icon (and the object of scorn) after the Monty Python sketch is broadcast
1991 Official Spam museum opens in Austin, Minnesota. The museum attracts more than 60,000 people annually. Spam Lite is introduced
2002 The six billionth can is sold
2006 Stinky French Garlic Spam is introduced in celebration of Spamalot, the musical, in London
2009 Spam becomes the national food after all other food becomes too expensive to buy
So, what are you doing with your Spam tonight? Personally, I’ll probably be having some spamburger helper, with a side of spammed potatoes. Yum!
