Dear Mr. Hormel

You absolute coward.

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I said to myself, perhaps he is a visionary. Perhaps he knows something we all don’t. Perhaps all those thoughts are wrong, and he’s simply a comedian, and he’s willing to commit to the bit. But I have recently acquired and consumed your Limited Edition Figgy Pudding Spam meat log, and you are obviously a wretched being wracked with fear. And possibly self-loathing.

I will tell you, sir, that this is not the letter I was hoping to write. As a Patriotic Proud American (or something) I have been raised on Christmas songs that extoll peace, love for our fellow humans, and greedy demands for figgy pudding, but of course I have never actually had figgy pudding – this despite a fondness for British folks and Terry Pratchett’s works, and an actual deep and abiding love for fruitcake, even though I’m not a hundred years old and didn’t live through the Great Depression.

I know from fruitcake, sir, and I’m not talking those bullshit “spent eight-to-twenty months drifting around the North Sea in a cargo container washed overboard from the Ever Given” stale-ass Panettone one inevitably receives at least every third Christmas. But I know my duty, and despite that love of fruitcake I sought out the worst-reviewed actual Christmas Pudding that was sold on Amazon, only to learn that the worst-reviewed only had 4.5 out of 5 stars. No matter, I said to myself, because I found something called “Cole’s English Privilege” Christmas Pudding and certainly, certainly, I could find something in that to compare disfavorably to your salty hot dog loaf.

Its basic journalistic integrity, innit? How could I possibly understand what you had perpetrated upon the world without a comparison to the actual product?

Sir, you must understand, before we really get into it: I am not a high-falutin’ type. I have consumed plenty of your cans of processed meat food product in my life. I have spent many days camping in the desert when you know you’re going to run out of ice, and cans of salty, salty, salty Spam are both an excellent protein source and a good way to stave off heatstroke. I’m not gonna sit here and blow smoke up your Spam by saying I enjoy your product, but it has its place, and I’m perfectly familiar with it and comfortable with its consumption. I’m not going to be my unnamed friend whose main reaction to your LEFPS faux-caseless-bologna was to say “it smells like cat food.” Of course it does. Duh. That’s what Spam is.

No sir. That’s not the problem here. The problem here is that your Figgy Pudding Spam did not taste enough like figgy pudding.

Figgy Pudding is fruity and spicy and citrusy and boozy and delicious. Now I know delicious is too much to ask for, and boozy won’t get past our Excessively Puritan FDA, but sir, that still leaves three possible flavor profiles to hit. What did I get? A whiff of orange peel. A mid-tongue note of faux cinnamon. The barest ghost of artificial baking spice mix extract. And that was eating it straight. I made musubi, that most noble of dishes, with the rest, and even though I plopped the can proudly right in the middle so everyone at the potluck I brought it to could see what it was, I’m not sure that anyone even noticed that it was Figgy Pudding flavored. I certainly didn’t notice anything peculiar when I ate one of the rolls myself.

Were you led astray by your marketing department? Did they say to you, sir, that you could make a Spam that was only visited by one of the three Ghosts of Christmas (I assume you shelled out the sponsorship dolla dolla bills and the newest version of A Christmas Carol produced by Mr. Hallmark will include The Ghost of Christmas Spam) and don’t worry, people will still hate it and hate you but they hated you anyway and we’ll rake in the hipster irony clams? Maybe they did; maybe you listened. Lord knows, I read the Washington Post review of this aspic-shaped meat block and they sure hated it, and I have to assume they require special dispensation from Mr. Bezos himself to post a negative review of something that could be sold on the Amazon reseller marketplace.

I couldn’t actually bring myself to hate it, sir, and that makes me hate it, and you, more. You could have thrown your marketing department aside and said no, I have the courage of my convictions, you spineless sapsuckers, we’re going to make a Spam Loaf that actually tastes like Figgy Pudding, and by God, I will never be poor again. Instead, you cravenly caved to them and let them – nay, encouraged them – to run your good name and reputation through the mud, and instead of releasing a product that would live in the hallowed Valhalla of terrible idea products that failed in a flaming pile of stars from the sky, you released a version of your standard product that is almost indistinguishable from the original except for the packaging.

For shame, sir. For shame.

Sincerely,

Alex Parise