Dear Mr. Omni

Finally!

Right now, mankind faces some of the greatest existential threats it has ever faced. Global warming. AI-generated content making the internet worthless. Mass extinctions. Mr. Bell’s glorious telephones being made absolutely useless because of all the scam calls. So many others! Amongst all these crises, your company has stepped up and solved the most pressing, the most critical, and perhaps the hardest problem facing all of mankind today: the absolute lack of plant-based Spam.

I must tip my hat to you, sir. Where would we be without you, Mr. Omni? It’s high time you and your backing army of venture capitalists threw down the gauntlet to those hippie-ass vegans and vegetarians. You couldn’t label your no-animals-harmed-in-the-making-of-fake-spam product “vegan,” now could you? No! You needed make sure we knew what we were eating – a cynical cash-grab designed to greenwash the “eating economy” and secure shareholder value for your crony capitalist friends through the production and sale of vegan Spam that’s barely labeled as vegan. I inspected the label and the phrase “plant-based” takes up roughly 600% more real estate than the tiny seal at the bottom right of the package that declares its veganness in one of the smarmiest ways I’ve ever seen.

Let me be clear, sir - I have no problem with vegan food or with fake meat. I spent six or so years of my life as a vegetarian and one year as a vegan. I’ve played the game, and believe you me, I would have given at least two or three toes for decent faux-corned beef hash. What I do have a problem with is cynical, morally bankrupt cash grabs by the stooges of venture capitalists who are trying to extract the maximum amount of filthy lucre out of a market that only exists to play on middle-class guilt over a planet that’s being rapidly poisoned in a zero-interest economy. And that is clearly what is going on here.

You can disagree with me all you like, sir, but the number of decisions around this product that you have made out of clear moral cowardice makes your position plain for all to see. This fake Spam strikes no lines in its product design, marketing, or really anything else to target a consumer market. This product is for your funders, so that they can make a dollar. Nothing else.

Consider: if your fake Spam were intended to be marketed towards the nostalgic vegan who missed opening a can of spam with their sainted grandmother and preparing it on a stovetop, you would have sold it in a can, as God and the US Military around 1942 (but I repeat myself) intended. Instead, it comes in a bag of pre-sliced lozenges, fully obviously shaped in a way to evoke Spam but to not be Spam.

Consider: your gutless marketing department named this product “Plant-Based Meat-Style Luncheon.” This is a product name that does not roll off the tongue! “Hey Becky! Could you pass me the Plant-Based Meat-Style Luncheon” is a sentence that has never and will never be uttered in either the history or the future of mankind. It doesn’t even become an acronym! “Hey Becky! Could you pass me the [unintelligable spitting].” We live in a world where COVID-19 is a daily threat and you name your product in such a way that its acronym sounds like Bill the Cat coughing up a hairball on stage with the Boingers? No attempt was made to brand this product so that it would exist on store shelves for any actual amount of time. Hell, luncheon isn’t even a food! It’s a meal! A concept! A longer and more formal way to say lunch! It’s a bunch of old British ladies sitting around a table drinking tea with their pinkies out! I’m glad I picked this bag of slabs up when I did because I fully expect I will never see this on my local grocer’s shelf ever again.

And don’t think, sir, that I have never seen store-brand Spam. I’m fully aware that it’s called “Luncheon Meat.” Here’s the thing about the product team you hired from Mr. Fiverr - they either forgot, or didn’t care, about how the English language works. When it’s Luncheon Meat, Luncheon is an adjective. When it’s Meat-Style Luncheon, it’s a noun. Your competitors figured it out - Mr. Unmeat’s Luncheon-Style Unmeat, now that makes sense and its all because he didn’t depend on ChatGPT to do his branding. Your product? It sticks right in the uncanny valley with your Mirror Universe opposite, who made Meat-Based Fries Oven to meet the whims of his VC funders.

Consider: this product is not for the cost conscious! It cost roughly twice what a can of Spam costs, and yet comes with approximately half the quantity of Spam that would be in that can. It’s not even for the consumer on the run, because while Spam proper takes all of one minute to fry, this takes six or seven minutes to fry and requires constant attention! “Flip every minute” the packaging says. Congratulations, sir - that was a truly annoying directive that I’ve never before seen on a package of food, and flipping your fake Spam repeatedly was almost as annoying as making risotto, yet with such a sadder and worse outcome.

Finally, consider: your Plant-Based Meat-Style Luncheon is not for people who like food. Aside from all of the above PBMSLematic points noted above, it just wasn’t very good. The product, much like the marketing, was just sorta… thrown together. It was unpleasant to smell while frying it - imagine, if you will, dusty Spam. Library Spam. A clichéd scene in a movie where a grown granddaughter enters the mansion she just inherited from a distant relative, and she blows off the dust on her new kitchen counter to find her grandmother’s Spam. And then, after it cooked for a little bit more, it got distinctly fishy.

As for the taste? It was Spam-like, I guess, but distinctly worse. Sixty percent less salt is good, I guess, but it made the taste undeniably limp. It was muted, background. The ghost of Spam. No Frills branded Potted Meat Food Product for people who don’t like flavor. But the worst part, oh man, the worst part? That has to have been the texture. The outside was crispy, but the inside? The inside was greasy. Oleaginous. If a texture could be smarmy? That’s what it was. Not that I’m personally aware of this, but I am assured by the popular culture that humans taste like pork. If that’s true, then this Plant-Based Meat-Style Luncheon is what a used car salesman tastes like.

But none of this actually matters, of course. Because again, Mr. Omni, you didn’t make this product for us consumers. They say that behind every powerful man is a stronger woman, but in your case, behind you is a team of vulture capitalists who are dictating your every move so they can squeeze a couple more cents out of the threadbare remains of capitalism before the guillotines come out, and you are their willing puppet. So I suppose congratulations are to be extended, sir - you’ve sold at least one unit of this nonsense, you’ve Increased Shareholder Value, and you’ve had your moment in the sun, though once your fickle VC backers are distracted by something shiny, they’ll forget you, and as quickly as we will once your Plant-Based Meat-Style Luncheon disappears from shelves forever.

Sincerely,

Alex Parise