Dear Mr. Slim
Dear Mr. Slim,
Dude, I recently got myself a box of your Vlasic Dill Pickle Slim Jim Smoked Snack Sticks, and I gotta tell you man, I’m starting to lose the thread here.
For the last couple years, all of you snack purveyors have seen fit to bombard us all with more and more outlandish snack concoctions, forcing together flavors and textures that no cook who wasn’t shroomed to the gills would ever consider plating up and slamming in front of a surprised diner. I’m not talking about Michelin Starred places that offer a “chef’s choice” option, I’m not even talking a restaurant owned by white hipsters that unironically culturally appropriates the phrase omakase to describe a tasting menu.
I mean, I’m talking a twenty-something line cook who gets off his 12-hour shift that started at 4am, blazes up before getting on public transit to go home to his walkup that he shares with six other drunk bros, and it’s the day before rent is due, and the shared cupboard is bare, and Zeke and the rest of his housemates haven’t managed to make their way out of the pot-smoke haze wreathing their apartment, and they start wheedling our hero “bro you can make one more dinner, bro we’re so hungry, bro make us all some food” – that guy, that trodden upon bro who can’t even drink legally yet and also wasn’t even supposed to be here today wouldn’t look at his bare-ass cupboards and assemble the some of the shit that your flavor scientists have been assembling and hurling in our faces over the last few years.
And yet, for some reason – morbid curiosity? Masochism? FOMO? I don’t actually know – whenever one of y’all release a new one of these flavorhorrors I feel compelled to bear witness, to experience them. I have crammed things into my faceholes that would probably cause a medieval peasant to instantly shrivel into a dessicated husk and float away on the slightest breeze, that would make Guy Fieri burn a kitchen down, that would enrange Alton Brown to the point that he speechlessly walked out of a restaurant, and it’s this product, this deceptively simple product is the one that’s making me question whether we live in a simulation or not. For fuck’s sake, all we’re talking here is Slim Jims and pickles, it’s not like it’s complicated or anything, and yet. And yet.
You might think, sir, that I’m going on a bit here, and I might be, but I need you to understand something. For me, a critical part of experiencing insane products like these unsolicited pickle pics of a meat stick you’re foisting on a public who apparently have too much money is taking in the products both conceptually and holistically. When I ordered this box of meat spears from Mr. Bezos’ online peculiarium, pretty much my only thought was “who would want to eat a pickle flavored Slim Jim, not even a stoner would want that.” I didn’t really think much of them, to the point that I didn’t even really remember ordering them.
It was only after they showed up and I was confronted with the package in all its glory – REJOICE!, the eighty-eyed angel declared, as I opened the package, and blood began to seep from all of my pores – that I was reduced to a state resembling existential dread. The first thing that jumped out at me about this product’s packaging is that it looked unfinished, as if the graphic designers you had working on this abomination were just as shroomed out as your flavor scientists, specifically on the front of the packaging, which includes a rendering of the product’s packaging emblazoned with the phrase Actual Size. Now, I have seen my share of unsolicited Slim Jims and I am very aware that the colored plastic is on the front, and the blister pack with the hot hot meat tube is on the back, but there is no consumer I know, no notional purchaser I can imagine, who would look at a package and be swayed by an Actual Size picture of the product’s interior packaging and be like Yes, Yes I Care More About The Length Of The Meat Condom Than The Tube Steak And I Will Be Buying This Box Of Snacks Immediately. Hell, sir, in my case, I’d already bought the package, it was already in my hand, it was solicited, and you put pants on it anyway! It reminds me of that rather brilliant essay out on the internet about Marvel movies “Everyone is Beautiful and No One Is Horny” except the meat stick isn’t comely and I’m not hungry.
So all I could imagine at this point was that your designers were drunk and slapped together an unfinished package for a product no one wanted, no one would buy, and which was only assembled so y’all would lose some money this year and you could write off the production cost for tax reasons… but just to make sure, I went and looked at your other bulk sausage party packs and my gods, every single one shows the packaging in Actual Size with nary a single picture of the actual product on it. What in the Actual Size Fuck is going on here! I honestly thought Marketing 101 was “show the product you want people to buy” but instead its an endless parade of packaging all the way down! Your entire marketing department’s design vernacular involves being more proud of the packaging than the product, and the packaging is a two color plastic sleeve with some flames and a logo on it!
The mind reels.
I actually had to step away from your product for a while after figuring that out, sir. Absolute confusion over here.
Finally, I felt ready to approach these tasty snacks again, and I was curious about what parts of the pickle you were gonna push in the flavor profile, so I decided my next step was to look at the ingredients to see what I was in for. So I flipped the package around and Jesus Christ what the fuck
I actually can’t tell you which of these I’m more mad about, sir, so we’ll go top to bottom: “Meat Us Online.” I don’t know what that means, but I promise you I am not scanning the QR code that says “Long Boi Gang” in the middle. I do not want to know what horrible Twitter or X or whatever account that leads to, and I really do not want to see what automated porn bots swarm its posts.
If you’re offended by all the dick jokes in this letter so far, sir, I want to make it very clear right the fuck now that it is entirely your fault, and if those two particular “jokes” weren’t on your packaging I’d have toned it down. I’m also not even sure what you’re going for here - I’m not gay, and I’m in a loving committed relationship with a wonderful woman, but I have to imagine if I made a Grindr profile with the description “come snack on my Slim Jim” I’d get, like, zero right swipes or whatever the hell their user interface is.
But this all pales in comparison to how irritated I was by the phrase “Grip ‘N Rip.” I have to assume this is your edgy version of the much more common “Grab-N-Go” but with a worse-placed apostrophe and a real “hello fellow kids” vibe. Yeah you’re gonna grip n rip a slim jim and then grind a phat 360 noseplant I’m sure, Phony Hawk. Get the fuck outta here with that nonsense. Oh no wait, that’s what I did - threw the package across the room and went and did something else for a whole day.
I want to say that when I came back to the package to read the ingredients, I didn’t immediately read “Grip ‘N Rip” and get angry and throw the package across the room again, but that’s actually what happened. Are you noticing a theme here yet, sir? This product is so objectionable that I’ve been writing for two and half pages and I haven’t even gotten to the ingredients yet. It took me days of having this product in my home and staring at it and throwing it before I could bring myself to open the package! You have made a mistake, sir! This product is a mistake!
After being unable to get past the Grip ‘N Rip text twice, I knew I had to take drastic measures. Instead of trying to look at the package again, I instead put myself into a biofeedback loop and rewired my brain to always rewrite Grip ‘N Rip to GNR to Guns ‘N Roses. Normally, this wouldn’t be great for me, because I cannot fucking stand that band, but it at least served its purpose here, because I could look at your packaging, and instead of screaming in horror, I started screaming WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE in my best faux-Rose screech. My cats didn’t like it, and my newborn wasn’t pleased with me, but hey, these are the sacrifices we must needs make in this pursuit of disgusting novelty snack foods.
After finally having defeated the minotaur, I was able to reach my goal - to read the ingredients of this product. I wasn’t sure what I would find there - would there be cucumbers? Mustard seed? Garlic? I read the ingredients and there were all our old friends that we’d find in any Slim Jim – beef, pork, mechanically separated chicken, all as expected. I started to get disturbed, sir, because as I read through the ingredients everything looked like a normal Slim Jim, until –
Fucking dill weed? Dill weed? That’s how you decided to make this shit taste like a pickle? You put dill weed in it?
Listen man, we all know that there are things other than beef in Slim Jims, but we all also know how heavily y’all lean into the “beef” stick thing over there. No one would eat a Slim Jim if it was mechanically separated chicken jerky. You sell this shit as beef, and I will tell you for true, I have only had beef seasoned with dill once in my life, and that was in the Czech Republic. That one experience aside, I have never considered using dill to spice beef. So – in what you will notice is also becoming a theme here – I went and did some more research. First on google - are there any beef and dill recipes out there? There are, but – and color me shocked here – the first couple hits are all Czech recipes. Now, sir, I know for certain you aren’t going after the Eastern European market segment here. You are marketing at bros, bros who wouldn’t be able to point out the Czech Republic on a clearly labeled map, with a neon sign at the top that read HERE THERE BE PRAGUE with an arrow pointed directly at the capital.
Still yelling “what the actual size eff-word” in my head, I leaned back in my chair and thought, how can I get into Mr. Slim’s head? Maybe he is being inspired by something… so I went down to my kitchen and grabbed my 1969 Betty Crocker Cookbook, because if you’ve got a target audience its the kids of the sort of mesoamerican suburbanite who lives in like Missouri or some shit who had that cookbook around, and maybe that style of cooking would give me a clue? Sir, I went through every beef recipe in that cookbook, and while some of them did call for some exotic ingredients – ooh, oregano, ooh, tarragon, oh oh oh, marjoram, how European! – even in 1969 not one recipe called for combining the dulcet tones of dill with the manly beefy goodness of beef. Honestly, I’m still flummoxed. As I mentioned earlier – the mind reels. I truly cannot figure out what you were thinking when you made this product.
Honestly, at this point, I was thoroughly sick of this ordeal, and I said to myself, you just gotta eat one of these things. So I finally opened the package, pulled out a Slim Jim, and —
AAAAAAAHHAAHHJGHAHAHGKHAHAGGAGGGGHGGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHGHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGAHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGAHHAHGAHGHAHGAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (x24)
Why.
The fuck.
Does every.
Fucking Smoked Snack Stick.
Have a goddamn pun on the package.
This is not a Taco Bell hot sauce packet in 1997. This is not a Snapple bottle cap. This is not a Terry Pratchett novel. This is not Rocky and Bullwinkle. It is twenty goddamn twenty-five and we as a society no longer wish to be pandered to by product producers, we want to eat our shitty meme products in peace. “Dill me in” go fuck yourself. Shit, we have a cucumber cat toy that has “Kind of A Big Dill” embroidered on it and even the cats don’t like it. ”Keep Calm and Pickle On” shut up that doesn’t even make any sense. “Ever a dill moment” that isn’t even the right phrase! It’s “never a dull moment” you cantankerous, obtuse spoon. “Meat Me” first of all – no, second of all – that doesn’t even make sense? Where? St Louis? Outside? Are you challenging me to a fight?
I will admit, sir, that by now, I had lapsed into despair. For the first time upon attempting to consume a product like this, I used one of my lifelines, and phoned a friend. His advice? Just gotta channel your inner Macho Man Randy Savage and go for it. And it was good advice, I guess, hell, didn’t even Hamlet tell us that the only way is through? I’d spent so much time and so many of my precious and dwindling brain cells on this terrible product that I just had to go forth and Do The Thing.
So I grabbed one that probably said, I don’t know, “Chronicle of a Dillth Foretold” or some shit on it, who can even pay attention anymore, tore the package where my rewired brain perceived “Sweet Child of Brine,” and was punched directly in the face with the biggest dill fist I have ever experienced. Sir, did you subcontract with some of those folks in Mendocino County who are breeding super-THC weed strains to make the dilliest dill strain possible? These things are offensively dilly, and I love dill, my favorite soup is borscht and my god the open package is sitting literal feet from me and its dill bitting its way into my nose like it’s on a 18v cordless DeWalt. Its not just dill, though, is it? It’s salty, umami, beefy dill. Sweaty dill. Fishy dill. Fishy, sweaty, beefy, umami dill. It is one of the most foul aromas I have ever had the displeasure to experience. I have smelled literal drains that smelled better than this. But then there’s nothing for it, I guess, and before I mechanically separated chickened out, I had to take a bite, and –
Oh gods, it burns. My lips are burning. My tongue is burning. My throat is burning. Is that, are my teeth burning? Oh god now my eustachian tubes are burning, the insides of my ears are burning, flames, flames on either side of my face, how is this even happening, my nose is burning, this smoked snack stick didn’t come anywhere near my eyes or nose or ears why is my entire head literally on fire –
I called on my inner Macho Man Randy Savage and he came to me and he grabbed onto that medieval peasant mentioned earlier as all the salt and MSG desiccated him into a corn husk doll of a man that briefly tried to anchor himself to the ground before the surface area of both him and the peasant turned them into a kite that the prevailing winds quickly launched over the continental US where they would eventually be mistaken for a Chinese spy balloon and shot down over Maryland by a hastily scrambled F-15.
All of the burning led directly to a massive coughing fit, and to me chugging half a liter of water. Eventually it all cleared, and I began to feel okay, perhaps normal? No, I fear I will never be normal again. Even after all the water, some flavor impressions remain – the haunting melody of more dill than belongs in a single product. A whisper of salted beef. The sharpest vinegar – is this what the glacial acetic acid in my college biochem lab would have tasted like, I wonder? God, more dill. MSG. Salt. So fucking much dill.
And I still have twenty goddamn five of these things.
This entire experience was… I don’t even know how to really describe it, sir. My heart is still thudding from all the salt of a single three-inch snack stick. This was less of a snack that I consumed, and more of a violent assault that was done onto me. I feel like I’m a worse person after having gone through the ordeal of experiencing one of these snack sticks. I have found the Real Slim Jim Shady, and I hate him. That’s you, by the way, sir. I hate you. Though, to be fair, perhaps not as much as Mrs. Slim hates you – because if you really think this pencil stub counts towards the “long bois gang” then I really have to wonder how many other lies you’ve told that poor woman over the course of your I am sure far too long marriage.
God, I have such a headache now. Please never make a product again.
With sincerity, and hatred,
Alex Parise
P.S. Oh Gods, the burps. Simply indescribable. Absolute ultraviolence. 0/10 stars.
