There is a town in southeastern Minnesota that is called Austin and in it you can find the Hormel factory. At Hormel they make SPAM and they set up a museum about SPAM that is more fun then you would think SPAM could be. In 1937 The Hormel Company started to make SPAM out of the parts of the pig that were hard to sell. SPAM is a loaf of meat that comes in a can and is really just pork shoulder, ham, salt, sodium nitrate and gelatin from the pig’s skin. It isn’t the lips, eye, and other nasty pig parts that some people think.
When SPAM first hit the market a lot of companies jumped in and tried to imitate SPAM so as a solution Hormel offered a $100 prize to anyone who could come up with a brand name that would make it’s pork product stand out. The winner of the prize was a brother of one of the Hormel employees who suggested turning “spiced ham” into SPAM. It was a hit and SPAM took off in a big way.
Hormel calls SPAM the Rodney Dangerfield of lunch meat. “It don’t get no respect.” SInce SPAM gets the share of 75% of the canned meat market someone must be respecting it. thirty percent of all households in the United States has a can of SPAM in it and SPAM has been around a long time so it must be good.
SPAM was an important part of winning World War II for us. It was hard to get food to our troops and with SPAM it was a lot easier to feed our army. SPAM was meat in a can that didn’t need refrigeration so it was easy to transport to the armies. American G.I.’s claim that they hate SPAM since they were forced to eat so much of it during the war but more then likely they developed a taste for it. More then 5 billion cans of SPAM have been sold around the world since it became invented in l937. American’s consume 3.8 cans every second or 122 million cans a year. But Spam is most prized in South Korean where it is just as likely for a young man to come courting a woman with a can of SPAM as a box of candy. In the United States SPAM is most popular in Hawaii.
At the SPAM Museum in Austin, Minnesota you will find a lot of interactive displays for you to participate in. There is a quiz show that has questions about SPAM in it and you get to see first hand how the plant operation works. There is an area on the history of SPAM with life sized figures that will talk to you. There is an entertaining 12 minute video about the world’s affection for SPAM. The people of Hormel do a good job with this museum it is clean, entertaining, and the staff is friendly and happy to be there.
The SPAM museum is off I-90 at the 178B exit then you can follow the signs to the SPAM Museum. You should plan on spending at least an hour at the SPAM Museum. The SPAM Museum is opened Monday-Sunday 10-5, Sunday noon-4, it is closed on major holidays. The SPAM Museum is Free and if you would like more information you can phone1-800-588-7726. Seeing the SPAM Museum is a great winter getaway for the whole family. The SPAM Museum is designed to entertain everyone from young to old.
