MREInfo.com

Someone asked me in email today about some new eBay auctions for Menu C "Military MREs". These are being sold by MREDepot/Steven Cyros and you can see one of the auctions here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0199174622

They include a *lot* of info and pics in the auction, but here's the gist of it:

These meals were custom ordered by a US Military Contractor (who shall remain nameless for legal reasons) working for the Government providing convoy security in Iraq, but due to increased restrictions in their operating rules of engagement and foreign oversight, they are scaling back their Middle Eastern operations.

ALSO NOTE; These MRE's are considered Menu ''C'' - there is no Menu A and Menu B in the C (C for Contract) Meals. These MRE Menus were cherry-picked by the Contractor to include the specific 2007 Menu Items that they wanted from Menu's A and B, as well as a lot of extra items and calories.

They have a full menu listing on there so check it out. I can't believe someone would actually cherry-pick the Omelet and Vegetable Manicotti but to each his own. :-)

Like I said, there are a lot of pics in the auction, but here are a couple of the more interesting ones:

MRE Bag from eBay auction vs. real 2007 MRE


I noticed a few things:

1. The soldier logo is different. Why would Ameriqual change it? I say Ameriqual because that's what's printed on the MRE case (see pic below).

2. They left the "Flamess Ration Heaters" text in but removed the company name and "Commercial resale is unlawful" text. Makes sense on the resale text, but why the company name?

3. The fonts are all wrong. When I made the MRE t-shirts for the site, it was a major pain in the ass to match up the fonts for "Meal" and "Ready-to-Eat". Look at the "a" in Meal - the beginning and ending strokes of the "a" are totally wrong. Also check out the word "eat" - it should be "Eat" with a capital E. And then check out the "y" and "t" in "Ready-to-eat". The lower part of the Y and T should be straight, not curved.

4. The line under the menu name is too thick and too far below the text.

I know I'm nitpicking on all this, but my point is if someplace like Ameriqual actually produced these, why are the details of the bag so "off"?

And check out these case pics:


It's definitely missing the "Commercial resale" text (understandable) but it's also saying they were produced by Ameriqual and they have the same NSNs as real military MREs.

And don't the newer 2006+ MREs say "MRE SF" (solid fiberboard) on the bottom of the case? Even the older MREs said "V2" to indicate the type of material used to construct the box. Here's a pic of the bottom of a 2006 case of MREs:



Personally, I think it's a pretty cool idea if there really were Menu C (for Contractor) MREs. I'm just curious as to why they would have made so many little changes to the way the MREs look and are packaged if they came from some place like Ameriqual.

What do you guys think?

Jan. 1, 2007 Update: please see this post: viewtopic.php?p=10390#10390 on page 9 of this thread for a summary of what we found.

Maybe they did those things all on purpose. Just to make it extra clear these are different from the 'Commercial Resale is Unlawful'-MRE's.

Maybe they just quickly changed the design of the MRE-bags before producing them because they knew these werent being sold to the government?

Looks like a good deal though, 55$ for a 11/2010 case, we can only dream of such auctions.

i think this is a very good fake because of the packaging: box and bag. how kman said there is some missing on both.

and i dont think they change the design within one year... i got 04/2010 and the bag looks like all others before. (except they changed meals ).

ich get a 07/2010 box next time so i can have a look.

btw:

nr 5 - picture says: "meatloaf with gravy"

http://www.mreinfo.com/us/mre/mre-menus.html

I've seen MREs similar to these last year, in a local surplus store. The lack of "not for sale" indicia on them did make me wonder a little, but the ones that I saw did have temperature sensors on the box. While the production of these meals for military contractors would make sense (no reason to re-invent the wheel ), MreDepot's text for the eBay sale sounds somewhat typical of the usual amatuerish eBay hype that one usually encounters on eBay listings. No doubt the insinuation that these were manufactured specifically for Blackwater Worldwide is designed to appeal to a specific audience. Quite honestly, it would not surprise me to see these being produced and marketed to all of the US contractors in the various war zones.

These meals were custom ordered by a US Military Contractor (who shall remain nameless for legal reasons) working for the Government providing convoy security in Iraq, but due to increased restrictions in their operating rules of engagement and foreign oversight, they are scaling back their Middle Eastern operations.

I don't they are "fakes" per se. There is no claim being made that they were specifically obtained from the military, as a matter of fact, quite to the contrary. Ameriqual's ability to produce these products for civilian resale to military contractors is probably predicated on the premise that the contents do not contain any components that were supplied by US Government resources, but rather components that are available from commercial vendors. It's not a big stretch since more and more components used in MREs and FSRs are being sourced from commercial vendors rather than including government supplied components or materials.

German_EPA wrote:i think this is a very good fake

kman wrote:
(...)

What do you guys think?

If these "MREs" are an imitation/copy, it means they are as valuabley as a Rolex wrist watch that "they" copy them...

To my opinion it could be possible both, they are faked and they are made for some civilain contractors like KBR and others
I saw some guys of them at "Combat Diaty" DVD

This is nothing but pure speculation, but I would think the private security contractors in Iraq would be one of those special agencies allowed to purchase MREs from the DOD. Like you said, why reinvent the wheel, so why spin up a whole new production of these special MREs when you could just buy them direct? If the DOD pays/charges $82 per case of MREs when they buy millions of them, you would think a special run like this would cost a lot more.

Then again, maybe Ameriqual/Sopakco/Wornick had a bunch of leftover parts and pieces and made the PSC's a good offer.

Even if these aren't "real" military MREs from one of the "Big Three" manufacturers, they're still a pretty good copy. My main concern would be them using the Ameriqual name (if they're not really from Ameriqual) and using the NSN number if they're not really the same as the military MREs.

I'd suspect that military contractors, like any other business people, would look for a source that does not include the third-party mark-ups that would include the administrative costs of the DOD. It would appear to me that they (the contractors) are just cutting out the proverbial "middle-man." As we all already know, the manufacturers are able to produce the branded "civilian" versions and sell them retail for much less than the DOD's advertised price (and the lack of a few components would not be enough to justify the differences in pricing.) I doubt that DOD actually pay's $82 per case, but that is what they bill out the cost to receiving agencies in Government funny money, which would, of course include all of their internal handling charges and acquisition costs. Also, one should bear in mind that the DOD contracts for the purchase of both components and meals, are based on terms that are FOB their depot (i.e. the cost includes shipping.)

I don't doubt that these are actually produced by Ameriqual, I don't think they're fakes in that sense, or fakes at all, just different packaging. And for the sake of simplicity, they may have just used the same outer packaging that they use for the DOD meals rather than going to the additional cost of having specially printed boxes made for smaller orders. Of course, I suppose, in retrospect, Ameriqual could have just put a piece of tape over the NSN number , but that too is an added material and labor expense.

kman wrote:If the DOD pays/charges $82 per case of MREs when they buy millions of them, you would think a special run like this would cost a lot more.
...
Even if these aren't "real" military MREs from one of the "Big Three" manufacturers, they're still a pretty good copy. My main concern would be them using the Ameriqual name (if they're not really from Ameriqual) and using the NSN number if they're not really the same as the military MREs.

All of that sounds good, but I keep coming back to the graphics on the bag. Why redesign the bag graphics...and redesign it so poorly...when the original would have been fine - all they had to do was remove the "Commercial resale" text and they'd be done.

Then again, I have a couple of cases of MCWs - one case has the graphics printed as "Food Packet, Cold Weather" with a poor choice of font while the other case has "Meal, Cold Weather" with the correct MRE bag fonts. And both MCWs were from Ameriqual.