1987 Beef Slices with Barbecue Sauce

[SentientTootsieRoll]

I wanted to try my luck and live dangerously again, so I took another old MRE for lunch. Today I brought a 1987 Beef Slices with Barbecue Sauce produced by Right Away Foods Corp. You'll have to forgive me for the overbright pictures, you can thank my Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and perhaps a little bit of user error on my part for that. My motto? It could be worse.

The MRE prior to opening:

Opened with everything laid out:

Contents:
- Beef Slices with Barbecue Sauce
- Crackers (the best ones produced!)
- Cookie Bar, Chocolate Covered
- Cheese Spread (oh no)
- Lemon-Lime Beverage Base Powder
- Freeze dried Peaches
- White MRE Spoon
- Accessory Packet A with:
-- Iodized Salt
-- Coffee Instant Type I
-- Creamer, Non-Dairy
-- Sugar
-- Tufco Toilet Paper
-- Matches
-- Gum

Accessory packet items showing the front and back of them:

Closeup of the Beef Slices in Barbecue Sauce retort pouch:

The coffee and lemon lime beverage prior to and after adding water, respectively:

Let's get the rest of the components prepared!

Closeup of the Beef Slices with Barbecue Sauce:

Closeup of the cookie bar, peaches, crackers and unopened cheese spread:

The result!:

Alright, I don't know why they pluralized the name of this MRE. As you can see, there is only one beef slice. Anyway, it tasted pretty good! The texture was reminiscent of roast beef, but perhaps a lot harder. Having a fork/steak knife would have been helpful. The sauce was the highlight of this meal, it was mildly spicy and had a nice brown sugar/molasses taste to it. They should bring this MRE back, something tells me that it would do quite well.

The oatmeal cookie bar was as delicious as always, the chocolate wasn't sour and it had a nice crunch to it. The freeze dried fruit was also very tasty. Now, the crackers from these 1987 MREs were done right. They were perfectly baked and have such a strong and natural wheat taste to them. You can even see bits of flour on them prior to taking them out. Come to think of it, I will need to take some nice closeups of them when I get a chance, it will make you hungry! I didn't want to destroy them with that cheese spread so I left that unopened. I will just store that away probably never open it, unless I get curious years down the road. I can only assume that it went bad like all cheese spread from this era of MREs has by this point.

The Type I coffee was still drinkable, as always. The sugar and creamer were also fine and brought the coffee to life. And that leaves us with the lemon-lime drink. At first, it had an odd flavor but I think it was alright. It was still powdered but it looked like the sugar or something had begun to separate. But I drank it nonetheless and I was pretty happy with it.

I finished everything off with the gum which was a bit hard initially but softened up after a few seconds of chewing. Still minty and sweet. I ultimately stored the toilet paper, salt and matches away for later use. The cheese spread? Well, let's just leave that alone for now.

[Conrad]

Nice review , I enjoyed reading it. Really gotta try some of these brown bag MREs before they get past the point of being somewhat reliably edible... Well as much as they are now.
This one does seem like one which should be brought back. The cookies, fruit and that main in particular

[NuWorldMann]

That looks pretty good, especially paired up with a molasses type sauce! Would like to see it packed with some rice or potatoes so it's more of a "meal". Haha, wouldn't mind looking upon that mystery meat without the sauce..was it like a Banquet Salisbury Steak with the smoke flavoring and fake grill marks?..looks as if all that sauce might be hiding something!

Classic crackers, cookie bar (chocolate covered) and some freeze dried peaches..sounds like a perfect MRE with those components. Cool review, thanks for putting it up!

[parafireboy]

Great review! I always enjoyed this one, and wish they would try re-introducing it into the lineup again. It's great that it held up so well and could be enjoyed after all this time. Thanks for sharing!