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Greetings All,

I recently bought several cases of vintage brown bag MREs to resell, and to my surprise, there were one and a half cases of 1982 MREs! I decided to pick one from the opened case and give it a try. The one I chose ended up being Menu 12B, Chicken Loaf. Sounds appetizing, right?! Anyway, upon opening the bag, I could see that most of the components appeared to be in perfect shape! The exception being the FD strawberries. I could immediately tell that the packaging had become delaminated and the vacuum seal had been broken. We'll get to that later.
First, I opened the accessory packet and dumped it's contents on the table. The contents of the accessory packet were:

Coffee Instant Type I
Non-Dairy Creamer
Sugar
Salt
Milk Caramels
Chewing Gum
Matches
Toilet Paper

The coffee, creamer, salt and sugar seemed to be fine (although I never opened them). The biggest surprise was the Caramels though. To my surprise they were still very soft and had not dried out!
Now on to the main itself. I opened the olive green box with the main entree, and there was a small dab of glue holding it in the box. I was able to get it out without damaging the box. The date code on it was "2106" (April 15, 1982). I boiled it for about 15 minutes in the pouch and hesitantly opened it and gave it a smell. It smelled like a typical chicken ration would! No foul smell at all (no pun intended). I dumped the delicious looking loaf of meat into a container and looked it over a bit. The surface felt a bit soft and squishy, almost like a Pâté. I took a spoon and broke into the loaf. The pieces of chicken inside looked perfectly fine, so I took a small bite. It tasted pretty good! Well, as good as something called "Chicken Loaf" could possibly be. It tasted a lot like the canned chicken you buy at the store for making chicken salad, only with a lot more preservatives. Not bad!

Next I moved onto the crackers, which upon first glance looked like they were still under a perfect vacuum seal. Slowly tearing open the package, I was greeted by a nice hiss as the air rushed back in. The contents looked perfectly fresh, but smelled a bit stale. These were the old style salted crackers, so that was a nice change from the non-salted crackers I am used to eating. I took a bite, and as expected, they were a bit stale but good!

Next was the peanut butter, the main component of the ration that I was a bit nervous to try. At first, the packet was very hard at one end and very soft at the other. This told me that the oils had separated. So I kneaded it for a few minutes until it felt like a consistent, soft peanut butter. I tore open the edge of the packet and squeezed a bit out onto my spoon. It smelled perfectly fine! I gave it a taste, expecting my tongue and throat to tell me it was a bad idea... Nope! It tasted good and gave me no ill effects. I ended up putting it on the crackers and finished it off!
Next came the only component that I was sure would be bad... the freeze dried strawberries. I opened the package and heard no hiss. The block of strawberries was very spongy, sticky, and had turned a very attractive shade of black and brown. They smelled like strawberries, but I was not bold enough to try them. I'm a bit allergic to strawberries, so it was no loss to me!
Now it was time to have dessert... the chocolate covered cookies! The package looked to have some delamination, but still appeared to have it's vacuum seal. I slowly tore open the package and was pleased to hear a strong hiss. Immediately I was greeted by a pleasant milk chocolate smell. Looking at the cookies, there was absolutely no oxidation to the chocolate whatsoever! I never would have expected nearly 40 year old chocolate to look and smell this fresh! The only issue with them was that they were stuck together and would not separate. I cracked off a corner, and they were still crispy! I took a bite... delicious! They were perfectly preserved. There was no foul taste to the chocolate or cookie whatsoever. They tasted like cookies that you would buy at the store today! This was definitely the most well preserved component of this ration.
I have no idea how these rations were stored, but I can imagine by looking at the boxes, that they were probably in a garage or shed. To my surprise, this ration was preserved pretty well despite what appeared to be less than optimal storage. This is the oldest ration I have tried, so I thought it was fitting that it would be my first ration review. I apologize for the long post, but I hope you enjoyed my rambling about this ration. I also have cases of rations from 1982, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1998, and 2004. I may do another review if you guys want.

Thanks for looking!

Very nice, good sir, I enjoyed it. Especially the thumbs up photos which made me chuckle.

Too bad about the FD Strawberries though, I really enjoy the old FD fruit packs.

Nice review!
I loved those cookies. Remember that meal . I thought I remember adding Tabasco to the chicken though.

very nice review

btw the tabasco didn't arrive in the mres before 1986 or maybe it was 1987 in a few menus only.

cheers ken

norge wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 17, 2019 10:55 am

very nice review

btw the tabasco didn't arrive in the mres before 1986 or maybe it was 1987 in a few menus only.

cheers ken

Yeah, maybe I’m thinking of the chicken with rice

Smitty wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 16, 2019 6:51 pm

Very nice, good sir, I enjoyed it. Especially the thumbs up photos which made me chuckle.

Me too, great idea

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'm glad you guys liked my review. I would like to do some more reviews, so let me know which menus from the years listed in my original post and I might try them. Not the 1982 Beefsteak ration though! That one is way too rare to open up! I know... this one was too, but I didn't know that when I did it! Anyway, let me know.

Thanks again!

Nice review man good job