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Hello all. I made the decision to dig into my collection of pre-1996 MREs. I decided to take one for lunch. It's only about a quarter of a century old, how bad could it be? Anyway, I chose Frankfurters, Beef. I've heard a lot of interesting stories about this one, some good, many not so good. The closest I've had was a 1987 Frankfurters and Beans, but those had gone bad, and that was in 2016. My hope was that maybe these hadn't passed the threshold of actual expiration. Without further ado, let's see what we've got!
This one looks pretty exciting, so far! We have:

- Beef Frankfurters
- Potato Sticks
- Crackers
- Cocoa Beverage Powder
- Freeze Dried Strawberries
- Sugar Free Fruit Punch
- Peanut Butter
- Mars Bar
- Tabasco Sauce
- Brown MRE Spoon
- FRH Accessory Packet with:
- Matches
- Gum
- Toilet Paper
- Wet-nap
- Iodized Salt
- Creamer
- Taster's Choice Coffee
- Domino Sugar
Preparing the main meal wasn't too difficult. After filling the FRH with water, it silently sizzled for a few minutes but never got real hot. So I decided to add the salt from the accessory packet and voila! The FRH began to take off and got incredibly hot.

Here's a look at the potato sticks and the drinks.
And the whole meal, prepared!
I'll just begin on the left and work my way over to the right. The peanut butter was still good, as to be expected. I've yet to cross paths with bad peanut butter. I don't like to add too much to my crackers, it really provokes thirst. The crackers tasted delicous, however by this point they stopped adding salt to them so they're similar to crackers in current MREs. The potato sticks were also pretty good. They tasted very much like Lay's potato chips, but a bit thicker. This must be my first time having the freeze dried strawberries and as I expected, they were amazing! I make it a rule not to add water to it because that really takes the fun out of it. That's like adding water to that freeze dried ice cream produced by Mountain House. Sure, I guess you can but that's no fun! The Mar's bar was pretty delicous and candy bars are always a good thing to see in an MRE! Below is a picture of what it looks like inside the bar. It looks fairly solid.
The frankfurters were actually pretty good, much to my surprise. I started by taking a small bite at first to see if my taste buds would react negatively and they didn't. They tasted very smoky and salty. But I actually enjoyed them. The coffee wasn't dry molded and tasted great along with the cocoa. The fruit punch was very sweet but really helped balance out the overall "dryness" of this meal. As you can undoubtedly tell, this is a pretty carb heavy MRE so having something cold to drink is a must. I'm not fond of spicy things, so I will save the Tabasco sauce for another time when I will need it (as a not-so-picky eater, this happens rarely).

Overall, I really enjoyed this meal. I'm baffled by the simple fact that this MRE has been around approximately two years longer than I have yet everything in it tasted great.

Damn man I'd.be so excited to try one of those. I've never seen one of the 80s or 90s ones in real life they just don't exist here (Ireland).
What a great bit of luck that it was all so good still. You'd expect at least something to probably be compromised

Wow, it really held up well! I know the "fingers of death" had a pretty bad reputation back in the day, but I actually kind of liked them. They did provoke a little indigestion, but they were great for camping, and we would give them a little heating over the campfire.

I'm surprised the potato sticks hadn't gone rancid. That's great that it was in such great condition.

Thanks for sharing!

parafireboy wrote:They did provoke a little indigestion

Well, I guess that explains that.

parafireboy wrote:but they were great for camping, and we would give them a little heating over the campfire.

My four year old self would have to vehemently disagree with you. I remember, sometime back in the late 90s my dad and his friend from the Army took me on some boating trip for a night. Being four years old at the time, I became pretty restless quickly and desperately wanted to go home. In an attempt to calm me down, one of them handed me "the hot dog MRE" as I called it for the longest time. I began to open it but they took out all of the good stuff and left me with just the frankfurters. I was pretty upset and didn't even bother to eat them after that.

How would I react these days? Eating MREs and fishing on a boat sounds like a damn good time. I don't know what I was thinking, perhaps I wasn't thinking at all.

Conrad wrote:What a great bit of luck that it was all so good still. You'd expect at least something to probably be compromised

Oddly enough, there have been a few cases where I've come across old MREs in which everything is still good. I often that a lot of entrees with beef last longer than those with chicken or ham. I also tried an 80s Turkey with Gravy MRE about a year ago and that tasted awful! The ingredients mentioned that it had chicken stock in it, so I think that might have been the culprit.

I'm not the biggest fan of pork but I tried a Pork with Rice and BBQ Sauce MRE from 1992 a while ago and it tasted okay. But I was concerned that the strong BBQ flavor might have been masking the pork so I couldn't tell if it was actually bad or not. I ultimately chose not to finish the rest of it off.

Another bold and entertaining review Sentient! What a great presentation. And the Mars bar looks perfectly preserved. Love the old MRE story. Stuff like that.. if you only had pictures of your 4 year old self in that scenario.

The franks look darker than usual.. they're always so odd.
Last one i had was a 1982 DoP and it gave me indigestion just like parafireboy mentioned about his experience.
Also, i agree the potato sticks not being rancid.. amazing!

I had pork w rice in bbq sauce in Doswell.. huge thanks to Kman for that case he shared. I wish i could replay that trip over & over. It was a hoot. Yes.. the bbq sauce can mask anything that has gone off.. most adventurous!