Anyhow, after all this I was getting disillusioned with the world of MREs - until I tried this SurePak meal. It had a lot of components I'd read about on here and wanted to try and everything - just about- tasted great.
2013 Sopacko Surepak
2013 Sopacko Surepak
I picked up this "MRE" in an Army/Navy store in New Jersey. As you can see, the bag says it was packed by Sopacko. It looks like a Sopacko SurePak, but doesn't have an FRH.
This MRE was great for a bunch of reasons. Recently I tried, and reviewed, some old MREs. I also got my hands on a case of APack civilian MREs from about 2011. I haven't bothered reviewing those - honestly they were disappointing. The components held up well,that wasn't the issue. I went through a bunch of these, trying some and sorting out what I wanted to keep. The meals were very monotonous - 6 menus, 2 meals of each. Every meal had crackers, peanut butter, the same beverage base, a brown sugar pastry (Pop Tart) one of two kinds of cookies - oatmeal or chocolate chip. The oatmeal cookies were vastly superior to the choc. chip. Six of the 12 entrees were some kind of red sauce based pasta - pasta and veggies, pasta and meat sauce, chili with beans. They all tasted nearly identical.
Anyhow, after all this I was getting disillusioned with the world of MREs - until I tried this SurePak meal. It had a lot of components I'd read about on here and wanted to try and everything - just about- tasted great.
The first thing I noticed and tore into was the Cran-Apple Ranger bar. Guys, it was fantastic. It was soft and almost fresh, and the fruit just popped out at you. This was the best American MRE component I've had yet.
This MRE was great for a bunch of reasons. Recently I tried, and reviewed, some old MREs. I also got my hands on a case of APack civilian MREs from about 2011. I haven't bothered reviewing those - honestly they were disappointing. The components held up well,that wasn't the issue. I went through a bunch of these, trying some and sorting out what I wanted to keep. The meals were very monotonous - 6 menus, 2 meals of each. Every meal had crackers, peanut butter, the same beverage base, a brown sugar pastry (Pop Tart) one of two kinds of cookies - oatmeal or chocolate chip. The oatmeal cookies were vastly superior to the choc. chip. Six of the 12 entrees were some kind of red sauce based pasta - pasta and veggies, pasta and meat sauce, chili with beans. They all tasted nearly identical.
Anyhow, after all this I was getting disillusioned with the world of MREs - until I tried this SurePak meal. It had a lot of components I'd read about on here and wanted to try and everything - just about- tasted great.
The first thing I noticed and tore into was the Cran-Apple Ranger bar. Guys, it was fantastic. It was soft and almost fresh, and the fruit just popped out at you. This was the best American MRE component I've had yet.
Last edited by Biobrew on Fri Mar 31, 2017 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: 2013 Sopack Surepak
The Zapplesauce looked a little dark, but the taste was very good - sweet and apple-ly. I'm not really an applesauce guy but this was good stuff.
The crackers and grape jelly were - crackers and grape jelly. Not exciting, but again seemed fresh and tasted fine.
I opted to have the cocoa beverage hot, and it was very good. I can see how this component in a military MRE, would be favorite of the guys in the field, from a taste and comfort perspective. It was like every cup of instant cocoa I had as a kid after sledding all day and coming inside to drink cocoa, eat Nilla wafers and watch cartoons.
The entrée, however, was disappointing. It was a veggie lasagna. Apparently throwing a whole bunch of red beans into something makes it "veggie". The ingredients listed zucchini, but I didn't see any. I was also hoping for some pieces of tomato and onion and maybe a little spinach. No dice. And the taste was mediocre at best - somewhat bland, too much beans, and the sauce just wasn't very good.
Overall, it was cool to get to try some of these interesting components (Zapplesauce, Ranger bar), and the Surepak was head and shoulders above the Ameriqual Apack.
Re: 2013 Sopacko Surepak
Nice review! Yeah, there are a bunch of those Sure-Pak's out there that don't contain FRH's so it's not surprising that you didn't get one. But having the Zapplesauce sure does make up for it...so much better than regular applesauce!