The idea of having all of these old MREs that I have yet to review has been gnawing at me. Thank you, I will be back next week.
I think it's time I dig in and find an old brown bag MRE that has yet to have its history preserved. And so it was I came such a thing! For your viewing and reading pleasure, I bring to you a 1982 Beef Stew MRE packed by "Southern PKG. and Storage Co., Inc" of Mullins, SC. I believe they later changed their name to the now widely known "Sopacko".
You may be wondering why it the top portion is missing. Well, I began to open this MRE up and dig into it but I just happened to catch myself in time as I remembered that it would probably be a bit wiser and selfless to take some pictures of it so I could review it. And so I did. There is your explanation for it being opened.
Here are the contents all laid out:
As you can undoubtedly tell, we have Beef Stew, Fruit Mix, Cherry Nut Cake, Peanut Butter, Cocoa Beverage Powder (Type 1), Crackers, and Accessory Packet A.
First, I will dig into the beef stew. I noticed that the pouch felt a little bloated. I began to wonder if the food had simply gone bad or if this was just the nature of how they packed these back then. It's a little hard to tell from the pics, but I decided to open the cardboard pouch and dig the retort pouch out. As you can see from the pic below, it has a date code of "2056". I also wonder why they glued the retort pouches to the cardboard.
Next I wanted to open up the cherry nut cake. Let's take a look!
And a date code of "2069".
Let's look at the fruit mix and crackers.
I find it interesting that the crackers were salted. I'm not sure why they no longer salt them, I wish they still did on the new MREs.
And here's everything laid out on a plate:
How's about a full assessment of everything? The cocoa tasted well. It had a slight odd taste to it, almost like someone had poured a shot of an alcoholic beverage of some sort, but it was definitely still drinkable. The cherry nut cake was still edible. It was very moist and sweet and had a strong molasses flavor to it. The saltine crackers and peanut butter were a bit bland, but were definitely still edible. The fruit mix tasted ok, but I believe some moisture had gotten into it overtime. It was unlike the other freeze dried fruit blocks I've had. It was flexible and I could bend it. While it still tasted fine, it was nowhere near satisfying compared to freeze dried fruit that's still in its original form.
That leaves us with the beef stew. I had a good feeling about this because I ate a 1987 Beef Stew menu twice within the last few months and it tasted great! However, this is a different story. Upon first taste, the stew was fairly good. But then it hit. My mouth was sullied with an incredibly bitter flavor so much that I had no choice other than to spit it out. (Perhaps I'm over-exaggerating a little here, but that was my initial reaction.) You may also notice that it has a somewhat "creamy" look to it. I really can't say whether or not that's by design, but my assumption is that it's not because I've never seen it like that before. And the ingredients don't lead me to believe there's anything that would cause it to look like that.
Well, at least it wasn't a total loss. Everything else was still pretty edible.
Last but certainly not least, we have the accessory packet to rummage through.
I can't say I've had Beechies gum in my 21 years of living, but it still held up and tasted very good. Everything else you see is standard in MREs past and present. I didn't dig into the coffee because it was simply late in the day and I don't want to keep myself awake for too long. Just by touching the packaging, the coffee and creamer do feel like they're still in powdered form. The toilet paper is definitely interesting because of the blue tone. I'm definitely keeping that around since they are so rare. The salt was produced by "Stickney & Poor" of Chelmsford, MA 01824.
My overall impressions? I suppose if you were starving enough, you'd be able to choke down the carb-based items without any trouble, and dare I say the stew. I'm sure I'd still feel ok if I were to choke down the rest of that stew but time and deprecation had eaten most of it for me. TL;DR: Everything was still good, expect for the main entree.
