With the grand opening of Hormel’s $8 million Spam Museum, there’s not much mystery left in the story of the world’s strangest can of food. The Rake dives in—only to learn the “Spam Gelatin Jump” has been canceled.
Now it’s just a savory memory. Marion Ross, Barb Billingsley, Tom Brokaw, and other dubious TV superstars were there. Southern Minnesotans bit into free Spamburgers. Teenie boppers bounced to the sounds of former Gear Daddy Martin Zellar, Austin’s hippest native son. Kids scrambled around a pork-themed amusement park. Tourists hauled around bags loaded down with cans of Spam extracted from a stack that spelled “SPAM” in six-foot high letters. “A lot of people come to stock up on it for the whole year, since it only costs a buck a can,” said a salesman who had already bagged his own year’s supply. Meanwhile, the line grew longer to buy Spam boxer shorts, Spam key chains, Spam license plate holders, and anything else that could conceivably be emblazoned with this four-letter word.
This was Spam Jam 2002 in Austin, Minnesota, and an occasion to celebrate the long-awaited inauguration of the $8 million Spam Museum and a new era of nostalgia. Even this all-American Spam (short for “spiced ham,” you know) suffered from the attacks of the pork-abstaining terrorists; the museum’s opening was postponed from mid-September 2001 until this summer.
The museum represents Hormel’s struggle to keep Spam a relevant pop cultural icon—like Coca-Cola, say, or Hershey bars—as opposed to shelved as a kitchsy reminder of a bygone era, outdated and mediocre American cuisine synonymous with unwanted email.
To clean up Spam’s image for the annual festival, some long-standing games have been nixed. There was a time when Spam Jam featured such events as the ever-unpopular Spam Gelatin Jump. “It’s basically all the white stuff around Spam in a big vat. You stick your arms in and pull out a golf ball for a prize,” said an attendant a few years ago when I last visited.
Even the beautiful blue and yellow Spambelle has been warehoused. The mini paddleboat, dating from 1956, used to give little rides to big eaters on Austin’s East Side Lake. But then the little steamboat sunk in 1999—on live TV. “They had to pull it out with a crane,” one eyewitness explained to me. “I guess the captain ate too much Spam!”
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