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How A Massive Turkey Screw-up Created TV Dinners · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. If you are hearing this
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Speaker 1: the day it comes out here in these United States,
0:36
Speaker 1: then happy Thanksgiving to you, super producer Max, to you
0:43
Speaker 1: knowl and I guess to me it's weird to say
0:46
Speaker 1: happy Thanksgiving to yourself. Gobble gobble, Max, Gobble gobble gobble,
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Speaker 1: who likes uh you guys, you guys turkey? Boys like
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Speaker 1: turkeys turkey. I have a complicated relationship with turkeys. They're
1:01
Speaker 1: one of the few birds that I don't get on with,
1:03
Speaker 1: one of the few animals so I don't get on with.
1:05
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, we talked about it both
1:07
Speaker 1: on Stuff they want, you know, and Ridiculous History. There
1:10
Speaker 1: can be they're aggressive, it's true, but also like, I
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Speaker 1: don't know, has anyone ever really attempted to have a
1:16
Speaker 1: domesticated pet turkey a little leash perhaps with a little
1:20
Speaker 1: collar on it. You know it's been done, you know,
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Speaker 1: someone's statistically likely, but seemingly a bad form. But yet somehow, Okay,
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Speaker 1: that's a slaughter. These these big beefy boys and populate
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Speaker 1: our Thanksgiving tables with them. Remember the whole of course,
1:38
Speaker 1: you remember it still goes on, the whole pardoning of
1:40
Speaker 1: the turkey thing. That's an interesting tradition, don't you think.
1:44
Speaker 1: Are you guys ricking Morty fans? Yes? Yeah, Have you
1:47
Speaker 1: guys seen the episode of Rick and Morty where Rick
1:50
Speaker 1: turns himself into our Turkey so they can get a
1:52
Speaker 1: pardon from the prest have Yeah, I've seen every episode. Yeah,
1:55
Speaker 1: it's it's worth it, especially if you're a Rick and
1:57
Speaker 1: Morty fan. That's the episode to revisit today. In fact,
2:00
Speaker 1: we're we're friends with Dan Harmon. We've been on his
2:03
Speaker 1: show Harmon Town, and he's come over to our show. Stuff.
2:07
Speaker 1: They don't want you to know. That was a roller
2:09
Speaker 1: coaster of a conversation and it went in unexpected places.
2:13
Speaker 1: In that spirit, this episode, which is a holiday episode,
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Speaker 1: is not going to talk about some of the things
2:20
Speaker 1: you might expect from a Thanksgiving episode of a history show.
2:24
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk about, you know, turkey partning
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Speaker 1: too much because we we all know that story. You've
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Speaker 1: probably heard the history of Thanksgiving, either the real version
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Speaker 1: or the sanitized version countless times growing up in the States.
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Speaker 1: Instead we decided to look at this through the angle
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Speaker 1: of one of our favorite things in all of history. Food. Uh.
2:49
Speaker 1: This is something that is close to you, regardless of
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Speaker 1: what you eat, where you live, or even if you
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Speaker 1: if you've never eaten turkey for some reason, this still
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Speaker 1: affects you. No, we're talking about TV dinners probablarly known
3:03
Speaker 1: as microwave meals. Right, Yeah, I love that TV dinner.
3:07
Speaker 1: I guess any dinner contectively to be consumed in front
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Speaker 1: of the TV. The idea here being it is self contained,
3:14
Speaker 1: comes with its own you know, throwaway receptacle. Um. So
3:19
Speaker 1: you know, you know, all you have to do is uh,
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Speaker 1: supply a fork, perhaps the knife if you if you
3:24
Speaker 1: need to, and then you know, rinse and repeat and
3:27
Speaker 1: enjoy your stories. Yeah. You don't really need any extra stuff,
3:30
Speaker 1: don't need any condiments. I mean, you know, I personally
3:33
Speaker 1: like to up a TV dinner a little bit, uh
3:36
Speaker 1: add a little bit of extra spice, perhaps a little
3:39
Speaker 1: Worcester sauce. I don't know who knows, but whatever it
3:41
Speaker 1: might be. Um. But some people, this is literally the
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Speaker 1: thing they fear the most is having to overthink cooking
3:47
Speaker 1: or meal prep. You know, so leave it to the professionals,
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Speaker 1: and oh, we know all TV dinners aren't created equal,
3:53
Speaker 1: but it really did come down to kind of an
3:56
Speaker 1: interesting backstory. These frozen, pre cooked, pre proportioned you know,
4:02
Speaker 1: m R. Ease of consumer culture essentially meals ready to eat. Uh.
4:07
Speaker 1: You know, a military thing, Benn. And you've collected some
4:09
Speaker 1: of these in the past, haven't you. Yeah, yeah, I
4:12
Speaker 1: have again. Uh for for the size of my pantry,
4:17
Speaker 1: I have way too much food because I'm still an
4:19
Speaker 1: eagle scout and feel like I have to be cartoonishly
4:22
Speaker 1: prepared for things. So I have m R. Ease from France,
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Speaker 1: Russia and the US. I also, you know, I don't
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Speaker 1: have as many microwave meals as usual because I really
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Speaker 1: like to cook. I know what you do too, knowld.
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Speaker 1: And this is where our research associate for today, Max Williams,
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Speaker 1: decided to start off with a hot take by saying
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Speaker 1: cooking is dumb, sir, I take exception, though I respect
4:49
Speaker 1: your right to disagree. That is the perspective of the
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Speaker 1: poor cook Smith. I would argue, no game, no game
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Speaker 1: in the kitchen. I mean sorry, I got a busy
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Speaker 1: life on like y'all, so I don't really have time
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Speaker 1: to cook. I'm out here being fancy, so you know
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Speaker 1: what I listen, you're I'm sorry, you're being fancy with
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Speaker 1: your microwave meals this hungry man. Yeah, you know, you
5:18
Speaker 1: know the uh my personal favorite is you know, the
5:20
Speaker 1: dinosaurs chicken nuggets. They're a bang for sure. They taste
5:24
Speaker 1: better when they're shaped like things, and you can have
5:26
Speaker 1: a little adventures with them. Put them in your mashed potatoes,
5:29
Speaker 1: make a little volcano mountain. No. I like to do
5:31
Speaker 1: a I like to do a recreation of the great
5:34
Speaker 1: extinction of the dinosaurs, you know, by dipping some stuff,
5:37
Speaker 1: and then I like to sort of throw them in
5:38
Speaker 1: the air and then catch them with my mouth. I'm
5:40
Speaker 1: an adult, I can vote, you know what I mean?
5:43
Speaker 1: Something should have done. No. Part of the beauty of
5:46
Speaker 1: being an adult as you can do whatever the hell
5:48
Speaker 1: you want. You can play with your food on the regular. Uh.
5:52
Speaker 1: And and we and we we take advantage of our
5:54
Speaker 1: adult status in these ridiculous ways pretty regularly. But the
5:58
Speaker 1: backstory that I was and aware of is that like
6:01
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting advancements in technology and let's not
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Speaker 1: live freezing and uh in refrigeration is technology even in
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Speaker 1: its earliest days. It is a form of technology even
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Speaker 1: without electrical components. Oftentimes innovations come from mistakes UH that
6:19
Speaker 1: then leads to solutions. Then you realize the mistake, or
6:23
Speaker 1: when you use the thing wrong or you know, in malfunction,
6:27
Speaker 1: it actually created a new and desired effect, such as
6:31
Speaker 1: the case with the Swanson's UH Food Corporation. Yeah, this
6:36
Speaker 1: is good. This is a beautiful point, and I'm glad
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Speaker 1: we're making it early on. The microwave itself is the
6:42
Speaker 1: result of a mistake and accidental discovery. Percy Spencer was
6:48
Speaker 1: a guy working for Raytheon back in the day, in
6:51
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, I think, and he realized a radar
6:55
Speaker 1: set he was working on had melted a good bar,
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Speaker 1: a Mr. Good Bar candy bar he had in his pocket.
7:03
Speaker 1: That mistake, that love of Mr Goodbar is what led
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Speaker 1: to the microwave. And years back I used to write
7:11
Speaker 1: a show for how Stuff Works called Stuff of Genius,
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Speaker 1: kids show about inventors, and that's how I learned that
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Speaker 1: Clarence Bird's Eye was the pioneer for the freezing methods
7:23
Speaker 1: you're talking about, Noll. If you look at it, the
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Speaker 1: groundwork for TV dinners. Really starts back in n when
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Speaker 1: Bird's Eye figures out this method for freezing fish. And
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Speaker 1: he learned this from Native people from First Nations folks
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Speaker 1: in Canada who had been preserving food due to the
7:43
Speaker 1: hostile environment for thousands of years. And we know that
7:48
Speaker 1: people have been eating frozen meat before in the United States,
7:52
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really popular because it didn't taste that great.
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Speaker 1: You could definitely tell something had been frozen. They had
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Speaker 1: weird textures, they didn't taste as nice. Birds. I changed
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Speaker 1: that with flash freezing technology, yeah, you know, and none
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Speaker 1: of that freezer burn or weird kind of pockets of
8:12
Speaker 1: inconsistent freezing. You know, it's all about the timing, right,
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Speaker 1: It's a bit flash freezing freezes everything the same temperature,
8:19
Speaker 1: same time, all in one kind of like you know,
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Speaker 1: Caveman style ice block, right, and then therefore when it
8:26
Speaker 1: when it defrosts or microwaves, everything theoretically reheats at the
8:30
Speaker 1: same temperature. And as you know, sometimes there are microwave
8:34
Speaker 1: meals that have instructions about stirring and then continuing to
8:38
Speaker 1: microwave and all of that, and that's usually just to
8:40
Speaker 1: encourage that even heating but this was absolutely revolutionary because
8:45
Speaker 1: now these things were palatable, and it prevented some of
8:49
Speaker 1: these issues that came along with slow freezing things like
8:53
Speaker 1: meat and poultry, which would actually cause them to lose
8:57
Speaker 1: their flavor and the texture would be weird too. Right, Yeah, exactly.
9:01
Speaker 1: And there's a lot to Bird's Eye story. I think
9:04
Speaker 1: we we we should spend some time on a bird's
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Speaker 1: eyel that might be a recognizable brand to a lot
9:08
Speaker 1: of our fellow ridiculous historians today still around those pretty
9:12
Speaker 1: the boiling bag corn and you know, whatever it might be.
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Speaker 1: Lots of frozen vegetables still come from the Bird's Eye Company. Yep, yep.
9:19
Speaker 1: And Bird's Eye turns out as a Brooklyn cat. And
9:22
Speaker 1: he's born in Brooklyn, uh And he was always interested
9:26
Speaker 1: in the natural sciences. He went to Amherst College in
9:30
Speaker 1: nineteen o six, where for two years he studied biology
9:34
Speaker 1: until he ran out of money unfortunately, so he went
9:38
Speaker 1: to the labor market. He works for the U. S
9:40
Speaker 1: Department of Agriculture, and he travels around. He's in New Mexico,
9:44
Speaker 1: he's in Arizona. In nineteen twelve, he makes it up
9:48
Speaker 1: to Canada. He takes on a new profession. He becomes
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Speaker 1: a fur trader, and he does this, you know, on
9:54
Speaker 1: and off for about let's say five years. And while
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Speaker 1: he's going around Labrador in Canada, he says, oh, look,
10:03
Speaker 1: people freeze food in the winter because they can't get
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Speaker 1: fresh food during that season, So how do they fix it?
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Speaker 1: And when he sees what they've been doing, when he
10:13
Speaker 1: sees what they've learned again over thousands of years, he says, huh,
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Speaker 1: maybe I can take these ancient techniques and apply them
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Speaker 1: to the modern day. So he gets back to the
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Speaker 1: States and he starts experimenting. This leads to him founding
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Speaker 1: General Seafoods Company in nineteen four and uh, I think
10:34
Speaker 1: it's not too long after. It's when he starts selling
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Speaker 1: this stuff. And this is what makes the Bird's Eye
10:42
Speaker 1: family fortune. His most successful thing is like big innovation
10:48
Speaker 1: was that rapid freezing knoll where they take packaged food,
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Speaker 1: they have to refrigerated metal plates and they flash freeze it.
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Speaker 1: He didn't make the first frozen food sold in stores,
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Speaker 1: but his is so efficient and kept things so flavorful
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Speaker 1: that it clearly dominated the market, like right after it
11:07
Speaker 1: came out. So is that proprietary technology ben like, at
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Speaker 1: this point, is this the only game in town, do
11:13
Speaker 1: you think? Or is this something that is that can
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Speaker 1: then be kind of repurposed by other companies. That's a
11:19
Speaker 1: good question. So he does get patents for this stuff.
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Speaker 1: But eventually in also in he sells his patents for
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Speaker 1: twenty two million dollars to Goldman Sacks in the and
11:33
Speaker 1: the post them serial company. They are not a name
11:38
Speaker 1: you would hear these days. It's not a story the
11:40
Speaker 1: Jedi will tell you. But this eventually led to the
11:43
Speaker 1: formation of General Foods. Do you say, post them serial company?
11:48
Speaker 1: Pos t U M post them so? But didn't did
11:52
Speaker 1: they shorten that to post? Eventually they did. It became
11:55
Speaker 1: post consumer brands. That's what it is now, things like
11:59
Speaker 1: gold and Crisp or Raisin Brand. They really, they really,
12:03
Speaker 1: they really lean into the post logo on the boxes
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Speaker 1: of some of these Raisin Brand in particular, and the
12:11
Speaker 1: just absolutely absurdly titled Grape Nuts which contains neither grape
12:16
Speaker 1: nor nor nuts. Also, uh, I might make some enemies here, folks,
12:21
Speaker 1: but since we're in a safe space and we're all friends,
12:24
Speaker 1: I'll just say it. I don't like Raisin brand. You know,
12:26
Speaker 1: when they're like two scoops. It's just like an extra
12:29
Speaker 1: scoop of poop for me was too much already. Raisins
12:33
Speaker 1: are failed grapes. Their grapes they dropped out, you know
12:36
Speaker 1: what I mean. I agree they gave up on life. Man. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: my girlfriend really loves Raisin brand, But I am with
12:42
Speaker 1: you that as a trash cereal, as is grape nuts
12:45
Speaker 1: and shredded wheat. These are all legacy cereals, and I'm
12:48
Speaker 1: sure there's a place for them and many people's pants.
12:50
Speaker 1: Multimeal senior home centers, you know, that's the main market.
12:55
Speaker 1: But do you remember O G shredded wheat? You guys,
12:58
Speaker 1: it was just like it was huge giant blocks of
13:00
Speaker 1: shreds of wheat, and then you know, many wheats became
13:03
Speaker 1: more of the thing. But I think you could still
13:05
Speaker 1: buy the ones that have four giant freaking bricks of
13:09
Speaker 1: wheat shreds. Yeah, Max, what's on your mind? So? Um,
13:13
Speaker 1: we're talking about all this like old school grows cereal
13:16
Speaker 1: and like that's like all my daddy's he's obsessed with
13:19
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. And like I remember when the
13:23
Speaker 1: pandemic was first taken off, there was I guess a
13:25
Speaker 1: shortage of grape nuts, which I wouldn't have known. I
13:28
Speaker 1: don't think y'all would have known. But we like a
13:30
Speaker 1: group thread and my dad's like, yeah, it's really hard,
13:33
Speaker 1: Like they're trying to charge me like thirty six dollars
13:34
Speaker 1: for a box of grape nuts on Amazon, and it's like,
13:37
Speaker 1: why don't you just not eat grape nuts? Like what
13:39
Speaker 1: what would I do without grape nuts? It's like, eat
13:41
Speaker 1: anything else save thirty six dollars a box is what
13:44
Speaker 1: you would do? Uh. It actually says though on the
13:48
Speaker 1: page on Post despite its name, grape nuts do not
13:51
Speaker 1: contain grapes nor nuts. Legends state that the c W
13:55
Speaker 1: Post believed glucose so what he referred to as grape
13:58
Speaker 1: sugar formed during the baking process. Well, you can't win
14:03
Speaker 1: them all. Uh. This this, and also let us know
14:07
Speaker 1: what your favorite at least favorite cereals are. We probably
14:10
Speaker 1: should do an episode on cereal in the future. But
14:13
Speaker 1: but we're getting to the Thanksgiving part because this is
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Speaker 1: the story. Microwave dinners are the story of a series
14:21
Speaker 1: of weird accidents and discoveries and mistakes. Just for the record,
14:27
Speaker 1: this this this bird's eye stuff. These are not microwave dinners.
14:30
Speaker 1: These are frozen you know, frozen foods, right, preserve frozen corn,
14:36
Speaker 1: frozen vegetables, frozen meats, but not all put together into one,
14:40
Speaker 1: one deal. Yeah, yeah, not yet. But we have to
14:43
Speaker 1: know about that technology to understand what led to TV
14:47
Speaker 1: dinners today. As we see, war drives a lot of
14:51
Speaker 1: human innovation in addition to making so much tragedy and atrocity.
14:57
Speaker 1: World War two accelerated medical technology. World War two accelerated
15:02
Speaker 1: packaging technology, supply chain logistics, and it accelerated the popularity
15:08
Speaker 1: of frozen food. People started acquiring the bird's eye process.
15:14
Speaker 1: Folks like Maxim Food Systems Inc. In they used this
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Speaker 1: flash freezing technology to create frozen, prepackaged dinners. But they
15:24
Speaker 1: were just for civilian air carriers and the military. They
15:29
Speaker 1: had a cool name too. I like this name, strato
15:32
Speaker 1: plates or sky plates. It's the meals of the future
15:37
Speaker 1: of the air. You know, they should have called mashed
15:40
Speaker 1: potatoes cloud potatoes, Like I can think of all these
15:42
Speaker 1: different names. I love it. No, it's really smart. Good branding.
15:46
Speaker 1: Unnecessary kind of because it's not really public facing. Certain
15:50
Speaker 1: things a little bit wasted, but yeah, this is this
15:53
Speaker 1: is essentially frozen m R E S. M R e's
15:56
Speaker 1: by the way, you know, not to be the dead
15:58
Speaker 1: horse here, but they are dry. They are not They
16:01
Speaker 1: don't need to be heated, isn't that right? Pen Or
16:03
Speaker 1: like they're they're freeze dried in some sense, or they
16:05
Speaker 1: don't need to be they're like preserved in kind of
16:08
Speaker 1: like an air tight packaging. But they're not frozen. Yeah,
16:11
Speaker 1: they're vacuum sealed. They're not frozen, and they're supposed to
16:13
Speaker 1: have a they they have a wide temperature tolerance. It
16:17
Speaker 1: will impact how long they last. But if you have
16:20
Speaker 1: them stored in a in a cool, dry place, they
16:23
Speaker 1: can keep for a long time. For anybody who has,
16:28
Speaker 1: let me put this diplomatically, been in a situation where
16:31
Speaker 1: you ate m R e's for a while, you may
16:34
Speaker 1: know the most popular urban legend about them, which is
16:37
Speaker 1: that they can give you constipation. No comment either way,
16:41
Speaker 1: but would love to hear your war stories about it. No,
16:43
Speaker 1: you are correct. One thing you will need that n
16:46
Speaker 1: m R A doesn't include is water. So a lot
16:49
Speaker 1: of the drink packets are going to be powdered and
16:52
Speaker 1: you add water to them, but you don't have to
16:55
Speaker 1: heat this stuff to eat it, which can be key
16:58
Speaker 1: if you're in a um an active situation, right probably
17:03
Speaker 1: you know, we like a hot meal. There are certain meals.
17:05
Speaker 1: I'm no stranger to eating cold leftovers, you know, usually
17:10
Speaker 1: a little bit drunk in the middle of the night.
17:12
Speaker 1: Not gonna lie, but they definitely have a different They
17:15
Speaker 1: hit different than when they're warm e s. Humans tend
17:18
Speaker 1: to like certain things that we expect to be hot
17:20
Speaker 1: to be hot, unless we're talking cold pizza. Day after
17:25
Speaker 1: pizza is really good and it's due to the chemical
17:29
Speaker 1: reactions between the bread, the cheese and the tomato. God,
17:32
Speaker 1: we're fun at parties. But so we've got the strato plates,
17:36
Speaker 1: we've got the sky plates. And the interesting thing is
17:39
Speaker 1: these playing This is almost like a marketing ploy by
17:42
Speaker 1: the Maxim Company in a weird way because along with these,
17:46
Speaker 1: you know, these meals, maxis and is also installing their
17:50
Speaker 1: line of Whirlwind electric ovens, which is a precursor to
17:55
Speaker 1: convection ovens. W. L. Maxon, you know, was was the
17:59
Speaker 1: founder of this company, and this is sort of a
18:00
Speaker 1: structor genius on his part to get these things to
18:03
Speaker 1: get in with kind of the military, right this Unfortunately,
18:06
Speaker 1: his plan to expand the strato plates idea to a larger,
18:11
Speaker 1: more consumer facing audience died along with the man, but
18:16
Speaker 1: it opened the door for others to jump into this
18:20
Speaker 1: kind of burgeoning new, uh new food space. And we
18:24
Speaker 1: remember Maxim's efforts because he did. He did place an
18:28
Speaker 1: important brick in the pavement toward towards your grocery store today.
18:34
Speaker 1: So there's this other guy named Jack Fisher, and he
18:39
Speaker 1: also wants to get in the frozen food business, and
18:43
Speaker 1: like Maxim before him, he wants to aim for a
18:47
Speaker 1: specific demographic, a specific slice of customerhood. Customer two. We're
18:52
Speaker 1: just making up words. It's fine, it's American English. Uh.
18:55
Speaker 1: He has these things that are frozen meals. They're in
18:58
Speaker 1: aluminum trays and he calls them frigie dinners like frigid
19:02
Speaker 1: air dash dinner. And he said, look, I'm not gonna
19:06
Speaker 1: sell these necessarily in grocery stores. I got a business
19:09
Speaker 1: to business model, and my business sells exclusively to bars,
19:14
Speaker 1: basically bars that not just every bar, bars that want
19:20
Speaker 1: to feed hungry customers so they keep consuming booze, but
19:25
Speaker 1: also bars that don't want to spend the scratch to
19:28
Speaker 1: hire a cook or build a kitchen. So he's that's
19:32
Speaker 1: what he's doing. You could call them lazy bars. Maybe
19:35
Speaker 1: they just didn't have the real estate behind the bar
19:37
Speaker 1: to have a kitchen. So he's selling these things, and
19:41
Speaker 1: uh he meets with some success, but Frozen Dinners are
19:45
Speaker 1: still not something you see in the average US household
19:48
Speaker 1: because history is still waiting for one big, great mistake.
19:55
Speaker 1: And this great mistake, folks, is all about Thanksgiving, and
20:00
Speaker 1: it's all about turkeys. Turkey. Yuh talk to talk a
20:05
Speaker 1: little turk. It's worth it. Let's get turky, gobble it up.
20:08
Speaker 1: So yeah, this the Albert and Meyer Bernstein. Um, we're
20:14
Speaker 1: two brothers who founded the Frozen Dinners Incorporated under a
20:20
Speaker 1: label that I love because it is it's kind of
20:24
Speaker 1: does didn't age well that I do. I do get
20:25
Speaker 1: an image with the one eyed Eskimo. I imagine he
20:28
Speaker 1: is winking in some just to some degree, probably sort
20:32
Speaker 1: of like a big blocky logo cartoonish looking fellow. But yeah,
20:36
Speaker 1: we we we uh, we can't really culturally co opt
20:40
Speaker 1: things like that for the purposes of slinging our microwave
20:43
Speaker 1: meals for the better, I would add. They began selling
20:47
Speaker 1: a product in Pittsburgh. It's very regional in nineteen selling
20:52
Speaker 1: these frozen dinners. By around nineteen fifty the company had
20:55
Speaker 1: produced more than four hundred thousands of these meals, and
20:59
Speaker 1: that is when they formed the Quaker State Food Corporation
21:04
Speaker 1: and started to look into creating an expanded distribution network
21:08
Speaker 1: around the east eastern part of the United States. By
21:12
Speaker 1: then had it sold more than two million prepackaged frozen meals.
21:16
Speaker 1: Has really taken off around that time. A company that
21:20
Speaker 1: we reference to the top of the show, uh, a
21:22
Speaker 1: Nebraska based company called ce A Swanson and Sons, which
21:28
Speaker 1: is a you know, very popular food brand already known
21:33
Speaker 1: for its frozen chicken and turkey uh and also chicken
21:37
Speaker 1: pot pies. UM. They decided and were kind of the
21:42
Speaker 1: impetus for taking this concept national because at this point
21:45
Speaker 1: you have some kind of like little you know, factions,
21:48
Speaker 1: little regional factions. They're really have their own territories. But
21:52
Speaker 1: it was because again as a reference at the top
21:54
Speaker 1: of the show, of a mistake, a very particularly bad
22:00
Speaker 1: lead time mistake happening around the Thanksgiving holidays in nineteen
22:05
Speaker 1: fifty three. Yeah, yeah, and a little bit of context
22:09
Speaker 1: gobble gobble. Indeed, Max and a little bit of context here.
22:12
Speaker 1: So the frozen food industry, as we've outlined, is already
22:16
Speaker 1: really taking off, and part of that is due to
22:20
Speaker 1: the demand of labor. In World War Two, a lot
22:24
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, there was still very much a
22:25
Speaker 1: glass ceiling for women right in the workforce, and when
22:31
Speaker 1: more men were taken off to war, more women became
22:36
Speaker 1: started working, right, and this limited the amount of time
22:40
Speaker 1: they could spend preparing meals as they would have done
22:43
Speaker 1: in decades prior. So after World War Two closes, there's
22:47
Speaker 1: this post World War two economic boom. You know, for
22:50
Speaker 1: some people, it's like the Golden years, right, two point
22:54
Speaker 1: five kids, you could buy a car, everybody's buying a house.
22:57
Speaker 1: Everybody has money, no one has time, right, at least
23:00
Speaker 1: that's the rose colored, sanitized version of history. And so
23:05
Speaker 1: Swanson is doing something a lot of food companies and
23:08
Speaker 1: manufacturers in general have to do in the modern day.
23:11
Speaker 1: They're gambling a little. They're taking their past sales estimates
23:16
Speaker 1: and they're doing the math and they're saying, Okay, we're
23:19
Speaker 1: gonna buy this many you know, of this many widgets
23:23
Speaker 1: or this many gallons or tons of something. Right, And
23:28
Speaker 1: in nine the Swanson's, they make them wrong move at
23:34
Speaker 1: the casino of food manufacturing sales of turkeys for Thanksgiving,
23:40
Speaker 1: our stupid low and all of a sudden, Swanson, which
23:45
Speaker 1: is a powerful company, as you said, they find themselves
23:48
Speaker 1: with no less than five hundred and twenty thousand pounds
23:53
Speaker 1: on leftover turkey. Yeah, if you've ever dealt with leftover
23:57
Speaker 1: turkey at a family Thanksgiving, you can amend imagine the
24:00
Speaker 1: problem this could sink their company. This is a lot
24:04
Speaker 1: of turkey, and you know, people might have turkey fatigue,
24:07
Speaker 1: they might not want to all of a sudden buy
24:09
Speaker 1: a bird, even if it's on a discount. Well, isn't
24:12
Speaker 1: that funny? I mean, turkey really is kind of a
24:14
Speaker 1: seasonal bird in terms of like you know, typically a
24:18
Speaker 1: year round chicken is more popular, but turkey, I don't know,
24:22
Speaker 1: because of marketing or history or tradition or whatever, typically
24:26
Speaker 1: is something that you really buy and stock up on
24:28
Speaker 1: around the holidays. So they miscalculated, like you said, grossly
24:33
Speaker 1: and ended up with thousand pounds of frozen product that
24:38
Speaker 1: will not last forever obviously, and also as a narrowing
24:42
Speaker 1: window of interest, right in terms of like when this
24:46
Speaker 1: bird is appropriate to serve. You know, I think turkey
24:50
Speaker 1: is good. I like turkey stuff. I'll get like a
24:52
Speaker 1: turkey pop pie or jerk turkey. You know, there's definitely
24:55
Speaker 1: places here in Atlanta where you can get like really
24:58
Speaker 1: good turkey meat loaf around, turkey in on the spaghetti.
25:01
Speaker 1: I like the turkey leg at the Renaissance. That's awesome. Also,
25:07
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think a lot of times
25:09
Speaker 1: when people are anti turkey, it's because they haven't had
25:13
Speaker 1: it properly cooked. It is a bird that can dry out,
25:17
Speaker 1: and that's you know, that's the bane of many a
25:19
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving gathering. But also health people who are into the
25:24
Speaker 1: health food world love turkey, right, turkey bacon if you
25:28
Speaker 1: don't eat pork, that kind of stuff. Turkey's often used
25:31
Speaker 1: as alternatives. I had a turkey Philly one time, which
25:34
Speaker 1: was really good. I still think about it. I had
25:37
Speaker 1: a dream about it. That's how you know it's good.
25:39
Speaker 1: Dream sandwiches. I love that. Take me there. But you know, again,
25:43
Speaker 1: like this, this requires some innovation, right, so the company
25:47
Speaker 1: essentially had to like think fast and and and basically
25:51
Speaker 1: invent something that they could sell successfully to the American
25:56
Speaker 1: public that would be year round seasonal, not a holiday themed,
26:02
Speaker 1: and that would also keep they had they had an
26:12
Speaker 1: expensive ticking clock too. This is like a gosh, this
26:16
Speaker 1: is almost like a Mr. Show situation or a Christopher
26:20
Speaker 1: Guest film. So they dropped the ball on or they
26:23
Speaker 1: dropped the bird, I should say, on over buying turkey,
26:29
Speaker 1: and they didn't want it to thaw and go bad.
26:31
Speaker 1: So what they did instead was they got ten refrigerated
26:35
Speaker 1: railway cars, kind of like the stuff you would see
26:38
Speaker 1: on on on the rails today. And they knew the
26:41
Speaker 1: refrigeration for these cars only worked when the train was moving,
26:46
Speaker 1: so they shuttled trains back and forth, This is a
26:49
Speaker 1: true story, from Nebraska to the East coast, just boom
26:53
Speaker 1: to the East Coast, boom to Nebraska, just in a
26:56
Speaker 1: desperate bid to an expensive bid to keep the stuff frozen.
27:00
Speaker 1: All the executives were sitting there in the boardroom going on,
27:04
Speaker 1: come on, come on, uh, let's not forget too that had, dude,
27:08
Speaker 1: that couldn't have been an inexpensive property. Yeah, man, serious
27:14
Speaker 1: ticking cloth. Uh. And then like again, sort of like
27:17
Speaker 1: with the Scotch tape situation, you had kind of a
27:20
Speaker 1: junior salesperson or like you know junior. Yeah, salesman, a
27:24
Speaker 1: guy named Jerry Thomas who remembered seeing these like aluminum
27:29
Speaker 1: trays in distribution warehouses that he visited in Pittsburgh. These
27:33
Speaker 1: were the same kinds of trays that you see stacked
27:36
Speaker 1: in those kind of racks like on airplanes for you know,
27:39
Speaker 1: in all the old days of sort of like PanAm
27:43
Speaker 1: early airline food kind of situations. And he just kind of,
27:47
Speaker 1: you know, planted this seed with the Swanson execs and
27:52
Speaker 1: what if we you know, package this all together with
27:55
Speaker 1: like like a meal, you know, with complete with with
27:58
Speaker 1: stuffing and peas and uh sweet potatoes and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah,
28:03
Speaker 1: they did, and they did something smart. So remember we
28:06
Speaker 1: talked about turkey fatigue. That's what I like to call it.
28:09
Speaker 1: It's a real problem. You know, they knew it would
28:11
Speaker 1: be the wrong move to try to say, hey, wasn't
28:14
Speaker 1: the last Thanksgiving where you got stressed out with your family?
28:17
Speaker 1: Wasn't that awesome? Don't you want to relive that? They
28:19
Speaker 1: knew that was a dumb idea, So they tapped into
28:23
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist of another invention sweeping the nation. Television. Uh
28:29
Speaker 1: that same year they sold more than twenty five million
28:33
Speaker 1: instances of this product by not calling it Whoops too
28:38
Speaker 1: much Turkey. Instead, they called it TV dinners. For ninety
28:41
Speaker 1: cents a package, you could get this thing that was like, now,
28:45
Speaker 1: it was part of your TV viewing experience. Hey, honey,
28:49
Speaker 1: you don't have to slave away in the kitchen. Sit
28:51
Speaker 1: down with us and let's see what's on the quiz
28:53
Speaker 1: broadcast or whatever. It's it's a it's a futurist concept, right,
28:58
Speaker 1: which which was so is microwaves, and now we think
28:59
Speaker 1: a microwave is sort of like a last resort. You know,
29:02
Speaker 1: any microwave dinners are fine, but like they're you know,
29:05
Speaker 1: not nearly as good as like a home cooked meal
29:07
Speaker 1: or even like reheating leftovers on the stove or something about.
29:10
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's come a long way. But
29:12
Speaker 1: I would also say, Penn, you could probably credit this
29:14
Speaker 1: with with single handedly creating the TV tray industry. Oh,
29:19
Speaker 1: it definitely goes to that level. Now, there have been
29:22
Speaker 1: people who were eating on trays by a radio or
29:25
Speaker 1: something beforehand, but this but no, but something. Yeah, I
29:30
Speaker 1: think you're onto something. And this origin story about our
29:32
Speaker 1: guy Thomas is sometimes debated and sometimes people will say
29:37
Speaker 1: you you should give a lot more credit to Thomas's bosses.
29:42
Speaker 1: The company itself credits Gilbert and Clark Swanson with dreaming
29:48
Speaker 1: up that iconic three part plate and the TV name.
29:52
Speaker 1: And you know, you'll hear stories that swants that Gilbert
29:55
Speaker 1: Swans in particular was inspired by an airline food tray
29:59
Speaker 1: while flying to just Banker. But there's this other thing,
30:03
Speaker 1: you know, there's so many things. There's an urban legend now, right.
30:07
Speaker 1: There's the also the idea that Gilbert thought of the
30:09
Speaker 1: name TV dinner because he had people over for a
30:12
Speaker 1: party and everybody's watching the TV. But folks were balancing
30:17
Speaker 1: the trays on their laps or balancing plates of food.
30:20
Speaker 1: So you know, take it as you make. Someone at
30:22
Speaker 1: Swanson came up with it. I tend to be a
30:25
Speaker 1: fan of the underdog and the common man, so I'm
30:28
Speaker 1: gonna go team Thomas on this. It just seems a
30:31
Speaker 1: little convenient for the official Swanson company to say, oh,
30:35
Speaker 1: are fearless leaders came up with it. But if that's
30:38
Speaker 1: the truth, that's the truth. Thumbs down from the company
30:40
Speaker 1: line company line line. H But but even just the
30:45
Speaker 1: circumstances surrounding it or bonkers you know, the idea of
30:48
Speaker 1: like the ticking clock, like you know, as as as
30:51
Speaker 1: dull as the invention of TV dinners might sound as
30:55
Speaker 1: the subject for like a biopic, I could see this
30:57
Speaker 1: part being kind of tense. Yeah, I mean this is
31:03
Speaker 1: like again, this is another great opportunity for Ridiculous History
31:07
Speaker 1: Studios and the extended Ridiculous History Universe. We would make
31:12
Speaker 1: an awesome, awesome feature on this, and we can say
31:16
Speaker 1: that with certitude because we know there's more to the story.
31:19
Speaker 1: So these are TV dinners, but as student listeners, you'll
31:23
Speaker 1: notice the timeline of this stuff and the timeline of
31:27
Speaker 1: the microwave they don't line up. The TV dinner makes
31:31
Speaker 1: it into the American household. Before the microwave, what what
31:35
Speaker 1: you needed to do was pop this in an oven
31:38
Speaker 1: and wait twenty five minutes, which doesn't maybe sounds super
31:42
Speaker 1: convenient for a lot of people these days. Right, you
31:44
Speaker 1: can still see this as a preparation instruction on chicken
31:50
Speaker 1: pot pies. Right, you can put it in the microwave
31:52
Speaker 1: for what eight to twelve minutes or something or better
31:55
Speaker 1: in the oven. It's always a thing like with a
31:58
Speaker 1: crust like that that is essentially uncooked pastry. You know
32:02
Speaker 1: what I mean. You want in the in the microwave,
32:04
Speaker 1: it's gonna be soggy and not as good, or you
32:07
Speaker 1: can put it in the oven for you know, thirty
32:10
Speaker 1: something minutes, and a lot of people, no judgment. A
32:13
Speaker 1: lot of people want to save the time and they
32:16
Speaker 1: just settle for something that tastes a little less crispy.
32:19
Speaker 1: I think it was this Smithsonian article that you found,
32:23
Speaker 1: Max that had one of my favorite facts from Kovie
32:26
Speaker 1: by a Colo who we've mentioned on the show before.
32:29
Speaker 1: A brief history of the TV Dinner Covid points out
32:33
Speaker 1: that some people were writing angry letters to Swanson because
32:38
Speaker 1: TV Dinners got so popular. They were saying, Hey, Swanson brothers,
32:43
Speaker 1: you know I can't even get a home cooked meals
32:46
Speaker 1: in my house anymore. It's always always TV dinners. I'm
32:49
Speaker 1: sick of the turkey or something like that. We're paraphrasing
32:55
Speaker 1: by saying some people and not just saying men, right,
32:59
Speaker 1: angry angry angry dudes. Maybe some proto in cells in
33:03
Speaker 1: the basement. And no, we didn't mention that the the
33:08
Speaker 1: packaging of these things was designed to look like many
33:12
Speaker 1: television's A little tuning knobs uh so, I think that.
33:16
Speaker 1: I think it's cool. Yeah. So they hit grocery stores
33:21
Speaker 1: right September nine fifty three, huge success. By that same
33:26
Speaker 1: time next year they have sold ten million units. The
33:29
Speaker 1: year after that, they've sold twenty five million, and people
33:35
Speaker 1: loved it. They also expanded, right, it wasn't always just Turkey.
33:39
Speaker 1: After they saved themselves from the Great Turkey Crisis, they
33:45
Speaker 1: they started going into Salisbury steak, pot roast things like that.
33:50
Speaker 1: You know, I ate Salisbury steak as a kid, both
33:52
Speaker 1: homemade and and TV dinners, and I remember really liking
33:59
Speaker 1: it was quite young until I had my first actual steak,
34:04
Speaker 1: and you know, it was like a meat of the
34:06
Speaker 1: gods straw, the fool Situationally, I felt so built. Yeah,
34:11
Speaker 1: Salisbury steak is kind of like it pales in comparison
34:15
Speaker 1: to just the texture and the flavor of of of
34:17
Speaker 1: a real piece of steak. But it's more like meat
34:19
Speaker 1: low f Really, it's really kind of more of a
34:21
Speaker 1: meat product. It's a pound of beef patty, Yeah, like
34:24
Speaker 1: a mcribb or like hamburger in Japan. Muh so. But
34:30
Speaker 1: the sauce is good, way, people like sauces. Sauces great.
34:34
Speaker 1: Other companies, you know, similar to what happened when Bird's Eye,
34:37
Speaker 1: Like we were saying other companies like Staffers and then Banquet,
34:41
Speaker 1: Oh we forgot about Banquet. They got into the game.
34:44
Speaker 1: This became a huge business for food manufacturers. It was
34:49
Speaker 1: a synergistic effect too. It's like TV wanted to promote
34:53
Speaker 1: this too, right, because of the association with their medium.
34:58
Speaker 1: He started getting all these celebrity eat tie ins essentially,
35:01
Speaker 1: and you know it being shielled on I Love Lucy
35:03
Speaker 1: and gun Smoke and all that stuff in the same
35:05
Speaker 1: way that now we have, you know, all these TV
35:08
Speaker 1: and movie tie ins with like cereals and silly products
35:12
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah. Yeah, And you know, you make an
35:15
Speaker 1: excellent point there because think about it. If you're manufacturing TV,
35:20
Speaker 1: so you're making programs for television, then you want people watching, right,
35:26
Speaker 1: So now if you can sort of infiltrate their traditional
35:30
Speaker 1: meal time and say, hey, instead of sitting around at
35:34
Speaker 1: the kitchen table eating and talking about your day, tuning
35:37
Speaker 1: into guns Smoke or I Love Lucy or what have you,
35:41
Speaker 1: and eat TV dinners while you do it. This became
35:44
Speaker 1: a symbiotic relationship between the two industries and a quite
35:48
Speaker 1: successful one, because no one really could have predicted this.
35:53
Speaker 1: Television was a massive hit and very quickly it didn't
35:57
Speaker 1: take long to catch on. I want to shout out,
35:59
Speaker 1: by the way, Filo Farnsworth another stuff. A genius guy,
36:03
Speaker 1: Filo Farnsworth invinced the concept of television when he's like
36:06
Speaker 1: fourteen as a farm boy. He's plowing across a field
36:11
Speaker 1: line by line and he thinks, huh, what if I
36:14
Speaker 1: could send images this way line bio line the way
36:17
Speaker 1: that I'm plowing this field. That sounds crazy, but it's
36:20
Speaker 1: true and it lets you know how far the mind
36:23
Speaker 1: can wander. Would you have to do work like that?
36:25
Speaker 1: So shout out to Filo. Okay, I yield my tipe. No,
36:29
Speaker 1: it's fine, now, it's very very fascinating, and it's it's
36:31
Speaker 1: it really really is that kind of outside of the
36:34
Speaker 1: box thinking that that creates the most bizarre and incredible
36:39
Speaker 1: innovations of humanity? Really, so I have a question for you,
36:44
Speaker 1: uh and and new Bet in New Max, what credit
36:47
Speaker 1: is due to the brainstorming under lane that happens upon
36:52
Speaker 1: a genius idea and then the company takes it and
36:56
Speaker 1: runs with it. You know, no, not you can leave
37:00
Speaker 1: maybe morally, Let's say, like, is is he owed a
37:05
Speaker 1: stake in the company? You know, is you know? I
37:08
Speaker 1: mean that's I really am asking seriously, I'm not being
37:10
Speaker 1: cynical about it. Like he you know, he claims this
37:13
Speaker 1: guy he was given a thousand dollars in nineteen fifties bucks,
37:16
Speaker 1: which would be probably more like a hundred thousand dollars
37:19
Speaker 1: right today, roughly, I'm guessing. And a promotion, a relatively
37:25
Speaker 1: vague promotion. But it's like, you know, it was it
37:28
Speaker 1: was brainstorming time the guy opened his mouth. He had
37:30
Speaker 1: an idea and then it was executed by the company
37:33
Speaker 1: and they had the product to do it. Like, are
37:36
Speaker 1: they stealing this guy's idea? Well? Is it parallel? Thinking?
37:40
Speaker 1: Would somebody else have come up with it? Anyway? Like
37:43
Speaker 1: what is a truly unique idea and what is owed
37:46
Speaker 1: to the person that like spits it out into existence? Well,
37:49
Speaker 1: I have some thoughts on that. First off, in any
37:54
Speaker 1: large organization, Unfortunately, what tends to happen is if it's
37:59
Speaker 1: a good idea, all of a sudden, everybody had some
38:02
Speaker 1: sort of contribution, whether or not that's the case. And
38:05
Speaker 1: it's an unfortunate reality of how self centered people can be.
38:10
Speaker 1: Now as far as whether this is a unique innovation,
38:13
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to point out that while while
38:16
Speaker 1: our boy Mr Thomas may not have been the only
38:20
Speaker 1: person to think of this thing, he was Swanson was
38:23
Speaker 1: one of the few organizations that had five hundred and
38:26
Speaker 1: twenty thousand pounds of turkey to bring to bear. Right,
38:30
Speaker 1: So it's no longer just a conversation some you know,
38:34
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of a lot of folks working
38:36
Speaker 1: in the tech industry or consulting or engineers who are
38:40
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians. And often companies require you to sign
38:46
Speaker 1: some sort of agreement that says anything made with company
38:49
Speaker 1: equipment or on company time belongs to the company. So
38:53
Speaker 1: you can run into stuff like that ethically, however, it's
38:57
Speaker 1: just my opinion. Ethically, I am a huge believer in
39:01
Speaker 1: giving people credit where it's due for what they have done.
39:05
Speaker 1: I think it's incredibly important, increditively important. Oh so we're
39:11
Speaker 1: gonna miss but uh, but it is a good question. No,
39:14
Speaker 1: it is a good question. Well, let's just I I
39:18
Speaker 1: think I'm with you on all of those points. I
39:20
Speaker 1: just think, you know, in the heat of the moment,
39:22
Speaker 1: it is interesting where you know, like someone doesn't have
39:26
Speaker 1: the bargaining power, let's say, from their position, to ensure
39:30
Speaker 1: that their idea pays them dividends for like the rest
39:33
Speaker 1: of their life, you know, yeah, yeah, I mean, and
39:36
Speaker 1: then I know, like so people who have pet peeves.
39:40
Speaker 1: Everybody has a few pet peeves. People who have a
39:43
Speaker 1: lot tend to be pretty chill about them. People who
39:46
Speaker 1: have only a few tend to get a little zealous
39:48
Speaker 1: about them. And uh, I know I'm preaching to acquire
39:52
Speaker 1: here for a lot of us tuning in. But one
39:54
Speaker 1: of my pet peeves, for instance, is hearing an idea
39:58
Speaker 1: concept that I made hold back to me as though
40:01
Speaker 1: it was not my idea in the first place. And
40:03
Speaker 1: that is something you know, that's something that people encounter
40:07
Speaker 1: in the corporate world all the time. So shout out
40:10
Speaker 1: to everybody, I think on behalf of the showing say
40:12
Speaker 1: the shout out to everybody who feels like you have
40:15
Speaker 1: been in a situation where you come up with a
40:17
Speaker 1: banger idea and all of a sudden your bosses say, hey,
40:21
Speaker 1: I've got an idea. Oh it's like that high on
40:23
Speaker 1: potent news sketch exact, you know, I mean, like it's
40:27
Speaker 1: all about who said a lot. And this also happens
40:29
Speaker 1: not to get on a soapbox here, but with sexism,
40:33
Speaker 1: like with with with women, for example, maybe who have
40:35
Speaker 1: an idea but they don't say it forcefully enough, or
40:38
Speaker 1: it's or they're just not a man. And therefore when
40:42
Speaker 1: a man repeats it, you know, or the boss, and
40:45
Speaker 1: it makes it their own, then it gets the attention
40:47
Speaker 1: that it maybe didn't get when somebody who maybe is
40:50
Speaker 1: viewed in a company culture as less than um put
40:54
Speaker 1: it out there. So yeah, but with this, oh, here's
40:58
Speaker 1: a way we can segue back. So Filo Farnsworth weird story.
41:04
Speaker 1: Speaking of credit, Filo Farnsworth only makes one appearance on
41:08
Speaker 1: television and the entirety of his life. And he's on
41:11
Speaker 1: this show where you have to guess why someone is
41:16
Speaker 1: famous or what what makes them a notable figure. And
41:20
Speaker 1: he was on this show called I've Got a Secret,
41:24
Speaker 1: and they tried to guess his secret, and you know,
41:27
Speaker 1: he answers these questions from this panel, and his secret
41:31
Speaker 1: was I invented electric television. No one could guess it,
41:35
Speaker 1: and so he won the game and his prize was
41:40
Speaker 1: eighty dollars and a carton of Winston Cigarettes. Good job, Filo.
41:45
Speaker 1: But uh, but that that happens in fifty seven, and
41:50
Speaker 1: television sweeps the world before then. In nineteen fifty less
41:55
Speaker 1: than ten percent of people had television sets, but by
42:00
Speaker 1: five more than sixty four percent of US households had TVs,
42:05
Speaker 1: by more than eighty seven percent. That's that's a rise
42:11
Speaker 1: so precipitous that it outdoes the cellular phone. It's nearly
42:15
Speaker 1: a hundred percent adoption, which is probably close to that today.
42:20
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I mean there's definitely you know,
42:21
Speaker 1: obviously there can be a backlash against that, and there
42:23
Speaker 1: are stuff course cord cutters, but even now, the TV
42:26
Speaker 1: manufacturers have figured out how to you know, integrate TVs
42:30
Speaker 1: into cable less homes, like with smart TVs and apps
42:33
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. So I would argue that
42:34
Speaker 1: number probably is very close to the same today, if
42:37
Speaker 1: not a little bit higher. Oh yeah, it's it's probably
42:40
Speaker 1: a higher. I mean, you know, we're cord cutter generation
42:43
Speaker 1: over here, so a lot of people, you might not
42:46
Speaker 1: a lot of people are getting rid of cable. But
42:49
Speaker 1: you probably do have a TV in your home for
42:52
Speaker 1: games you like to play, or you have a connected
42:54
Speaker 1: to a computer, right, or you could say you don't
42:57
Speaker 1: need a television because your computer monotcher does all the
43:01
Speaker 1: things you want a TV to do. Still still very
43:04
Speaker 1: much the same thing. Swanson is, you know, not in
43:08
Speaker 1: a vacuum. Here, Swanson has their finger on the pulse.
43:11
Speaker 1: They saved themselves from the Great Turkey Crisis. They knew
43:13
Speaker 1: a good thing when they saw it. So what do
43:15
Speaker 1: they start making TV commercials? Commercials for TV dinners on TV?
43:20
Speaker 1: How exhibit is that? So? So they kind of pimp
43:24
Speaker 1: their TV dinner ride and they also get pressed from
43:28
Speaker 1: celebrities like you alluded to earlier in old nineteen sixty
43:31
Speaker 1: two talking to New Yorker, Barbara Streichs said says the
43:35
Speaker 1: best fried chicken I know comes with a TV dinner
43:38
Speaker 1: and that you couldn't write better copy than that, you
43:41
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And she apparently told this of
43:44
Speaker 1: her own volition to the New Yorker in nineteen sixty two.
43:48
Speaker 1: Because at this point, this is probably this is innovative.
43:51
Speaker 1: So it's almost chic to be like leaning into the
43:54
Speaker 1: TV dinner craze at this point, as opposed to it
43:57
Speaker 1: becoming kind of ghosh a bit later, right, It wasn't
44:01
Speaker 1: looked at as uh, food for people who hated cooking,
44:06
Speaker 1: or food for people who are somehow less successful. Right,
44:11
Speaker 1: it was looked at as the food of the busy,
44:14
Speaker 1: the early adopters, right, the movers and the shakers. And
44:19
Speaker 1: now if we fast forward, we see that this stuff
44:23
Speaker 1: just expanded, right, it diversified their through their microwave desserts
44:28
Speaker 1: a plenty. In the sixties, Swanson starts making TV breakfast
44:33
Speaker 1: TV lunch kind of things. Campbell's gets in the game,
44:36
Speaker 1: of course in nine three. By this point they're Swanson's
44:40
Speaker 1: parent company, and they introduce Hungry Man, which are you know,
44:46
Speaker 1: larger meals aimed towards surprise hungry dudes. And then, you know,
44:51
Speaker 1: in the seventies, we get it starts to kind of
44:55
Speaker 1: go off the rails a little bit with like sort
44:57
Speaker 1: of tastemaker kind of poorly placed taste maker attempts. Let's
45:02
Speaker 1: just say by this one since take on Polynesian style dinner,
45:06
Speaker 1: which is like completely not anything that would even resemble
45:10
Speaker 1: food you might get in Polynesia. And critics take note
45:14
Speaker 1: because now this really is kind of encroaching on you know,
45:19
Speaker 1: fine foods and on like, you know, the idea of
45:21
Speaker 1: fine dining. So you have a lot of like kind
45:24
Speaker 1: of New York Times New Yorker types who are turning
45:28
Speaker 1: their nose up at the thing now and now it
45:30
Speaker 1: is kind of becoming more ghost and a little more like,
45:33
Speaker 1: you know, the the the meal of of the tasteless consumer. Yeah,
45:39
Speaker 1: because there's always a backlash in the world of arts
45:42
Speaker 1: and culture. And this is something I used to talk
45:46
Speaker 1: about at length with our old pal and felt ridiculous
45:49
Speaker 1: historian Casey Pegram. There's this recursive logic, right, if something
45:53
Speaker 1: gets too popular too quickly, there's going to be someone
45:56
Speaker 1: who comes out as a contrarian, right, and they say,
46:00
Speaker 1: this is uh, you know, the emperor has no clothes.
46:05
Speaker 1: So of course, people like New York Times food critic
46:09
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy seven would say TV dinners, you know,
46:13
Speaker 1: they're basically too popular. They have there for people who
46:17
Speaker 1: have no taste. And this cultural critique begins, this national conversation.
46:22
Speaker 1: One newspaper out of Shrewsbury, New Jersey says, well, hey,
46:26
Speaker 1: maybe it's maybe it's more about the value in the convenience.
46:30
Speaker 1: Sure it's not a Michelin restaurant necessarily, but in what
46:33
Speaker 1: other way, can I get a single serving of turkey,
46:36
Speaker 1: a portion of dressing, and the potatoes, vegetable and dessert
46:39
Speaker 1: for less than dollar for something like sixty nine cents.
46:42
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Also, people who are on diets
46:45
Speaker 1: liked it from what we read, Yeah, exactly. And then
46:48
Speaker 1: you start getting things like lean cuisine and again I
46:51
Speaker 1: don't know the exact history of that, but as an example,
46:55
Speaker 1: or weight Watchers, because it is uh even today like
46:58
Speaker 1: a lot of the really expensive subscription meal plan you know,
47:02
Speaker 1: weight loss kind of like solutions are frozen dinners that
47:06
Speaker 1: that you know, get shipped to you like in these
47:09
Speaker 1: kind of refrigerated boxes or whatever. Um. So that makes sense,
47:14
Speaker 1: the whole built in portion control just don't go for
47:16
Speaker 1: the hungry man style. But it is actually only just
47:21
Speaker 1: now through all of this that the biggest innovation of
47:25
Speaker 1: all kind of comes nineteen eighties six when the Campbell's
47:30
Speaker 1: Soup company invents the microwave safe tray. So up to
47:34
Speaker 1: this point we've been you know, twenty minutes in the oven.
47:37
Speaker 1: Now this is cutting down prep time for these things
47:40
Speaker 1: to just you know, twelve minutes thirt less than that,
47:43
Speaker 1: even depending on the size and the and the type
47:45
Speaker 1: of of of dish. Yeah, this is where the TV
47:49
Speaker 1: dinner becomes the microwave meal, and people are already nostalgic
47:55
Speaker 1: for the TV dinner. There was one columnist who said
47:59
Speaker 1: progress is one of full but I was still miss
48:01
Speaker 1: those steaming creekly aluminum TV trees. Uh and uh. Now,
48:09
Speaker 1: if you have been around for the past couple of years,
48:13
Speaker 1: you know that there was a global pandemic, one that
48:16
Speaker 1: continues today despite the news moving on to different stories.
48:22
Speaker 1: It turns out that the COVID nineteen pandemic was huge
48:26
Speaker 1: for frozen meals. People who didn't want to cook and
48:29
Speaker 1: who would usually go to a restaurant or something found
48:32
Speaker 1: that their favorite restaurants were closed to one degree or another.
48:36
Speaker 1: So people were by nearly fifty more frozen meals in
48:41
Speaker 1: April as compared to and Uh. Then you saw kind
48:47
Speaker 1: of fancier stores like Williams Sonoma stock fancy gourmet TV dinners,
48:53
Speaker 1: So we didn't even talk about that part. Now, micro
48:55
Speaker 1: wave mules and TV dinners have also moved into the
48:59
Speaker 1: world of like gourmet Upper Echelont and Whole Foods, Trader
49:03
Speaker 1: Joe's type stuff. You can get it organic, you can
49:06
Speaker 1: get a vegan, gluten free all sorts of neat cuisines
49:10
Speaker 1: from around the world that taste pretty close in some
49:14
Speaker 1: cases to the actual traditionally cooked versions. It's it's pretty neat. Also,
49:21
Speaker 1: I didn't I I think I saw this of one
49:25
Speaker 1: Atlanta restaurant over the past few years. They were offering
49:29
Speaker 1: frozen versions of their restaurants or restaurant offerings for carry out. Yeah,
49:35
Speaker 1: did you try any of those? No? But I mean
49:38
Speaker 1: I have noticed more of that lately with like T
49:41
Speaker 1: G I Fridays, you know, potato loaded potato skins and
49:45
Speaker 1: PF Chang's, you know, but whatever, like orange chicken. But
49:50
Speaker 1: usually I mean, if the if the chain restaurant dishes
49:53
Speaker 1: even that good to begin with, the microwave version is
49:57
Speaker 1: probably gonna pale in comparison. Yeah. Yeah, And in this
50:00
Speaker 1: case we're talking to about, uh, maybe restaurants that aren't
50:04
Speaker 1: chain restaurants. But I've figured out how to you know,
50:07
Speaker 1: from some family meal. Yeah, that's cool, that's cool. Yeah, No,
50:11
Speaker 1: I think that's neat. There's certainly, especially certain restaurants or
50:16
Speaker 1: bakeries say that make like a really beloved lasagna or
50:20
Speaker 1: like a really like like a family meal thing, and
50:22
Speaker 1: you can get that frozen ready to freeze. That's great.
50:26
Speaker 1: Casseroles such for soul food and now frozen meals are
50:33
Speaker 1: here to stay. Uh. They're not all unhealthy. That's a
50:37
Speaker 1: bit of a stereotype. They're not all super fancy, obviously,
50:42
Speaker 1: but almost everybody has tried one and enjoyed it. They
50:48
Speaker 1: are all kinds of options, and we owe it all.
50:53
Speaker 1: We really do owe it all in part to Jerry
50:57
Speaker 1: Thomas and his solution to a massive mistake by the
51:02
Speaker 1: good folks over at Swanson. So thanks, what do you
51:06
Speaker 1: say we that's started. That's our company line here. Thanks
51:09
Speaker 1: to you, Jerry. Yeah, and all the Jerry's of the
51:12
Speaker 1: world that don't get credit for their ideas. Yeah, go
51:15
Speaker 1: eat some frozen turkey Swanson. So so I didn't even
51:20
Speaker 1: talk about what that Swanson money did for right wing
51:23
Speaker 1: punditry than you can google it yourself, though, google it yourself.
51:33
Speaker 1: Well we yeah, we'll take you to the edge of
51:35
Speaker 1: that rabbit hole or that turkey turkey roost, turkey hangout.
51:39
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, since it's a holiday and we
51:42
Speaker 1: might guys, we might be accompanying someone right now as
51:46
Speaker 1: they're getting away from their family, or as they're like
51:49
Speaker 1: washing dishes, or as they're cooking, and they just say, oh,
51:52
Speaker 1: don't talk to me. I'm listening to something very important.
51:56
Speaker 1: If you need a note from to your family from us,
51:59
Speaker 1: let us know we got your back, and here are
52:01
Speaker 1: some things to give you a laugh, some terrible jokes. Well,
52:05
Speaker 1: what do you call a group of featherless turkeys? M
52:10
Speaker 1: I don't know, Ben, what do you call a group
52:12
Speaker 1: of featherless turkeys? I'm so glad you asked a cluster pluck? Uh? Okay, okay,
52:19
Speaker 1: just one more, just one more, just one more here?
52:22
Speaker 1: Why did the turkey cross the road to prove he
52:25
Speaker 1: wasn't a chicken? Yeah? Classic classic format there, classic format.
52:30
Speaker 1: So well you can also say because it was the
52:33
Speaker 1: chickens day off. Yeah that's good. No, that's good. Any
52:37
Speaker 1: judges will accept both. Yeah, this was a lot of fun.
52:40
Speaker 1: We went long, but we again, we wanted to give
52:42
Speaker 1: you some time. Uh if you if you need a
52:44
Speaker 1: little escape for these holidays. I hope this finds you
52:48
Speaker 1: well and in good health, good spirits. Thank you so
52:52
Speaker 1: much as always for tuning in. We wish you the
52:55
Speaker 1: happiest of thanksgivings to those who celebrate uh. And if
53:00
Speaker 1: you don't, well, we just made some American customs sound
53:04
Speaker 1: even weirder and I think you're okay with that. Yeah. Always,
53:08
Speaker 1: that's what we do here in Pardiculous Sister Uh. We'll
53:11
Speaker 1: see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
53:21
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
53:23
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows