Hot Slut Of The Day!
The Legendary Swanson Turkey Dinner!
For weeks and weeks, we’ve been told that this is going to be a Thanksgiving like no other, and not in a good way, because some people are stupidly going to do shit like normal and are risk inhaling the unwanted dinner guest of coronavirus as they shove gravy-slathered turkey into their pie hole, and some of us are scaling it down, and others are just pulling down the red curtain on the holidays for the rest of the year. That is why it’s the perfect time for the Swanson Turkey to make a comeback! Because nothing says a 2020 Thanksgiving like a metal tin of turkey-flavored rubber!
Swanson TV dinners are still sold today (but as Hungry Man TV dinners), and the birth of the Swanson TV dinner is apparently thanks to Thanksgiving. One story goes that after Thanksgiving in the 1950s, Swanson had a mountain of frozen turkeys that didn’t sell. They didn’t know what to do with them until Gerry Thomas, a salesmen, brain-pooted out a light bulb in the form of the idea for TV dinners. Gerry allegedly came up with the idea to put turkey, cornbread stuffing, sweet potatoes, and other holiday deliciousness into tin trays that could be heated up in the oven. via Smithsonian:
According to the most widely accepted account, a Swanson salesman named Gerry Thomas conceived the company’s frozen dinners in late 1953 when he saw that the company had 260 tons of frozen turkey left over after Thanksgiving, sitting in ten refrigerated railroad cars. (The train’s refrigeration worked only when the cars were moving, so Swanson had the trains travel back and forth between its Nebraska headquarters and the East Coast “until panicked executives could figure out what to do,” according to Adweek.) Thomas had the idea to add other holiday staples such as cornbread stuffing and sweet potatoes, and to serve them alongside the bird in frozen, partitioned aluminum trays designed to be heated in the oven. Betty Cronin, Swanson’s bacteriologist, helped the meals succeed with her research into how to heat the meat and vegetables at the same time while killing food-borne germs.
I mean, forever, I thought that Swanson was Gloria Swanson’s food company, so I’m just going to tell myself that Gloria Swanson is the one who invented the TV dinner. But Swanson’s turkey TV dinner became one of their signatures and as the completely real people in this commercial know, it’s because the peas were crispy (read: mushier than wet grandpa balls) and the turkey was moist (read: drier than a grandpa’s asshole in the desert):
And yes, I’ve tasted a grandpa’s balls and asshole, so I know, okay! But seriously, I don’t remember much about the turkey, peas, or that those watery mashed potatoes because my mouth always went for those coagulated cranberries.
This year, I should’ve just gone with a turkey TV dinner because it’s that kind of year. And by “gone with a turkey TV dinner,” I mean drop the contents of one into the blender, add a bottle of cranberry vodka, and voila! 2020 Thanksgiving dinner in a cup.
Pic: Amazon