Off the Mark by Mark Parisi for August 01, 2020

It fell off the back of an Argentina truck.

I think it’s past the Best Ewwwsed By date

I remember going to a local warehouse market with my grandparents in my early chilhood, that sold dented cans with no labels for 10 cents each. It was the luck of the draw, beef stew, or okra!!

I wouldn’t even buy a dented can of cat food.

When the first panic buying started in Australia I found only one tin of what I wanted left on the shelf. It had a dent in it!!! Obviously not acceptable to hoarders as it was imperfect

I remember a grocery store where most of your cans were like this! The challenge was finding a normal can of something.

EWWW!

Loved Wacky Packs!! Here are some others…https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;ylt=A0geKeSIZiVfGE0AMgBXNyoA;ylu=X3oDMTEyaDFxYjdwBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQzAwOTRfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=wacky+packs+1970s&fr=ymyy-t-s

A college roommate’s father was the forklift driver at a grocery warehouse where the policy was to throw out dented/damaged cans. He found that a case of soup cans dented quite easily when dropped from a certain height. According to the USDA, ‘If a can containing food has a small dent, but is otherwise in good shape, the food should be safe to eat. Discard deeply dented cans. A deep dent is one that you can lay your finger into. Deep dents often have sharp points. A sharp dent on either the top or side seam can damage the seam and allow bacteria to enter the can.’

I’m getting flashbacks to Mad Magazine. I think they had jokes like this.

The packaging is so wacky.

“Well do ya punk?”

I’m thinking Mr. Parisi collected those “Garbage Pail Kids” cards in his youth… tapping that classic “gross” factor LOL!!!

MAD magazine work, again. Nice to see it.

Shades of Wacky Packs!

Dinty Moore stew is so gross, I wouldn’t buy a non-dented can if it were free. I wonder if anyone who works at Dinty eats it.

I worked with a gentleman that was frugal or cheap. It depends on how you look at it. He would buy the cans with no labels. We worked out in the oil field, nowhere close to towns or any eating establishment so when it was time to eat, Jim would offer us a can. Who knows what was in it. Dog food, peaches, garbanzo beans, who knows. To him every meal was an adventure. I preferred my lunch that I made that morning. Jim was a good friend. He died young. Don’t smoke.

This reminds me of those Wacky Packages product parodies back in the day…

As it was around 50 years since Post “Rice Krinkles” dissappeared from store shelves, maybe one “Wacky Packages” cartoon could feature “Starched Rice Wrinkles”, inspired (LIGHTLY) by Chinese laundry businesses.

This reminds me of the Garbage Pail stickers we all collected in the early 80s

Nice, this reminds me of the old ‘Cracked’ comics