StarKist®
Ready-Mixed
Tuna Salad
DISCLAIMER: This review and criticism of a StarKist product is an independant work. This site is not sanctioned, authorized, sponsored or supported by StarKist and no connection between this site and StarKist Seafood Company is expressed or implied. Review text, HTML, original digital photographs and QuickTime VRs of commercially available StarKist products are Copyright © 1997, David Cain. StarKist logo and Charlie the Tuna are registered trademarks of the StarKist Seafood Company. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Let me tell you something. I am a tuna guy. I like tuna. Tuna salad in particular. I regularly enjoy the fine products of the StarKist company. I take particular and regular delight in the efficiently packaged and quite good and convenient Charlie's Lunch Kit, which includes a small tin of tuna (chunk light or albacore - your choice), reduced-cal mayonaise, relish, pretty good crackers, and a wooden spoon-shaped thing for mangling the supplied ingredients into tuna salad. Great idea. Great product. I eat it several times a week.
But this... this is something quite different.
I had my first grossly unpleasant experience with StarKist Ready-Mixed Tuna Salad sometime in late August of 1997. As you can see from this page, it made an impression.
The Ready-Mixed package costs about the same as a Charlie's Lunch Kit, but comes with not-as-good crackers, a sturdy enough plastic spoon (if you can break this spoon serving yourself tuna salad, you are truly an irredeemable dork), and the nasty, nasty, bad, foul and evil tin of premixed tuna salad.
Upon cracking open the tin, the immediate sensation is that of being at the beach. After a particularly bad fish kill. If you've ever repaired a German car (I have - 4 of my own over the years), you can simulate the smell for yourself by imagining the scent of the peculiar rubber favored by German automakers, throwing in a little burning insulation, and dead fish for good measure.
In the words of Brian Wilson, God Only Knows why StarKist decided that the ideal thing to do with freshly mixed Tuna Salad was to put it in a can and let it come to room temperature. (N.B. - information on the StarKist site indicates that their tuna products are best consumed within FOUR YEARS).
Apalled at the odor, I steeled myself for the first bite - it couldn't POSSIBLY taste as bad as it smelled. When will I ever learn.
My first line of defense, as always with seafood, is the trusty and quite delicious Old Bay Seasoning. Usually a sprinkle of this will improve ANY gift from Poseidon.
After titrating to the LD-50 level with Old Bay, given no appreciable effect on odor or taste, I finished my meager lunch, half dead and weeping.
This -uh- 'product', is an answer to a question no one asked.
The original Charlie's Lunch Kit is actually a pretty handy and good-tasting light meal or snack. The Ready-Mixed Tuna pack is an error, an affront, a portable miasma to darken our lunch hour.
(click and drag to view)
And yet...and yet... in 1997, StarKist won an Edison award from the American Marketing Association for the Ready-Mixed Tuna pack. Apparently these were folks who didn't TASTE the stuff...
Ladies and Germs, for October, I give you our scariest guest star. If you have the guts (no pun...), make sure you've installed the QuickTime Plugin and give the freestanding tin of - er - Tuna Salad to your right a spin!
The Tuna QuickTime VR is comprised of undoctored photographs. The lights were hot and yes it stunk. No tuna were harmed in the making of this web site. Except the ones in the can, of course. Do you think they put peckers in there? And what's this Mahi-Mahi crap anyway?
Click Here to view last month's Guest Star...