What does Hormel think about spam?

2006-02-13

In one of those Monday morning moments, I got to wondering what the company that originally registered the term "SPAM" (the meat-like substance) thought about the term "spam" (the email scourge). A few minutes on Google and I found the following page on one of Hormel's web sites. It boils down to the following:

"Let's face it. Today's teens and young adults are more computer savvy than ever, and the next generations will be even more so. Children will be exposed to the slang term "spam" to describe UCE well before being exposed to our famous product SPAM. Ultimately, we are trying to avoid the day when the consuming public asks, "Why would Hormel Foods name its product after junk e-mail?" "

That, with its reference to "mickey mouse" unsophistication and so on, I thought was a reasonably sanguine assessment.

Then I wondered, was the company ever able to send out any product-related email at all? After all, what would you expect your filters do with email sent from spam.com?