I’m starting a new Friday series today and I’m calling it, The Friday Focal Point. What I’m going to do is take random objects, places and things and focus in on them on Friday. I’ll take pictures, find information, look for photos on the internet and basically make it up as I go along and see what happens!
This week, I decided to start out with Hamburger Helper.
Why? I don’t know, I told you I’m making this up as I go along!
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A (Very) Brief History Of Hamburger Helper
Hamburger Helper was first brought out by General Mills in 1971. Meat prices were getting high back then due to a meat shortage and Hamburger Helper was introduced as a delicious and inexpensive way to stretch your hamburger supply by turning it into a tasty one skillet hamburger casserole dinner.
Most of the flavors used pasta, but some had rice and potatoes as well. There’s also seasoning packets and most people add things like cheese and onions to them, especially if you’ve smoked some wacky-tobacky before you started preparing this boxed meal.
Eagle Foods bought the brand from General Mills for $610 million dollars in May of 2022.
There you go, I told it was going to be brief!
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Close Encounters Of The Hamburger Helper Kind
I thought we’d go look at some examples of modern day Hamburger Helper and what better place than Schnucks Grocery Store on University. Let’s go in and take a look!
All the prepared and boxed foods are down this aisle, let’s go find the Hamburger Helper!
Wow, I’ve heard of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound and now I’m witnessing the Wall of Hamburger Helper!
It’s so…hmmm…what’s the word I’m looking for? Underwhelming…that’s the word!
Oh, look, they give you other options to use rather than ground beef…but aren’t meatballs made out of ground beef? My mind…blown!
Hot dogs…in Hamburger Helper? Once again…mind blown!
Ground sausage instead of ground beef isn’t much of a stretch there Hamburger Helper!
But aren’t meatballs…oh wait, we did that already…never mind.
Tuna Helper? This must be the evil twin version of Hamburger Helper. There’s something fishy going on here. Sorry about that, it couldn’t be helped, let’s just keep moving along!
Black Beans? Hey, Hamburger Helper…FUCK YOU!
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The Obligatory Vintage Print Advertisement
One delusional ad!
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Hamburger Helper: Cooking 101
Here’s a step by step guide on how to cook Hamburger Helper.
What’s sad to me is that this fucking video has over 300,000 views on YouTube! I’ve got my own YouTube channel and my last video is struggling to hit 40 views!
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Obligatory Vintage TV Advertisement
This is the earliest ad I could find. It’s from 1974 and I don’t remember it at all. The reason for this is that by 1974 I had discovered marijuana and various other drugs, so that year and many of the years to follow are a complete blur.
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Just Beat It!
This is kind of like a mentally-challenged Mr. Bill episode!
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Related Post: Casual Friday At MBIP World Headquarters.