by Alan Bonnici

Created on: April 01, 2010

Depending on how old you are, the word Spam can mean different things. Over the years this word has fed us and made us want to throw up, it made us laugh and made us angry. It even has its own song!

The word Spam has its origin in a canned precooked pork meat product manufactured by Hormel Foods. Initially this product was launched under the name of Hormel Spiced Ham, but when the product began to lose market share the company decided to run a competition to find this product a new name. SPAM was born. The name was a blend of SPiced hAM. During World War Two, field soldiers were given cans of this product since it was easy to carry and tasted good. In fact more than 45 million kilos of this product were shipped to Europe during the war.

War veterans returning home had gotten used to the taste of SPAM and still consumed it on its own or as an ingredient in a more complex dish. Suffice to say that in 1959 the billionth can of SPAM Classic was produced with the second billionth can of SPAM being produced in 1970.  Outside the USA, SPAM became one of the food staples wherever US troops were stationed or in those countries with which the US had signed the Len-Lease Act.

During the Second World War, SPAM was one of the more available products in Britain. As a result, it ended up practically being used in every meal.  In 1970, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin created a sketch around SPAM for their British TV show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In their 3.24 minute skit, the word SPAM is said, sung or shown more than 130 times. It was intended to highlight the fact that the British were fed up of eating this product. This became known as the Spam Song and both lyrics as well as the sketch itself can be easily found on the Internet.

The term spam became part of the computer jargon in the 1980s before the advent of the commercialised Internet. During that time, people who hung out on BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) would use the word SPAM repeatedly or would transmit huge amounts of quotes from Monty Python in order to force other user’s text off the screen. One should take into account that in those days Internet connections ran at an ant’s pace and a screen load of text would take a considerable amount of time to show on a computer monitor. Sending an irritating, large, meaningless block of text in this way was called spamming. The Spam Song was the inspiration for this. During this era, rival

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