Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAlister
Word of the Day: Spam
Ever wonder why the unsolicited junk mail in your computer is called spam? The name is a portmanteau of “spiced ham” created by the brother of a Hormel executive for their new product. Hawaiians alone consume more than 7 million cans of spam yearly. It was introduced in the islands during World War II as GI rations, and in Hawaii today it’s found on menus from McDonald’s breakfast to upscale offerings of Spam musubi.
Spam was the theme of a zany Monty Python sketch in the 1970’s. “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” was a popular TV show on the BBC which later became available in the states on PBS. In the well-known bit, a couple enter a café and find a Spam-heavy menu. There’s egg and spam, egg bacon and spam, egg bacon sausage and spam….. You get the idea. There’s a table of Vikings nearby who begin singing, “spam, spam, spam…. wonderful spam.” You can catch it on YouTube, but beware. It will stick in your brain all day.
You either think it’s hilarious or you don’t and early computer nerds apparently did. They started to use the term to describe the profusion of growing junk email to the over-abundance of spam in the sketch. It entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1998 as a term for “unsolicited messages sent over the internet…for the purposes of advertising .. etc.” It also also became a verb. As computer use grew, it became the primary definition, so much so that Hormel Foods pursued a series of unsuccessful lawsuits against companies like Spam Arrest and Spambuster for trademark infringement.
It was too late. By then, the spam was out of the can thanks to Hormel, Monty Python, singing Vikings and computer nerds.
