Ride out the apocalypse with tinned sammiches

Why would you buy a Candwich-brand sandwich in a can? Helpfully, the site lists three value propositions: "Healthy fast food," "Great for vending," and, of course, "Disaster preparedness."

With an extended shelf-life, Candwich™ is ideal for emergency food storage needs in the event of a natural disaster. Candwich™ tastes great, and because of the special Army formulated recipe, the bread stays as soft and sweet after one-year in storage as it did the day it was made (If you can ever keep them around that long)!

It comes in 24-packs, too.

Candwich - The Go Anywhere Sandwich (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Food • Gadgets • gross • not food • ZOMGWEREALLGONNADIERUNHIDE

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macegr

I did not realize the BLINK tag still worked on modern browsers.
- Guest
  
  until the end of days
- Ambiguity
  
  You must be using Firefox (or Opera). It’s actually JavaScript, and IE/Chrome don’t support it.
  
  Long live the mighty blink! Proof positive the FF is God’s browser…
- http://redesigned.com redesigned
  
  nice to see the blink tag int he source code…blink, we hate you, we miss you…
suburbanhick

I’m just trying to figure out what the most horrifying aspect of this is: The sandwiches, or the idea behind them. They both give me the willies!
- kerry
  
  I’m more horrified by the promise of a “candy surprise inside,” per the side of the can. WTF candy in my candwich?
  - suburbanhick
    
    LOL – Maybe they mean the sandwich itself. <:-o
    - kerry
      
      No, if you look at the nutrition info on the website there’s a column for the sandwich and a column for the “candy.” shudder
      - suburbanhick
        
        The very notion of either of them having anything even remotely related to ‘nutrition’ in them is hilarious!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

The last time Boing Boing posted about this, the story included some interesting business details:

http://boingboing.net/2010/07/12/candwich-sandwich-in.html
http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

Ah, Army food! Recognized the world ’round as haute cuisine.
C.J. Hayes

There’s only 3-5 ounces of food in those cans, that is not ideal for a survival situation. The bread is probably very light, and it should be dense. Plus, each can is like $2.50, which works out to around $8-12 per pound.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  Yup.
  
  You’d be better off maintaining a rotating stock of jam, peanut butter, potted meat and crackers.
  
  I’m sure you can get shelf-stable crackers really cheap. Not as tasty as fresh fluffy bread, but I doubt those canned buns will be very good either.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness
  
  FEMA was handing out the real disaster preparedness version of this product at the ration distribution centers after Hurricane Ike. The bread slices were incredibly dense and came in sealed, foil-backed plastic. The peanut butter was all natural with no emulsifiers, so you had to remix it by kneading the brown plastic tubes it came in. The jelly was just commercial stuff in packets larger than, but similar to, ketchup packets. Plus there was a bunch of commercial stuff that kept well that FEMA probably bought as overstocks.
  
  Didn’t have a FEMA POD nearby, but my gf at the time had one just around the corner and she really needed it, area was without power for many days and traffic was rerouted around a bridge that was thought to be damaged.
  
  Everyone got tired of their FEMA rations, so I ended up taking two boxes home from my gf and her neighbors. Best peanut butter I ever had.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Plus nausea and diarrhea is not ideal for a survival situation either.
- Bangorian
  
  Pre-Post-apocalyptic price gouging is a drag.
Ceronomus

$17 for four CANNED sandwiches? These people are obviously VERY high. You know…if the conept of a canned PB&J hadn’t already made that crystal clear.
George Michaelson

You know its a USA thing when it gets to PBJ and the rest of us in the free world wonder what seventh ring of hell satan was riding through when he decided to marry perfectly good jam with aflotoxin riddled, anaphalaxys inducing ground nut paste…
- sam1148
  
  George Washington Carver is often credited with inventing peanut butter, debatable, but he popularized the product as a use for the peanut crops.
  He was a black scientist working at the Tuskegee Institute for uses for crops other than cotton after a cotton blight (the boil weavle) which collapsed the local economy.
  It’s high in protein and easy to digest, making it a great food for storable lunches with bread, and the jam or honey for energy and sugars.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    As a child, I wouldn’t touch peanut butter. As an adult, I can’t shove it in fast enough.
    - SomeGuyNamedMark
      
      That would make a great food review.
      - http://chipandre.com Chip
        
        Also, sex toys.
- noah django
  
  if peanut butter is wrong, then i don’t want to be right! willful food-based nationalism! USA! USA!
- Blinkers
  
  If that’s how you’re going to describe the wonder that is peanut butter then you’ve definitely got your own issues to worry about and shouldn’t be concerning yourself with “a USA thing”.
SoItBegins

“…the bread stays as soft and sweet after one-year in storage as it did the day it was made!”

Which means it’s exactly as hard as it was to begin with.
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

Candwich BBQ Chicken goes better with Captain Morgan’s than coke. It’s the only way to get loaded, imo.
- suburbanhick
  
  ugh. that is just so nasty…
ROSSINDETROIT

I know this is an awful thing but I sort of want to own one. Just as a gag. In two of the three common senses of the term.
But I swear, if one of these had bacon in it someone somewhere would be taking it seriously.
http://profile.yahoo.com/2PBI7FZD7UTZLL7IPH6NA7DG7A James

Needs a Bacon, Egg, & Cheese Canwich
- suburbanhick
  
  Perhaps a SpamCanwich?
  Mmm…twice-canned mystery meat!
  - BombBlastLightingWaltz
    
    The poor animals that earn the token ‘mystery meat’. Living a distend life of packages, canned items and pate spears. To nourish the post-apocalyptic human establishment that made it a quantified product in the first place. Canwich of irony more like.
PhosPhorious

Apparently, it comes disassembled.

Design fail.
- Warren_Terra
  
  I hadn’t noticed this. This spoils the whole thing for me.
  
  (not that I was ever to buy one, other than as a joke – and I’m not in Utah).
  - suburbanhick
    
    Oh, come on – you need SOMEthing to do to pass all those hours in the bomb shelter. Hell, by the end of the first week you’ll be fighting over who gets to make the canwich today!
    “Mom, it’s MY turn today. Cindy did it yesterday!”
    “You kids just SHUT UP, or I swear I’ll throw you both out into the post-apocalyptic wasteland!”
- http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino
  
  That sucks. Most of the appeal for me was imagining a perfectly shaped, roly-poly little sandwich popping out of the can like one of these joke spring-loaded snakes. Boo.
  - suburbanhick
    
    I wonder if they’d poke you in the eye when they spring out, like poor Homer and the springy snake. DOH!
suburbanhick

“Healthy fast food,”
Well that tells you just about all you need to know right there, really.
technogeekagain

I used to have an Air Raid Shelter-style sealed tray of stuffed cabbage, which I picked up at a fundraising auction. Sat on the shelf for many more years; finally got eaten during a period when I was too busy to go shopping. I honestly wouldn’t mind having a few dozen more of those on hand; better than a lot of canned food I’ve tasted, and very space-efficient (assuming you and/or your friends are willing to eat that much of it once you do open it).

There’s something to be said for emergency/convenience reserves even if you don’t expect disasters.
- technogeekagain
  
  (Having said that: Canned _white_ bread? Yecch. If you’re going to do canned bread, do something that’s got some density to it and actually benefits from being steamed somewhat during cooking.)
http://www.facebook.com/kurt.osterbusch Kurt Osterbusch

Makes me think of this…

http://youtu.be/8ZTGppUiV38
apoxia

This bread is “sweet”? Blech.
- EvilSpirit
  
  Quite possibly related to the fact that it keeps for a year. Sugar acts as a preservative by keeping moisture unavailable to bacteria. Same principle’s at work in the jelly.
http://twitter.com/dwdawson Doug Dawson

I find it interesting that they’re only available online – or in Utah retail stores.
- Warren_Terra
  
  The story appears simply to be that the company making them (and trying to convince people there’s a market, other than as a gag gift) is in Utah.
  
  Shame, because it would be hilarious if these were made elsewhere and were inexplicably popular in Utah.
  - zarray
    
    Mormons have a thing that after being run out the east coast the church decided it was a moral prerogative to keep a years worth of rations and practice self-sufficiency.
    - Warren_Terra
      
      Well, sure, I’ve heard that, but as has been pointed out numerous times upthread buying these “candwiches” simply isn’t a sensible way to build a store of emergency provisions. They’re ludicrously overpriced, they’re not space-efficient for the nutrition, they’re not convenient, and on these and other grounds they’re not even a very good way to store PB&J sandwiches.
      - zarray
        
        Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this, and I can totally see these being set up around the register in the provision store the same way bubblegum is in a regular grocery store. Or mommy is looking through the cannery catalog, sees these in an ad and thinks that these would be ‘fun’ for the kids.
        
        Really though, the entire line of conception, production, and consumption is not thought out.
Halloween Jack

The Onion AV Club review. Verdict: kind of underwhelming.
zeppo

Mmmmm … that’s great Candwich!
http://twitter.com/Skyhawk1 skyhawk1

$17?! Does it come with a couple of phattys?
pjcamp

Not unless there’s peanut butter and mutant banana.

By the way, didn’t we talk about blink tags back in the 90′s? I think we did and we all decided they’re evil.

Maybe you were in the bathroom.
- voiceinthedistance
  
  I feel cheated. Nothing’s blinking for me in Safari. Do I need to fire up VirtualBox and run IE6 for the full immersive Canwich experience?
  - Warren_Terra
    
    According to the page source, there’s a Blink Tag around “disaster preparedness”, the last two words in the first paragraph of the post.
    
    I’m not seeing any blinking in Chrome, on my Windows laptop.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Works in FF.
      - zarray
        
        I think that’s because FF is ‘descended’ from netscape, and as far as I know IE has never supported blink, and that it was feature specific to NS.
  - pjcamp
    
    No!
    
    Apple is converting the experience into something they approve of? You have a filtered and edited version of the Internet? Say it ain’t so! Surely Steve would let you see reality without rose colored glasses.
    
    Reckon what else they don’t think you need to know?
    - voiceinthedistance
      
      Comments like yours, pjcamp, just never get old. Please keep them coming.
  - siloxane
    
    The blink tag is a non-standard element — I don’t believe it has ever been supported in either Safari or Internet Explorer.
  - http://www.lightning-rose.com/ LightningRose
    
    Even if blank tags went away there are still animgifs and Flash.
http://twitter.com/cicadamania Cicada Mania

I’m getting heartburn just thinking about it. I’ve tried bread in a can from Japan in the past, but that didn’t contain meat.
chicamarie

Why can I not find an ingredient list anywhere? Knowing it has about a quarter of the day’s fat ration is one thing, but I want to see all those multisyllabic words laid out in long form.
- zarray
  
  like Dihydrogen monoxide?
SomeGuyNamedMark

And if you tire of pb&j you can get a canned cheesburger:
http://www.cheeseburgerinacan.com/

Ummmm! Check out the review!
http://www.avclub.com/articles/taste-test-cheeseburger-in-a-can,2183/
- digi_owl
  
  I was wondering when that would make an appearance.
  - SomeGuyNamedMark
    
    I was surprised it took so long
http://www.facebook.com/justin.kalm Justin Kalm

Maybe it’s my diet talking, but I’d kind of like to try one.
WinstonSmith2012

I’ll tell you what sure sold me on these. It was that “the special Army formulated recipe.” Mmmmmmm…
- zarray
  
  They were developed to be dropped into enemy territory to cause mass demoralization.
- Halloween Jack
  
  Real army MREs (the descendants of C rations) are probably much, much better than these.
  - bytefyre
    
    I’ve had MRE’s before(one of the scout leaders works with the CF and I’m told they “fell off a truck”). When I was a venturer a few years ago we went to Algonquin park and we cooked some over a fire in a pot hanging on a stick after slogging through a 1.2 km (I don’t know if that’s actually long to some people but it was a nightmare to me)portage and an hour canoeing through a swamp, after ya’ know the 6 other portages (though the longest of those was only 750 meters I think) I don’t know who looked at the map and thought our canoe trip should have more carrying than canoeing but it wasn’t me. The point being they are mercifully easy to prepare and surprisingly tasty, I had my doubts for sure. But they made that hellish day (which was the 5th or so of a seven day journey, we hopped camp sites) a bit more bearable.
    - penguinchris
      
      Your description of a canoe trip in Algonquin is hilarious to me (and way off topic, but oh well), as someone who has done maybe 30-40 trips there over the years. I went to a summer camp in the park from ages 7-15, and worked as staff several summers; I did at least 2-3 canoe trips a summer and I’ve been almost everywhere in the park.
      
      If you think a 1200 m portage was rough… you hardly went anywhere worth going :) But yeah, unless you’re in great shape (which I never have been) any portage over 250 m or so can be nightmarish, and over 1500 m it’s hellish (I’ve done 5-6 km ones – within Algonquin – and 3 km ones are fairly common). At the camp I went to, we used wooden canoes (which are heavy) carried solo (one per staff member) and never doubled-back – everything was carried across in one go.
      
      The thing is though that despite hating it at first, I came to enjoy the break that portaging gives you from paddling. In places other than Algonquin, canoe trips typically involve way more paddling than portaging (and I’ve done that kind of trip) and for me it’s almost unbearably tedious. Canoeing is pleasurable and great in many ways, but when used as a mode of transport it gets old fast.
bagoombah

On the third day, which just happened to be a Sunday, BLINK rose from the dead and preached to his followers that he was to be made redundant. And so be it that on the following Thursday, BLINK left for the bus station after vowing to his followers that one day he would return and lead them to the promised code. As he passed from site, he was heard to exclaim that his return would signal the end of days and for his follows look for the sign. Is this the sign? Praise be to BLINK! Burn the unbelievers!
http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan

Those are organic, right?
- zarray
  
  in an Organic Chemistry sense … possibly.
alxr

The bread is soft and SWEET? Is it some kind of brioche? Because I’m not sure I want ‘BBQ chicken’ in a sweet bread when fresh, let alone once transformed into some tinned abomination.
http://www.facebook.com/barry.kaufman Barry Kaufman

I actually got samples of this when it came out and put a video together for the newspaper I was working for at the time. The sandwiches were actually not all that bad.

http://youtu.be/PYgPH820bBk
Cowicide

Throw a bunch of these cans, soda, an Xbox and a few fleshlights in a basement and you could keep trolls down there for years.
- http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan
  
  There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
costeau

Keeping five of these in the trunk of the car could come in handy, along with a Strawberry Shortcake-themed inflatable nuclear shelter…