A Letter To Richard and Timothy Smucker
I have been cleaning up the depths of my archives on my computer and I found a letter I wrote to the J.M. Smucker Company on July 15th of 2003. I never received a response:
July 15 2003
The J.M. Smucker Co.
1 Strawberry Lane
Orrville, Ohio 44667-0280
Dear Richard and Timothy Smucker,
Uncrustables. The claim is that this is a sandwich with no crust. Yet the first thing that draws our eye is the pie-like crust around the edge. What you call a "crimped-edge" is known to the rest of world as crust. Crust is defined as the hardened exterior or surface part of bread, and your "crimped-edge" is denser and harder than the soft un-crimped bread. The name Uncrustables, though cute and appealing, is nothing more than a well-crafted charade!
Furthermore, in Patent # 6,004,596 it is stated "wherein a crust portion of said first bread layer and said second bread layer has been removed." So an Uncrustable can only be made of bread that does actually have a crust. Our question to you is, what happens to the crust? Is it simply thrown away? Recycled into more bread? Or something far more sinister, like a future Crust-Only line of sandwich snacks and retail outlets?
Yours sincerely,
Kenneth M. Merrill
<< | Posted by kmikeym at 5:27 PM | >>
This product blew my mind around the same time that the "individually wrapped PB&J slices" did.
The Wife™ and myself consider this yet another example of a top-heavy society just waiting for something to make it all come crashing down.
I mean, I understand that some people likey their bread with no crusts–I can't comprehend it, I think the crust is maybe the most dee-lish part of the whole bread experience–I accept that there's no accounting for taste.
But to put the P, B, J, and casing for said PBJ in a box, then cut the crusts off, then crimp it so it looks like a pie crust–it all just beggars the imagination to come up with a way that we can be any more decadent. Maybe the stores can refer you to a person who will come to your house and hand-feed it to you (as repulsive as that idea is, I had it, and if any of you implement it, you owe me a royalty. Just so you know).
Strange that this has become a world where smearing your own peanut butter and jelly on bread has become the courageous mark of rugged individualism, but there you go.