Today we are going to have a look back into time. Step into the Wayback Machine, we will be taking a journey back to the 1960's, and then forward to the late 1970's. We will looking at a true Pop Culture "Medal of Honor" winner. Drum roll please, the "Medal of Honor winner is, SWANSON TV DINNERS.

Every kid from the 1960's & 70's, with parents that weren't filthy rich, has eaten a Swanson TV dinner, at one time during their childhood.

Swanson TV dinners cost under $1.00 and actually had meat as the main ingredient, as opposed to what is available in the 2010 frozen food aisle. Yeah, you can still get a frozen food dinner, with what is supposedly called meat, and you will pay a couple of million dollars for it. You can also buy a cheap pasta meal, made with an unknown sauce, for a couple of bucks.  

I use to work in the grocery industry. I was in charge of the dairy & frozen food section of my store. I vividly remember stamping the price on the Swanson TV dinners. The price was always under $1.

My mother worked for the company that made 90% of the aluminum pans that Swanson used for their TV dinners. She was told by one of the Swanson executives, the cost of the packaging was more than the cost of the food.

Food made on a massive scale is going to be cheap. How expensive could a dollop of mashed potatoes and a few spoonfuls of peas possibly be? A couple of pennies? The chicken pieces were from the tiniest chickens known to man. Are chickens insulted if they are called dwarfs? Whatever you call them, Dwarf Chickens or Little Chickens, it doesn't matter. The end result, they were TINY.

 Below is a newspaper ad for Swanson TV dinners, from the sixties. I hope you will enjoy your time machine journey.




BELOW IS A MONTAGE OF THE DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF SWANSON TV DINNERS, FROM THE 60's & 70's










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