Wherein The Author Salutes The Slim Jim

Say hello to everyone’s favorite gas station meat snack! Granted, not everyone has a favorite meat snack, whether found at gas station convenience marts or not. But for those who do, the Slim Jim surely fits the bill. I understand that these could be considered a touch controversial, with some of you being decided non-fans. I promise to highlight something with more universal appeal next time, so go enjoy your hummus or spinach dip and the rest of us will delve into the story of the Slim Jim and its start satisfying patrons of taverns in Philadelphia.

Alright, we are past the break, so I hope that some of you are still with us. Are you there? Good. Today, those of us who go to a bar are spoiled for “bar food”. Who is not amazed by the array of menu items, from nachos to onion rings to hot pretzels and everything in between. But in the old days the choices were more limited. Like pickled vegetables and meat products like pigs feet. I will confess that I have never understood the reason to consume a pickled pig’s foot (which I always thought was called a hoof). But it was the 1920’s and life was hard and you were hungry after swilling a few bootleg beers, which probably made about anything taste edible.

Vintage Slim Jim promotional ashtray from the 1950’s.

Adolph Levis was a small businessmen who pickled food items and sold them to taverns in the Philly. Some time between the 1920’s and the 1940’s (sources vary), he noticed that another popular food item in the bars was pepperoni. What wouldn’t be popular in comparison with pickled pigs feet? Do any of you Slim Jim haters look at them any differently now? Actually, noshing on a big hunk of pepperoni with a frosty mug of your favorite brew sounds pretty appealing to me. But I digress.

Vintage Slim Jim mug

Some time in the 1940’s, Levis and his brother-in-law Joseph Cherry hired a local meat packer to concoct a thin, single-serving sausage stick which they called “Penn Rose”. A bunch of them would be packed in a jar of vinegar and slung across bar counters with drafts of Schaefer, Schmidt’s or Ballentine so that a guy in Philadelphia wouldn’t go hungry while he argued with his pals about whether Connie Mack’s Athletics were going to have a decent year against the Yankees.

By the 1950’s the company (by then called Cherry-Levis Food Products) had changed the name of the snack to “Slim Jim” and offered them wrapped individually in cellophane. Is it fair to claim that the modern world burst into existence at that moment? The products continued to grow in popularity all through the northeastern U.S. as the growing interstate highway system offered distribution opportunities.

Along with the Slim Jim name came the product’s first mascot – a tall, thin figure dressed in a tuxedo and sporting a top hat and walking stick. The consensus seems to be that the character was intended to buff up the product’s image. Making the Slim Jim the original high-class meat snack. I just made that part up, because I doubt that “high-class” and “meat snack” have ever appeared in the same sentence before. And to think, here you are to experience it! But I digress. Again.

By 1967, the Slim Jim was distributed through much of the northeast and had become popular enough that General Mills bought the company for something in the neighborhood of $20 million. General Mills moved operations to North Carolina and combined the Slim Jim operation with that of the Jesse Jones Sausage Company, calling the combination Goodmark Foods. Some Goodmark executives bought the company when General Mills put it up for sale in the early 1980’s, and kept it until selling to ConAgra in 1997.

What’s in a Slim Jim? It depends on when you ask. The recipe has been changed several times over the decades. The current formulation goes back to the 1990’s, and appears to include a mixture of beef, pork and chicken. It is claimed that no organ meat has been used for several decades now, but beyond that it is probably best to just move right on from this topic. And who are we to fuss about what is in a Slim Jim? Have you noticed how your bread never turns moldy now? Big Chem is now in control of everything we eat, so what’s an occasional Slim Jim going to do to you?

It has developed that the biggest market for the Slim Jim is young males. This shouldn’t surprise us. The company figured it out when it hired pro wrestler Randy Savage as its spokesman. The company has managed to keep young males coming back, more recently with an online presence fueled by a creative and irreverent Instagram account (Sl1M Jim) run by a former fan whose account dwarfed the company’s official one.

So, there you go. The venerable Slim Jim, the grandaddy of single-serving meat sticks is still there to satisfy your snacking needs. The familiar red and yellow packaging is there to grab your attention the next time you are in line for the self-checkout at the grocery or when you go into the gas station because the pay-at-the-pump isn’t working. And while you are inside, forget the lottery ticket and go with the sure thing that is a Slim Jim.

45 thoughts on “Wherein The Author Salutes The Slim Jim”

    • I am no longer man enough for anything with that level of spice. I think I will stick to my original flavor (which we have learned is not actually the original flavor).

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  2. These are the ideal snack – no sugar and lot of protein. A guy (or gal, although I have yet to see a female partake of a Slim Jim) could do a whole lot worse in the snack department. There is a reason gas stations sell Slim Jims and not raw, fresh broccoli.

    I’ll be doing a lot of driving for work today, so a Slim Jim (washed down with a tub of ice-free Pepsi in a styrofoam cup) is sounding really good right now.

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    • That’s a great point – I am not sure I have ever seen a female consume a Slim Jim. Maybe if they were cut up and mixed into a salad or something.

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    • Eh, no sugar in the ingredients; but there is corn syrup in them. Which I guess if you’re planning to consume it with a tub of Pepsi probably isn’t a concern.

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  4. Never been a fan…had a few, but “meh”, just not a “go-to” snack for me. Altho I grew up in working class cities, I was never much of a “corner bar” person, where a lot of these snacks had been available for consumption, and many people had their seminal experiences. Of course now, it seems like the major purveyors of these snacks are the interstate adjacent service stations, and many of my pals wouldn’t consider gassing up for a road trip without buy a number of these, BUT, I have noticed, at least in my neck of the woods, that the Slim Jim is in a “death battle” for counter space with various individually packaged beef jerky brands, and something called pemmican, which seems to be some sort of “First Nations” dried, spiced meat with tallow and possibly berries of some sort; at least there always seems to be a picture of a chief on the package. So many snacks, so little time! BTW, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a multi-pack of these in my grocery store, altho they must exist; and maybe no one thinks of them until they’re in the service station and ready to light-out for parts unknown?

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  5. Interesting that the original recipe apparently was intended to bob in a jar of vinegar, behind a bar. Not unlike a pickled egg. Or pigs’ feet. What is it about pickled foods in bars in the mid-Atlantic? (Probably a lack of refrigeration for things intended to be displayed behind the bar…but that is probably not important now)

    We used to get these things in our lunchboxes in the early/mid 1970s. By “we” I mean me and my sister. And she presumably ate hers. So, that’s at least one female who ate Slim Jims. Although in all honesty I cannot say that I ever actually observed her eating from the lunchbox. (Maybe she traded it for something, which I suppose is possible. She was always better at that kind of stuff than me. I just ate what was there, no negotiation necessary.)

    I haven’t had one for years, but I have noticed that the ones I see regularly at the grocery and gas station are often of the “foot long” or longer variety. I guess the modern world has managed to super-size even the humble Slim Jim.

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    • Jeff, still see big jars of pickled eggs at northern Wisconsin bars, altho I never met anyone that ate one. The stuff floating in the brine was a real “off-put-ter”. Fresh cheese curds available, tho!

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      • I can buy jars of picked eggs and pickled pigs’ feet in my grocery store in Massachusetts.

        But I actually cannot buy beer in the grocery store. (state law) I’ve always found that kind of odd.

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    • I will confess to buying the extra long Slim Jim at least once.

      Pickled foods don’t really do it for me, so I’m glad the vinegar jar went away!

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    • Yes, the Slim Jim tends to divide – one either looks good to you while you stand in line for a cash register or it doesn’t.

      Of course, you Philly people get scrapple, which I would probably prefer to a SJ when I’m good and hungry. 🍽

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  7. Never a fan, although I do like jerky made from fresh venison. A former boss was also a hunter, and he would bring in deer jerky from his successful hunting endeavors for the staff.

    I’m amazed at how many food items originated in Pennsylvania in general, and Philadelphia in particular.

    When I read the headline, I first thought you were referring to the notorious “Slim Jim” automatic used in full-size Oldsmobiles and some full-size Pontiacs between 1961 and 1964. The only people who would salute that dud would be the mechanics who earned a pretty penny repairing it!

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  9. JP, I have never had a Slim Jim, although I’ve seen them plenty of times through the years. With the craze for eating protein snacks you’d think they would be popular, but the sodium factor probably keeps a lot of folks from eating them. I like the line about why would you want to have a sissy snack when you can have a Slim Jim as it’s more filling? I was always surprised that Big Boy restaurants could serve their Slim Jim sandwich, using the same name as this meat snack – granted, they are totally different foods but still ….

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  10. Well, I knew there was a reason I liked Slim Jims – it’s a Philadelphia native, just like me. I never knew any of this history… completely fascinating! I looked up Mr. Levis’s background, and he grew up in West Philadelphia, just a few blocks from where my grandparents lived at the time. $20 million for his company in the 1960s was pretty extraordinary. He evidently took that money, retired to Florida, and devoted much of the rest of his life to philanthropy. A great success story!

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    • I am amazed at the number of iconic foods from Philadelphia. I have already written about scrapple and Goldenberg Peanut Chews, and ought to give Tasty Kake a day in the sun.

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  11. Around here Slim Jim’s main competition is Jack Link’s, based in northern WI. Both are a fine road snack and I’ve eaten my fair share over the years. Look, a Jack Link’s link: https://www.jacklinks.com/

    And just about any WI meat shop worth its curing salt offers housemade snack sticks.

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  12. I’ve never seen an ash tray I wanted to own so badly.

    And for some reason this talk of bar snacks has me wondering what happened to “Have A Hank” handkerchiefs they used to sell at bars, usually next to the cash register.

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  13. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve eaten a Slim Jim, yet the taste is so distinctive I remember it like I had one yesterday. The black/white ad in the middle of the post is a convincing sell. It looks dated but certainly doesn’t sound like it. On the other hand, the lead ad reminds me how very innocent sale gimmicks were fifty-plus years ago. “Meat Tooth”? Not so appealing these days.

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  14. I must confess I’ve never heard of them….but I’ve seen beef jerky sticks near the cash registers in convenience stores and wondered who buys that stuff. Health nut here, by necessity, I won’t even eat sausage although I used to love it as a kid.

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  16. I’ve always loved Slim Jims, but I also have sampled many of its competitors over the years. They are the perfect ‘road snack’. Just this week I was traveling and needed a drink and snack, and picked up a couple. It amazes me how many different options are available in this beef stick/jerky niche.

    Several years ago I had a couple of flareups of gout – and anyone who’s had one knows how painful it is. I call it the devil’s disease. During that time period I swear even smelling a Slim Jim or other similar product would trigger a flare. Anyway, after about a year, my doctor prescribed a preventative med called Allupurinol. I’ll probably be on it the rest of my life, but now I can pretty much eat everything I want and not worry about it. Knocking on wood that I don’t jinx myself by saying that! Now I’m jonesin for a Slim Jim, or perhaps one of their competitors products.

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    • Ooooh, that kind of highly sought-after information requires you to upgrade to the Gold Tier Membership of my blog. You people on the free version think you are entitled to everything! 🙂

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