Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 14, 2012

Space Food Sticks!Haven’t thought of those in years; chocolate was best.

O yeah I did my time with Tang. Years in fact.

I still like Tang

Hey, Tang rocked! (And Space Food Sticks rolled.)

Velcro was invented in 1941, by a Swiss electrical engineer called George de Mestral, not by the American space program.

I remember drinking Grape Tang and Grapefruit Tang too.

Nab-etc.: Space food sticks did in fact resemble the energy bars that endurance athletes like, but cylindrical like a skinny Tootsie Roll. Chewy, not like the A&SM dried stuff.

Tang is good for removing tomato sauce stains from the inside of your dishwasher.

Mango Tang was the best. Unfortunately, they don’t sell it anymore. I use Tang to make Orange Juliuses at less than 1/10th the cost.

They were cheaper cuz the phrase ‘all natural’ hadn’t been thought of yet

Rotary phone anyone? Watch a kid trying to puzzle it out. Really funny.

Don’t worry, the space program is over now……

Frazz is old enough to have tasted Tang and space food sticks as a kid. Why would only his dad know and not him?

I had friends in college who lived on tang and soda crackers. And survived.

Boy they sure like to make me feel old. I was a little kid when we first had this stuff. I tried a pack of the so-called “Space Food” sticks once. They were awful. They didn’t last very long on the market, thank goodness. I got hooked on Tang, which had vitamin C & A added. I guess my mom tolerated my Tang addiction knowing it had some nutritional value to it. I remember years later trying the nutrasweet version. It was terrible. Tang is still being made and is considered a “classic” product.

I liked Space Food Sticks. They’re still being made, but not by Pillsbury anymore, and they CAN be bought at the Air and Space Museum, along with freeze-dried ice cream and such. They disappeared off the retail shelves in the mid 70’s, so Frazz would have to be pushing 40 to have any real first-hand memories of them.

(Information taken from: www.spacefoodsticks.com/history)

Amazing how many ‘innovations’ in “health food” and"energy etcs" came from the space program. After awhile they had themachines and needed somewhere to market the products…and so… kids with bikes and interesting fantasies get spandex clothes and suck down tightly wrapped sugar packages at astronomical prices, convinced they are on a TREK instead of dreck. And paying for it.

During the design of Skylab, Marshall Space Flight Center proposed providing the flight crew with “‘nominal’ (that is, ‘normal’) space food” and “experimental space food” as part of the Habitability Subsystem. The weird thing was that the “experimental space food” was the kinds of things that you and I can buy in the grocery store. I was on the Critical Design Review panel and had objected to the misuse of “nominal.” I asked “Do you mean ‘approximately space food’? or do you mean ‘space food in name only?’” (the two meanings of ‘nominal’). The astronaut representatives laughed and said that either meaning would fit — it was at best approximately food and usually was food in name only. The flight surgeons had the final say: “There is no such thing as ‘nominal space food’ or ‘experimental space food.’ There is only food.”

Velcro was perfected over 100mya in feather mk ll or lll

In the Chinese Space Program, Tang is one of the Astronauts…

Tang sounds like Skin So Soft, the Avon product that kills ticks and fleas and cleans your carburetor (ok that’s an exaggeration)… makes you wonder why anyone would want to put it on their skin.

As a college student, Tang is pretty cheap and easy. I drink it all the time

I used to work in a drug treatment center where we did, among other things, detox using methadone. The methadone (which tastes like quinine) was mixed with Tang (with food coloring added, so if any of it got to the street, they could tell which clinic it came from).