Spamarama

Spamarama
Spam eating contest at the 2004 Spamarama festival
Genre	Festival
Frequency	Annually
Location(s)	Austin, Texas
Country	United States
Inaugurated	1978
Founder	David Arnsberger Terry Dick

Spamarama (SPAMARAMA) is a long-time annual festival and competitive cookoff held in Austin, Texas, during 1978–2007 and in 2019 and 2022 to celebrate Spam, the branded canned pork product. The festival includes a Spam cook-off, Spam themed competitive activities, and live music. ^[1][2][3]

Origin

The Spamarama began in 1978 as a joke between David Arnsberger and his friend, Dick Terry, who believed there were too many barbecue and chili cook-offs. The frequent contests seemed silly to them and they felt that a real challenge would be to make dishes with Spam. "If you could make Spam edible, that would be a feat," Arnsberger explained. The two friends considered calling the event a "SPAM-Off", but the name quickly became Spamarama.

Arnsberger was one of the frontmen for the Uranium Savages, the Austin parody band, which had a gig already booked on April Fools' Day at Soap Creek Saloon on Bee Cave Road. They piggy-backed their festival idea on to the band's gig and 300 spectators and 27 entries later the first Spamarama was a success. Austinites liked the opportunity to compete in events like the pig-shouting contests, to dress in costume, and come up with creative Spam and pig pun-themed dishes. The event was repeated and soon artist Jim Franklin designed Spamarama T-shirts and posters that have since become collectors’ items. ^[4][1][5]

Hormel lawsuit

Hormel, makers of Spam, sent Jim Franklin a cease-and-desist order for using their brand name. They also claimed the Spamarama festival was "diluting their product, a legal term for harming". Hormel eventually located David Arnsberger and worked out a contract with him and Sharon Kincl, which gave them the sole rights to use the Spamarama name in perpetuity royalty free. For the next four years the Spamarama festival continued. Hormel provided Spam branded items, official T-shirts, ball caps, clocks and other swag that could be used as prizes, although they did not like the name of the Spam Cram contest.^[4][1]