“Sealed Crustless” sandwiches

This is a joke, right?

I’m not asking if it’s a joke because I don’t think it’s a sandwich. These are not pies, baked from a doughy state with the PB&J in the middle. These are not ravioli, as Wikipedia trolls spent much of 2018 trying to claim. These are not bread geodes, mined painstakingly from the surrounding crumb and carved by artisans into pleasing scalloped-edged flying saucer shapes. They sure do appear to be 2 slices of bread with peanut butter and jelly between, the crusts removed and the edges crimped.

I’m not asking if it’s a joke because I plan to go on some kind of rant about how lazy our society is. For me these sandwiches are unnecessary–that does not mean they are for everyone. I’m sure there are people for whom assembling a sandwich is a hardship, or for whom the sealed edges are a welcome guard against spills. They might not be the most nutritious thing someone could eat, and the hour defrost time is inconvenient, and I’m not sure whether someone who has a hard time making a sandwich could open the plastic packaging easily either, but none of this is my point.

My point is, do “sealed crustless” sandwiches exist outside of Smuckers Uncrustables? If not, why is this on the List?

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KFC’s “Double Down” was removed from the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches on May 14th, 2015, with the following reason cited:

This is a list of generic popular sandwiches and has no room for specific sandwiches made only by specific restaurants (otherwise there would be reason to have entries for “Big Mac,” “Whopper,” etc.).

So perhaps the Sealed Crustless slides by because that is not the trademarked name marketed by Smuckers. However, if you search for the phrase “sealed crustless sandwich,” you will find this patent application from December of 1997, describing the structure of the sandwich and with drafts of the mechanisms for making them. This patent is currently assigned to none other than Smuckers Fruit Processing Company. So this appears to be entirely owned and produced by Smuckers.

So hey. They pulled a fast one, Smuckers did. I don’t edit the List, I just eat the sandwiches and write about them. So here I am, Smuckers, writing about your dumb sandwiches for free.

This is a strawberry Uncrustable. I suppose technically it is a “Smucker’s Uncrustables peanut butter & strawberry jam sandwich.” It consists of 2 layers of peanut butter, one for each slice of bread, with the jam inbetween, the peanut butter keeping it from oozing into the porous squishy white bread.

It is not very good white bread, nor is it the highest quality strawberry jam (though Smuckers jams in general are not terrible) or peanut butter. Since the jam is squeezed into such a small space, the larger chunks that can make jam in a jar enjoyably fruit-like aren’t found, and the jam itself seems sweeter. The peanut butter also has added sugar, and the bread is full of stabilizing ingredients as well, to make this product better able to withstand long times frozen or sitting on a shelf. It’s fine, though, sweet and squishy and insubstantial.

This is the health food version of the Uncrustable, the “Smucker’s Uncrustables REDUCED SUGAR peanut butter & grape spread sandwich on WHOLE WHEAT bread.” Please note that the packaging uses at least 15 different fonts in spelling out this unwieldy name.

The greater color contrasts in the “whole wheat” bread make it possible to see the demarcation between top slice of bread and bottom, the line where two once separate items were fused together into this Frankenstein of a sandwich.

The bread here has a slightly stiffer texture and more assertive flavor, and the jelly is less sweet. It’s not good, not by any means, but it’s almost better than the strawberry one, despite the fact that I really don’t like grape jelly.

These things are a hot commodity for Smucker’s. They’re currently building a new plant in Colorado, as this may be the only product of theirs that is still increasing in sales. They’ve been introducing new flavors, such as peanut butter & honey spread, peanut butter only, and “Hazelnut spread,” their version of Nutella. (OK, might have to try that one. Toasted, though.)

So you win, Smuckers. And so does my 11 year old. He now has two mostly-full boxes of Uncrustables for after school snacks.

EDIT: I saw this device in a store yesterday (2/3/2019). It is a “Crust Cutter & Sandwich Sealer,” i.e. a device for making Sealed Crustless sandwiches. I wonder if Smuckers will go after these guys.