Slim Jim (snack food)
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| Product type | Jerky sticks |
|---|---|
| Owner | ConAgra Brands |
| Country | U.S. |
| Introduced | 1929 |
| Previous owners |
General Mills GoodMark Foods, Inc. |
| Tagline | Snap into a Slim Jim |
| Website | www |
Slim Jim is an American brand of jerky snacks or dried sausage sold globally and manufactured by ConAgra Brands. They are widely available and popular in the United States, with 2015 revenues of $575 million. About 500 million are produced annually in at least 21 varieties.
The Slim Jim was first invented by Adolph Levis in 1929 in Philadelphia, although he and his partner subsequently hired a meatpacker to develop the product for production in the 1940s. He later sold the company in 1967 for about $20 million to General Mills, who moved the operations to Raleigh, North Carolina, and merged them into other meatpacking operations that it renamed Goodmark Foods. He sold Goodmark in 1982 to a group led by Ron Doggett. ConAgra bought Goodmark in 1998.
The product Levis created is different from the one produced since the 1990s, with Lon Adams developing the current Slim Jim recipe while working for Goodmark. Slim Jim is an example of a food product which is listed as containing mechanically separated chicken in its ingredients by requirement of the USDA.
Production was interrupted after an explosion and fire on June 9, 2009 destroyed the plant in Garner, North Carolina, killing three workers. Operations resumed in Garner and in Troy, Ohio. On May 20, 2011, the facility in Garner closed, the same day that the company's former spokesman "Macho Man" Randy Savage died.
From 1993 to 2000, advertising for the product included commercials that featured professional wrestler "Macho Man" Randy Savage, who served as spokesperson. Each commercial would close with Savage bellowing "Need a little excitement? Snap into a Slim Jim!" Other notable spokespersons have included rapper Vanilla Ice and wrestlers The Ultimate Warrior, Bam Bam Bigelow, Kevin Nash, and Edge.
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