Cans of Spam meat made by the Hormel Foods Corporation are pictured in Silver Spring, Maryland, on July 5, 2012.
More cans of Spam have been sold than there are people on Earth. In 2007, Hormel says, it shipped off its 7 billionth can. It took 22 years to break the billion-tin mark, at which point the sales ramped up exponentially. The company had sold 3 billion cans by 1980 and 4 billion by 1986. Hormel, still based in Austin, Minn., where the gelatinous meat product was first dreamt up back in 1937, can crank out 44,000 cans an hour at their current facility. The company has reported booming sales in the midst of the recession, with sales increasing 20% since 2007.