1993 Croatian Special Dry Ration Review Freeze Dried Recon Patrol MRE Tasting Test 

3:00 That matchbook cover is incredible and easily the best part of that ration... the drawing of an anthropomorphic matchook celebrating its victory over a Zippo lighter.

It's amazing that Steve can find stuff like this. This would never have seen the light of the day for the general public were it not for his work and dedication.

It's only been up on YT 15 minutes, and ALREADY I am confident that this is the best review of Croatian Special Dry Ration I will ever see. Big like! Nice!

Honey! Grab the popcorn and cancel our plans… Steve dropped a new MRE video!

Cheers for the upload Steve

Stuck at home with a cut hand from a work injury, really appreciate these videos Steve!

Just when my MREInfo withdrawals were kicking in, Steve delivers the product. Impeccable timing as always Steve.

Steve is the best thing on the internet. Good content, kind comments. You're the best man.

damn Steve is going ham with the uploads, good to see an oldie MRE.

Dried indeed 😂 Hello from Croatia ✌️

I always gotta watch Steve eat rations as old as me most of the time its definitely aged better. 😅😂

Two videos in two days?! Nice! Edit: THREE!!!

He hear our call. Bringing joy back to us. Steve 2024.

Always surprising :) But always awesome!

My proposal: the citrus candy, salt tablet, and dandelion greens added to the freezy-beef to make orange beef veggies.

I try to talk to people about this channel and they look at me funny 😁

Looking good Steve

The package on those orange candies looks like something out of the 60s

Sees a floater in the bottom of the can, "that looks nice"

You're spoiling us bro

We need a vid where Steve talks us through all the cool stuff on his shelf.

Steve is spoiling us with uploads.

No hesitation when eating 30 year old dried beef. Love this guy

Yes!! Steve is on spree 💪🏻

Find yourself a partner that treat you the way Steve treat the orange candy packaging

We're gonna need a Steve1989 original music album, dude. Ideally complete with spoon music!

Nice, m’kay

So much going on in this one. Awesome!👍😎🇦🇺

I always wonder, since Steve stores a lot of the packaging, is there like a storage closet full of MRE packaging somewhere?

The almost auto tune like spoon taps get me every time

I'm disturbed by the tea and chocolate specifically.

Use an artist's plastic palette knife to safely scrape gummed-up powder or granular materials. Available in any art supply store. Bon appetite!

My croatian mother: omg he's eating it! 😂

I was surprised by the number of components in such a small package.

If you know anything about Croatia you know that getting a ration from 1993 in 2023 is insane.

Where are you displaying all this stuff you are saving for display?

"Let's check out this instant energy tea." *opens packet, revealing something that looks like a dead colony of ants in some decomposed animal remains* "NIIICE!"

A Croatian MRE from 1993, even under the best circumstances has lived an extremely hard life.

Hello from Croatia Steve. This ration was made during homeland war and probably as rare as an unicorn. Nice, mkay.

If Steve says the coffee is "horrendous" it would most certainly incapacitate or possibly kill an ordinary man.

wow this really brings back fond memories of my time in Croatian Army (Hrvatska kopnena vojska - HKoV). That was my favorite chocolate bar, shame to see it did not last all the years. Thanks for the trip down memory lane Steve!

Watched your videos right before i got cancer, during treatment, during false remission, during second treatment, and now im watching you while bald-post bone marrow transplant. Thanks for being a mainstay and keeping my sanity. Love your international reviews especially so this was a treat.

My dad brought a bunch of these when he came back from the front in 1994. I remember my sister and I splitting the chocolate. These were made during the war in Croatia and were packaged in December 1993.

_We are not worthy of these regular uploads_

Goes incognito for years… then comes back with content after content after content. We salute you Steve!

You just know that the coffee would kill a lesser man outright if Steve is calling it bad

Steve your music is always fire, keep it up.

This is one of only two or three creators whose videos I must watch as soon as I get home from work.

Steve’s shelf he stands near is his equivalent of Ashen’s brown couch. It never changes, which is kind of comforting.

Translation for 2:09: Special dry meal (Specijalni suhi obrok) Name of the product (Naziv proizvoda): Desert chocolate (desertna čokolada) Dehydrated meat block (mesna kocka dehidrirana) Candy "Limač" or "poni" (bomboni Limač i Poni) Context: old school fruit flavoured hard candy, just this particular brand was long gone after 90s. Ponita Context: really popular form of instant energy drink in this part of Europe, just here in Croatia is mostly referred as "Cedevita" after the most popular brand of said drink made by "Atlantic group" Poni čaj Context: Dont know what is that for a tea, even my father has hard time remembering it. Chewing gum Wrigley's (guma za žvakanje WRIGLEY'S) Kitchen salt (kuhinjska sol) Izosan 1 (pills for disinfection of water for drinking)/(tablete za dezifekciju vode za piće) Franck kaffee (instant coffee)/ (Instant kava) Context: Our really old coffee making brand/producer (dates to 1892.), its mostly associated as best quality coffee (and is much more expensive) Sugar (šećer) Asepsoleta (antiseptic wet tissue) Packaged: December 93 (PAKIRANO: Prosinac 93)

Hell ya! Croatian here, What a treat!!!! Homeland war era ration, a lot of history here.

I'd like to take a minute to appreciate how Steve changes the pitch of the "dings" when he taps the spoon on a glass so that it makes a little song. Such a weird little touch that is probably fun to do when editing the video together, and it always makes me smile. He's been doing this for a really long time and I haven't really seen it mentioned in comments before (not that it hasn't been). Anyway, thanks for all the interesting things you do with these videos, and thank you for continuing to use your synth music and photos for the intro and outro. That synth sound immediately brings back memories of PC game music from the mid 90s. Love it! :)

LOL! Steve you are the MRE MAN! Imitators cry every time you raise your creative head! They copy your old stuff with crap trays, plastic ware and fancy knives, but will not eat 120 year old beef and 80 yr old smokes while still commenting on the “hiss”! I’ll take your sporadic creative genius and daredevil approach over all the imitators, even if it’s only twice a year, but please don’t do that to us. Good health and please continue on with your journey.

Nice! The balkan war period is so fascinating to me, and I love seeing these rations preserved and explored for us. It humanizes the experiences of the regular soldiers.

That matchbook is a piece of art! I would make that into a t-shirt design.

Amazing another upload!!!

Back to back, nice

I'm jelly you got that real Wrigleys gum. My granddad worked for Wrigleys in the 90s so i got free Wrigleys in my childhood, I could taste something was very wrong when they switched. I even got to try Winterfresh before it was sold in the US in 1994. I got one of the first packages meant to go on shelves that year and it's now a core memory, I'd still chew that gum.

its important to note that Steve has an insanely high tolerance for potentially toxic chocolate

Its beef soup cubes ,you should boil them for 10min to get the soup...its something we use all the time here in the balkans

My dad was a UN peacekeeper with 3VP back in 93' shared tons of stories and pictures from his time over there, one sticks out of a small house that was destroyed that had a little old lady living in it and my father and a few others helped her find all of her remaining belongings and set her up with some CAF rations. Now I get to carry the torch in not only his regiment but the same damn battalion as him current day. This video made my day seeing something from a warzone my father was in. Poor souls in every war past and present may you find peace.

*My Psycologist:* "Croatian Matchbox-man who beats us Zippo's in the ring isn't real, he can't hurt you." 2:59

Thank you Steve!

I love the matchbook going full 'DOWN GOES FRAZIER!!" with the art. The imagery is just super cool.

It's amazing to see such a piece of history from the Yugoslav Wars. I didn't know that the Croats had a ration, which is similar to the US Patrol ration. Even more amazing is that the components held up together for the past 31 years since the date of manufacture. The sugar packet on 17:42 even has an advertisement in Croatian: Nigdje ga nema do "Podravka" džema ! (There is nothing like jam from Podravka). Podravka is a Croatian brand for condiments, sauses, candies, jam and instant soups. They are famous as the creators of Vegeta, a universal condiment, which is very popular in ex-Yugo countries. I would love to see more rations from the Balkans. Too bad, that there aren't rations from my home country, Bulgaria.

Nothing like starting off a new year with a bunch of new MRE videos. Thanks Steve! Now let's get this video out onto a tray. Nice

I have been watching you for years and I love to hear how much you actually care about this stuff. It is super interesting to learn the history behind the things that sustained soldiers during war efforts. Thank you for bringing these to video

I dunno man. I was half expecting a sealed pouch of Red Man and two mini bottles Croatian spirits.

Steve is the ultimate hobbiest. Knowledgeable, savvy collector, etc. In another world/time Steve would have the most rad model train setup

I haven't had Wrigley's spearmint gum since they changed the recipe. I could smell and taste it from memory. The matchbook design is fantastic.

I've never seen a chocolate bar explode like that! 😮 Only Steve can poor two drinks at the same time without spilling a drop! 😎👍

I dont think he liked the beef🙄

By far steve you're the best reviewer of MRE ration thanks for theses video

Tea may actually be bergamot or the local evergreen berry substitute version.

The chocolate simply devolved into its former powdered form. Any more time and steve would have been unpacking cacao beans.

The auto tune mixing the glasses was amazing

Oj zjadłbym taką gumkę z dawnych czasów. Jakiś czas temu trafiła mi się guma Turbo z lat '90, była kompletnie skamieniała, ale gdy potrzymałem ją w ustach kilka minut, byłem w stanie chociaż odrobinę pogryźć i raz jeszcze przeżyć ten (tamten) niepowtarzalny smak 😎 Pozdro!

The handwritten part on the ingredient list says "matches"

2:07 what is written by hand is "Žigice" which translates to matchstick

As a long time fan, it's always exciting to see uploads that hit closer to "home" in some way. I'm sure a different group of your viewers experience the same feelings with every video. Thank you for all the work you do, please keep it up!

Steve and Tray back with another amazing video!

When the month was horrendous, Steve at the 11th hour comes in clutch ,thank you Steve 👏

4 drinks + 6 beef nuggets + gum= GIRLLLL DINNER

It is so rare because life was pretty hard there in early nineties. I'm also pretty surprised some of the rations weren't eaten

How am i first? 4am 😅

I have been in the ration game for a while, but ive never even heard of this one. Croation LRP basically? Thanks for preserving history, Steve!!

Thank you Steve. Nothing more therapeutic than your content.

If you squint your eyes enough, they look like chicken nuggies

I was in Bosnia in 1993. Thanks for this Steve. Great video as always.

That matchbook is actually sick, collectors are frothing lol

The Croatians put together an interesting ration! Thanks for sharing it with us, man. Try steeping the beef in hot water. You might get a bouillon analog as a by-product.

Steve out here just rapid fire dropping absolute bangers of videos today. Nice.

When the world needs him the most, he uploads!

Just imagine the V8 of Helge Meyer's Ghost Camaro roaring through Croatia to deliver supplies and MREs like this to people in need.

I thought he was gonna stir both drinks at once after he poured the water in both at once and I got very excited Nice

I think the tea is just a regular lemon tea (based on the text on the background). However, the orange bonbons are called Limac (or Limach if you want to read it right) which could be slang for "kiddo". It's a word where they reverse the word "mali" which means little to 'lima" and then transform it colloquially even further to "limach". Pretty cool

two days in a row and 2 videos today. thank you so much for all that you do!

Me: 1993? That’s not too old…..wait a minute *maths* 30 years ago, shit 🤦

We missed you Steve 😢 thank you for coming back!

GOOD MORNING Best Steve CANADA RU-vid ONTARIO MISSISSAUGA VIDEO TRANSIT 🇨🇦🇨🇦❄️❄️☃️⛄️⛄️❄️❄️