You can now get a full, 9-course Christmas dinner in a can

History tells us that many yummy things can come out of a can. Heinz baked beans. Campbell’s cream of tomato soup. Alphabetti spaghetti. These are all tasty tinned touchstones that have done as much for pop culture as they have for rumbling tummies. But, though food can obviously still be great if you decide to encase in metal, it should be obvious to anyone that not every dish needs the treatment. Some people have apparently failed to get the memo.

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Christmas dinner, when done right, should be one of the most exciting meals of the year. The sight of a table heaving under the weight of a massive bird, piles of potatoes and slabs of steaming sausage meat should be enough to get anyone hot under the collar. The spectacle of all that food and the prospect of total dietary indulgence is part of what makes the holiday so fun. One would think that trying to stuff all that into a can would somewhat defeat the point. That, apparently, hasn’t stopped us from doing just that.

The punnily named “Christmas Tinner” from Game is the ultimate example of a shortcut leading to disaster. This is the edible equivalent of an idiot teen ignoring advice to “not go through the woods” in your favourite horror movie – for the sake of a few hours you’re going to give yourself a whole world of grief and probable pain. There’s a reason why everyone else sticks to the path.

The can is split into nine individual levels, each designed to deliver some aspect of the Christmas experience with relative ease. The top two tiers feature scrambled egg and bacon. This, we can only hope, is designed to be eaten at the start of the day, rather than alongside the main event, as the only thing that can make canned turkey taste worse is canned turkey with old egg.

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After the breakfast bits have been polished off, the can moves on to more traditional Christmassy fare. Two mince pies are followed by turkey and potatoes, gravy, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, Brussel sprouts with stuffing or broccoli with stuffing and roast carrots and parsnips. This is all naturally followed by a slab of canned Christmas pudding, sitting at the bottom of the tin.

There are too many questions raised by the Christmas Tinner to address in one, small article. Why is there egg in it? What is the point of offering a choice between sprouts and broccoli? If you leave Christmas pudding to soak in parsnip juice, does it taste better? Ultimately, these are issues destined to remain unresolved for the foreseeable future, unless someone is willing to try it. Rather you than me.

Having been released by Game, it seems pretty clear that the Christmas Tinner is all about convenience. After all, who has the time to be incessantly basting turkey breast alongside bouts of Fortnite? But, while food that helps us multi-task has many pros, it looks like the food industry may have gone too far with this one. Turkey might take time, but surely anything is worth avoiding this metallic monstrosity.