It could be. Spam is translation for any kind of minced meat, there’s no implication about way of opening, shaper or brand. The one that was given out was (from scribble) without tab and cylindrical in shape.

And since you decided to query I’ll share another (more local) joke. In Poland you can buy spam called „Konserwa Turystyczna” (which translates to tourist can roughly). And the running joke about it is that you can (psst) buy one while NOT being a tourist. Nobody checks that!

As for the 3rd. Nobody said it was worse, that’s the point. I like the joke because it highlights it. The goal wasn’t to do it perfectly. It was to survive. Engineer succeeded in a way that solved the given problem.

And in IT we have a saying that premature optimization is a root of all evil. Doesn’t that sound aligning? :)