"The other interesting detail is the 'food plan' which appears to have been a part of it...I'm fuzzy about how they worked but I think it was a 'buy freezer food from us and you get the freezer free...but the freezer food was very expensive and not-so-good quality."
The more things change, the more they stay the same. There was some promotion at Albertson's along those lines last year. I can't remember how it worked. I THINK it was buy a freezer, and get coupons that would make it free. I had a chance to see a coupon book one would get, and it definitely didn't work out for me. Not that that was a surprise. A freezer's value for me would be storing staples bought cheap (say, at the peak of summer/fall harvest), or something I cooked up in quantity. If all I did was use it to hold frozen dinners, the value would drop dramatically. I seldom eat frozen prepared foods--I think it's healthier eating stuff I make from scratch--but even back when I did regularly eat frozen prepared foods, it never seemed worth stockpiling. Every time I went to the store, something was on sale, and when one brand went off sale, it'd be back on sale in the near future.