Yeah ... me too. It didn't help they were left over from the Korean conflict, I served in the Marine Corps
during the Vietnam era. The least liked C-ration was by far lima beans.
C-rats/K-rats...out in the bush just mix em up with a lil tobassco sauce and ketchup and you ate like a king!!!
I was in the Corps just after you. We still had ancient C-Rats that had to be used up before the MREs came in. I remember the B-1 can being the most useful thing for making a portable stove. I don't remember especially liking or disliking C-Rats, but then, I think the Ham and MFers were all gone by then. I don't recall having to eat them.
Things that I do remember about them include the super-useful 'John Wayne', 'S**t disks', John Wayne crackers, shaking my squad down for coffee packets (few of them drank coffee), taking the cans out of their boxes and packing them in spare socks inside your ALICE pack, and improvised tripwire triggers with a plastic C-Rat spoon and a clothes-pin. I also remember our Doc gassing himself out of a bunker at the range by cooking with Trioxane. :-)
Ditto...I still have one or two of those little can opener thingies in a drawer someplace.
I did like the little four-packs of ciggies, though.