Spam turns 75 on July 5 and, well, it might be feeling a little old.

It's hard to keep up with those youngsters on the grocery shelves. Campbell Soup (CPB) is getting a Thai tomato coconut flavor. Kraft (KFT) has new breakfast crisps. Ben & Jerry's now has Greek frozen yogurt.

But Spam? Well, Spam is just Spam, and it doesn't get a lot of love with health-conscious shoppers. Hormel Foods (HRL) has tried to keep Spam fresh in consumers' minds, but the canned pork just doesn't have enough buzz. Spam only has 1,246 Twitter followers -- even Purina Horse Feed has more.

So Hormel is out to change that. And it's starting with its first-ever spokescharacter: Sir Can-A-Lot. He's a 2.5-inch tall animated knight, Ad Age reports, and is supposed to "crusade to rescue the world from routine meals."

Sir Can-A-Lot is also going to help Spam make headway into social media. You can see one Spam commercial featuring the character here.

The first can of Spam was made in 1937 in Austin, Minn., according to Hormel. It was a hit, and by 1941 the company had sold 40 million pounds of the meat. Spam also played an important role in feeding Allied forces in World War II.

Spam isn't as popular now, but Hormel says it still sells 90 million cans of the meat in the U.S. each year. The company's stock price has risen 4% in the last year.

But the price of meat is rising, and Hormel said that's cutting into profits. The operating profit from Hormel's grocery products unit fell 9.2% in the quarter ended Jan. 29, Bloomberg reports. Wholesale-pork prices hit 88.2 cents a pound on Feb. 15 -- the highest since mid-December.

Hormel said its quarterly profit fell nearly 14% to $128.4 million.

So can Sir Can-A-Lot help Hormel reverse that trend? The first commercial in this campaign isn't all that exciting, and the new Spam website is clunky and confusing. Sir Can-A-Lot has his work cut out for him.

--Kim Peterson doesn't own any shares of the stocks mentioned. She has, however, made a mean Spam musubi.