34 Once-Popular Foods Every '80s Kid Will Know

Food nostalgia, the experience of being mentally and emotionally taken back to a previous time in your life via the smell, sight, or taste of food, is a real phenomenon. If there's one decade that spurs a lot of food nostalgia, it's the 1980s.

That can have a downside. When brands try to revive products, they often miss the mark due to changes in ingredients. A Redditor who claimed to work at a food-manufacturing company says that many companies have switched more of their ingredients to synthetic versions that don't quite taste the same. That can be disappointing, especially for '80s kids who remember these 34 once-popular foods.

Another very '80s food that '80s kids will remember is the Micro Magic line of microwavable burgers, fries, and shakes. Those don't sound so unusual now, but at the time, a burger you could zap in a few minutes along with fries and, yes, a shake, was a marvel of time-saving technology. There was a little debate over the shakes. They were sold completely frozen, and you'd place them in the microwave for about 30 seconds or so. The result was a softer but still very cold shake. At the time, early purchasers were pleasantly surprised at the taste and ease of preparation, but other people were a little cynical about actually being able to microwave a shake. The shakes were still popular, though, with one Redditor wishing they'd come back because similar frozen shakes just didn't hold up.

Remember these tiny rectangular pockets of goodness, microwaved right in the box? Chun King Egg Rolls were an afterschool snack for many kids. They'd come out of the microwave almost burning hot; one commentor on a Straight Dope forum even called them "little brown blisters of liquid pain when fresh out of the oven," but the kids didn't seem to mind.

By the way, if the pillow shape of these egg rolls reminds you of pizza rolls, there's a reason for that. The man who started the Chun King brand was Luigino "Jeno" Paulucci, who decided to start a line of Chinese-American convenience foods that eventually included frozen dinners with these tiny egg rolls as a side. In the 1960s, Paulucci switched to making Italian food and thought using egg roll wrappers with a pizza filling could be a hit. Jeno's products were eventually combined with products from the Totino's company.

Nabisco Swiss Cheese crackers were mildly flavored snacks with holes meant to mimic the look of Swiss cheese. They actually contained real Swiss cheese and were convenient when you wanted a handful of something to eat. They arrived on the scene in the 1970s and remained popular through the 2000s but were eventually discontinued.

Fans of the product who can make it to Canada can find a similar brand of Swiss cheese crackers, but that isn't enough for many. At least one Facebook page was started to try and drum up support for bringing back the crackers, although the last post was made in 2010.

Good in concept and delivery but lacking in packaging alternatives, the McDLT was well-intentioned but ill-fated. McDonald's wanted to create a burger that could compete with the lettuce-laden Whopper from Burger King, and the company wanted to ensure the lettuce, tomato, and top bun half remained cool while the bottom bun and patty remained hot. The solution was to package the burger with the hot ingredients on one side and the cool ingredients on the other and let the customer put them together when ready to eat the burger.

Unfortunately, the McDLT got taken out by a couple of factors. New rules around foam packaging meant the company couldn't use the materials that kept the two sides at their proper temperatures. Another suggested cause was that many McDonald's locations used the wrong cooking equipment, resulting in lukewarm patties.

This one is more for the "big kids" of the 1980s: a whiskey-flavored ice cream that lasted only a few years but that certainly made an impression. Available only in 1988 and 1989, Tennessee Mud was a coffee ice cream with added amaretto, almonds, and Jack Daniels whiskey. No real reason was given for the discontinuation; the flavor's tombstone in Ben & Jerry's Flavor Graveyard simply reads that "Mud with Jack Daniels was not meant to last."

Despite its short life, the flavor consistently shows up on lists of discontinued items fans wish would come back, and fans have even tried to make the ice cream at home. However, Ben & Jerry's has declined to bring the flavor back from the dead.

If a flavor is popular, and producing the flavor isn't terribly hard or expensive, you'd think keeping the flavor would be a no-brainer. So, it's a bit surprising to find out what happened to Dastardly Mash, another Ben & Jerry's flavor that landed in the Flavor Graveyard. The flavor was available for 12 years and contained nuts, raisins, and chocolate chips in chocolate ice cream. Ben discontinued the flavor in 1994, much to Jerry's chagrin. They still debate the decision. Ben's explanation was that he began to dislike the texture of the raisins in the ice cream even though sales of the flavor were good.

Taco Bell may be known for tacos and other main dishes, but the company also offers dessert. Nowadays, you can get Cinnamon Twists, but in the 1980s, you could get Cinnamon Crispas, which were fried, triangular tortilla chips doused in cinnamon sugar.

While people still order the Twists, the consensus is that the Crispas were far superior. This Redditor calls the Twists a downgrade from the Crispas, this Redditor compares the Twists to Styrofoam, this Redditor says the Twists are dry compared to the Crispas, and commentors in this entire post dunk on the Twists and reminisce about the Crispas. It's kind of baffling why the Crispas were discontinued at all.

McDonald's original process for making their apple pies was to fry them. The fried pies were replaced with baked pies in the early 1990s in most of the United States; the reason for the switch was to make the pies a little healthier as consumers in general were turning away from fattier foods. Fans of the fried version were obviously unhappy.

You saw that "most of," right? Well, if you ever travel to Hawaii, you can still score the deep-fried pies. In an interview with Honolulu magazine, franchise owner Victor Lim said franchises in the state initially sold the baked pies, but customers preferred the fried version, so the Hawaii franchises were allowed to keep selling them. The oldest existing McDonald's restaurant, located in Downey, California, also sells the fried pies. 

Sizzlean was processed "bacon" made from ground turkey, pork, and beef that was formed and cut into bacon-like strips. It was meant to be a leaner version of bacon for those who wanted the taste and form of bacon on their plates but didn't want the fat and grease associated with real pork bacon. It was a popular product but was discontinued after it was sold to ConAgra. No real reason was ever given, although speculation includes declining sales and the fact that ConAgra just might not have been interested in making it any longer.

Customers remember Sizzlean fondly. Commentors in this Reddit thread, for example, remember their families making it, particularly their grandparents. It may not have been an exciting product like pudding pies or microwavable shakes, but it helped families form happy memories — that's a rather nice accomplishment.

Hopping over the pond to the UK and Ireland finds a very popular '80s ice cream that, to the delight of fans, made a recent comeback. Funny Feet ice cream is a light pink chunk of strawberry ice cream shaped like a large foot, complete with individual toes. It was a favorite in the 1980s but ended up being discontinued.

The original manufacturer was Wall, who eventually brought Funny Feet back in 2013. But then Funny Feet disappeared again, only to return to Ireland in 2014 from maker HB and again in 2021 in the UK through the Iceland supermarket chain.

Sometimes a product is still around but is linked with the 1980s in people's minds, often resulting in surprise when those people find the product still in production. In the United States, that describes Five Alive juice, which is available outside the country and shows up randomly in stores here. Kids loved drinking this stuff; a post on Reddit elicited several comments about how good it was.

Five Alive featured a mix of orange, lemon, lime, tangerine, and grapefruit juices. It was available in cartons and as juice concentrate. Five Alive isn't widely available in the U.S. but was available in Canada in 2019. But, a writer for radio station WBKR in Owensboro, Kentucky, wrote on the station's website that he found Five Alive in concentrate form in 2020 in a local Kroger.

Oreo does a lot to their cookies, from reducing or expanding the "stuf" inside to making the cookies thinner or thicker. One thing they tried in the 1980s was making the cookie wider — much wider. So much wider that the sandwich cookie looked more like a sandwich than a cookie. Okay, maybe not that big, but it was easily the size of your palm. This was the Oreo Big Stuf, an individually packaged cookie that clocked in at 316 calories.

No one really knows why Nabisco stopped production on the cookie, not even customer service reps from Mondelēz International, which currently makes Oreos. There's at least one petition to bring back the Big Stuf, but for now, Oreos are only expanding vertically with the addition of even more filling.

Nature Valley granola bars from General Mills are a long-time lunchbox staple. In the mid-1980s, General Mills decided to produce something a little sweeter than the granola bars, and the result was the Peanut Butter Bopper. These were cylinders of peanut butter covered in chocolate and a topping like nuts or crispy rice. Flavors included Fudge Chip and Cookie Crunch, so these were not the oats and honey that the company's customers were used to.

Peanut Butter Boppers were also much softer to bite into compared to the hard granola bars and were a hit at first. However, General Mills discontinued them for unknown reasons. In 2023, people asked General Mills over social media if the company could bring the Boppers back, but the only answer was that the people running the social media account would let the company know.

The original Slice soda distinguished itself from its competitors by having a juice content of 10%. But, its initial popularity brought with it a number of new competitors that quickly gained an edge over the juicy soda, eventually eclipsing it. Slice soda faded into the background, and its flavors were either discontinued or replaced with new brands like Sierra Mist.

In 2022, fans got a jolt after a report that Slice was coming back. However, it turned out that the new "Slice" was actually a sparkling water product that had been released in 2018. But in 2021, Slice soda actually did come back, with juice and different sweeteners.

While we're on the subject of strange demises, here's one where there was no trademark issue, but rather a, uh, bathroom issue. Smurf-Berry Crunch was a popular cereal among fans of the "Smurfs" cartoon and was around in different forms for a few years in the 1980s. The problem was that a blue dye used in the cereal didn't digest well. In other words, that blue dye passed right through and turned, well, you know what, blue. Parents were alarmed, although the effect was similar to that of other dyes in cereals. Still, the complaints led Post, the manufacturer, to reformulate the product, which was given a new Smurf-related name.

Sometimes it's not about the food itself but the way the food is presented that makes it memorable. There are tons of bubble gum brands, but Topps topped them all in the 1980s with their small "juice cartons" filled with pieces of fruit-flavored gum. The gum looked like little rocks, and the initial burst of flavor combined with the novelty of biting into what looked like pebbles made the gum a success. The flavor faded fast, though; this Redditor summed it up nicely when they said it was "30 seconds of pure flavor satisfaction."

The way some of the flavors were packaged made the gum stand out even more. One flavor, pink lemonade, had two different flavors in it that chewers could combine. One was sweeter and one was more sour, creating a perfectly customized flavor.

What did you do when you craved the flavor of Gatorade but didn't want to actually drink it? In the 1980s, you could get Gatorade Gator Gum. The gum was first manufactured in the 1970s and wasn't discontinued until after the late 1980s when its manufacturing contract expired.

The gum wasn't everyone's favorite; even people who liked it admitted that the gum only made you thirsty despite the wrapper claiming it would quench thirst. One Redditor claimed the best part of the gum was when you chewed on a flavor crystal after the majority of the flavor had already disappeared. Regardless, there's no doubt it's a good memory for many kids of the '80s.