Foods From The 1980s That Are Weirdly Making A Comeback

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The year 2021 came saddled with some pretty big expectations. Unfortunately, given that COVID-19 risk didn't quite subside, few of those expectations were realized. That being said, the first few months of 2021 gave us reason to hope that the world could start turning again, and dramatically at that. That is, after all, how things went in the past. 

Think, for example, of how the war and pandemic-ravaged nineteen-teens gave way to the Roaring Twenties, with all of its frivolity and indulgence (via Art Deco Style). And after the economically-challenged 1970s, the 1980s brought with it luxury and opulence — so that right before our very eyes, leisure suits gave way to power suits, long hair gave way to the slicked back Wall Street look, and alfalfa sprouts gave way to caviar and foie gras (via Town and Country). 

Those fluctuations should provide further hope for those of us who lived through tough pandemic times in 2020. In 2021, with vaccinations on the rise, it even could be possible to sense a 1980s vibe in the air — or perhaps that's just the aroma of chicken wings, French onion soup, and everything bagel seasoning making their comeback. In fact, all these 1980s foods have been making a comeback. So, is it really that weird to think that a return to shoulder pads, smooth jazz, and high-concept cinema might not be too far behind? 

During the 1980s, sun-dried tomatoes were "ubiquitous" in American cuisine (via Taste). What made sun-dried tomatoes so popular, according to David Kamp, author of The United States of Arugula, is that they were "versatile and simple" and not "too outlandish" (via Taste). "You could toss them in anything," Kamp elaborated. In fact, people did, tossing them into pastas and salads and onto pizzas, filling them with goat cheese, and even mincing and kneading them into bread dough and baking them up as sun-dried tomato bagels and dinner rolls. 

By the mid-1990s, however, it appeared that sun-dried tomatoes' day in the sun was drawing to a close (via Taste). When food critic Ruth Reichl accused the savory dried fruit of being "monotonous," that seemed to be the last straw. Or was it? Apparently rumors of the demise of sun-dried tomatoes have been greatly exaggerated because it appears that they are back – and it may be that we have the umami trend to thank for that. As the LA Times wrote in 2019, "sun-dried tomatoes embody the sweetness of the fruit but with a condensed and intensified flavor that develops through the drying process until they become umami lozenges — the perfect pantry staple." 

The late great chef, Paul Prudhomme has been credited with introducing the world to blackened redfish. Prudhomme's innovation, which "combined the richness of a well-buttered thin redfish fillet with a...spice mixture," single-handedly brought Cajun food to prominence in the 1980s, according to Cooking Light. 

In fact, the Cajun trend became so hot in the 1980s that when Prudhomme opened a pop-up version of his legendary New Orleans restaurant, K Paul's, on New York City's Upper West Side in 1985, it drew a crowd of 250 people — even after the New York City health department shut the place down temporarily over hygiene concerns (via  The New York Times). In the years that followed, redfish became so popular that it became overfished – to the point where it is no longer legal to fish for it in most of the U.S. (via Food52).

But who needs redfish, when you can enhance just about any animal protein by coating it with butter and blackening spices and allowing it to char — especially when those blackening spices are now readily available, pre-mixed, at virtually any supermarket? In 2018, Food52 proclaimed that with or without redfish, blackening was ready for its comeback, and it was true. "Blackened" has even lent its name to the 80's band Metallica's own brand of high-end whiskey, which launched in 2018 and is still earning raves.

Buffalo chicken wings rose to prominence in the 1980s, when health-conscious consumers started favoring "boneless-skinless breast meat." This left chicken suppliers with a chicken wing surplus (via National Chicken Council). Hoping to rid themselves of that surplus, chicken suppliers took to selling wings on the cheap. Restaurants and bars saw this as an opportunity to purchase inexpensive protein, spice it, fry it, and sell it for cheap — even with a reasonable markup. 

As an extra-added bonus, spicy chicken wings tend to make people thirsty, which translates loosely into "more beer gets sold." On top of that, all of this was happening as sports bars started popping up across America. Chicken wings were already well-entrenched in American culture (via Smithsonian Magazine), but the pandemic has raised the profile of both chicken and chicken wings considerably. 

According to Meat & Poultry, "fifty percent of chicken-eating consumers in the United States have eaten [chicken] more than other protein in the past nine months." In part, that may be due to the fact that chicken wings are one of the easiest foods to order and enjoy via takeout at a time when takeout has been one of the only options for accessing fast food (via Eat This, Not That!). And this is despite the fact that at one point during the pandemic, chicken wings were associated with a nasty rumor that one could catch COVID-19 from frozen food packaging (via Fortune). 

You know those tins of flavored popcorn that people send as gifts around the holidays? Well, you can thank the 1980s for that. "A scant two years ago, the The New York Times wrote in 1983, "there was plain popcorn and buttered popcorn and caramel popcorn, and a few slightly more exotic flavors such as cinnamon for those who would dare," but now, there is  "pizza-flavored popcorn, watermelon-flavored popcorn and taco-flavored popcorn, and the stores that sell them are called gourmet shops in the industry." 

The New York Times also pointed out at the time that "about 70 percent of the country's popcorn is eaten at home, generating about $200 million in sales during 1982," with "popcorn confections and other specialty items accounting for another $100 million." Again, that was in 1983, but looking back, it could seem as if the New York Times was penning a future-letter to "Pandemic America," one which predicted the resurgence of home-popped popcorn and popcorn confections at a time when much of America found themselves stuck at home. 

The latest varieties of flavored popcorn are wilder than ever, including such flavors as fried-chicken (via Boston Herald), marmite, pumpkin spice, lemon sherbet, caffeine-infused, and gin and tonic, according to Little White Lies, and dark chocolate pretzel, cookies 'n cream, and bacon and cheddar (via Uptown Popcorn).

Given the resurgence in popularity of sugar-laden cereals, it shouldn't be all that surprising to learn that sugar-sweetened fruit "drinks" are coming back into style. Did you notice we didn't say "juice"? That's because the beloved fruit "drinks" that had their heyday in the 1980s (via The Daily Meal) tended to contain very little actual juice. Hi-C, for one, contained a mere 10 percent juice — and this remained the case in the 2010s, USA Today reported. What these fruit drinks did contain was a lot of sugar, often in the form of high fructose corn syrup. 

Hi-C, which had been around since 1946, enjoyed a huge surge of popularity in the 1980s thanks, in part, to the introduction of their Ecto Cooler juice boxes. Hi-C became a mainstay at McDonald's, with the Orange Lava Burst flavor becoming a cult favorite. So then why did McDonald's discontinue it in 2017? 

Strangely enough, the decision had less to do with sugar and more to do with licensing obligations, according to Today, which explained in 2017 that McDonald's had recently entered into a partnership with Coca-Cola, makers of Sprite TropicBerry. "Apparently, Hi-C would have stolen the new drink's thunder."

Now, fans of Hi-C Orange Lava Burst can breathe a sigh of relief. On February 21, 2021, McDonald's announced it was bringing the popular drink back, and it should be available nationwide by summer (via PR Newswire).

"Remember the wine cooler?" wrote Forbes in 2019. "It's back." Technically, it's true, as in iconic wine-cooler maker, Bartles & Jaymes, has come out with a pre-packaged (canned) cocktail that is both fizzy and made with wine. However, what is in those cans along with the fizzy wine is not what people who came of wine-drinking age during the wine-cooler-80s think of as "wine coolers." 

The wine coolers of the 1980s were made from wine, carbonated water, and sugar, which made them as close as you could get to a commercially bottled wine-spritzer (i.e., wine diluted with soda). Not that anyone really needed a pre-bottled wine-spritzer when all you need to make your own wine spritzer at home is a glass of wine and a spritz. But 1980s wine coolers had their fans — such that wine coolers became big business, with Gallo, Seagrams, and Bartles & Jaymes as a few of the most popular players.

But then Congress had the bright idea of levying a massive excise tax on wine, thus making "wine blending bad business," according to Wine Folly. In response, cooler-manufacturers started replacing wine with cheap malt liquor. That's how Zima came to exist. On the plus side, taking wine out of the equation enabled beverage manufacturers to get super-creative with their flavors. On the negative side, is a wine cooler that waters down its wine with malt liquor — as Bartles & Jaymes does – really a wine cooler? 

Americans started taking a keen interest in French cuisine starting in the 1970s (via Literary Hub). Some of the fancier French restaurants were serving nouvelle cuisine, with all its detailed precision, and on the more casual side of things were restaurants specializing in crepes and fondue. But by the mid-1980s, all these restaurants tended to have one item in common: French onion soup (via Saveur).

So ubiquitous was onion soup in those days that it came to be synonymous with steakhouses as well as French restaurants, according to Taste of Home. Although French cuisine in America, with its heavy sauces and hefty price tag, had to make room for the introduction and rise of other ethnic cuisines such as Japanese, Thai, pan-Asian, Northern Italian, and Indian, it appears that French onion soup is on the rise once again, at least at Panera Bread — especially at Panera Bread.

In a classic case of "you never realize what you want until its gone," it took Panera Bread's removing of French onion soup from its menu for its diehard fans to self-actualize as such. "The restaurant chain, known locally as St. Louis Bread Co., faced a flood of customer complaints after it removed [French onion soup]" from the menu in 2020, according to Ad Age (via KSDK). In response, Panera put French onion soup right back on the menu.

Although yogurt has been in the U.S. since the early 1900s, frozen yogurt wasn't even invented until the 1970s. According to 16 Handles, that first frozen yogurt was designed to be scooped the way you scoop hard ice cream –but it didn't really catch on. Then, in the 1980s, soft-serve frozen yogurt was invented. 

Marketed as a soft serve dessert that tasted similar to ice cream, it took off in popularity as consumers began to pay attention to "healthy eating" and "healthy ingredients," according to the Frozen Yogurt Mix blog, which also noted that by 1990, frozen yogurt represented 10% of frozen dessert sales.

And therein lies the rub. Frozen yogurt was, ultimately, just another frozen dessert. As it turned out, no matter how  "healthy" frozen yogurt might be, it's also pretty darn caloric, according to The Village Voice, which makes it not necessarily a better choice than ice cream. The disappointment was so palpable that Seinfeld mined it for the tragi-comedy of it all.

But guess what eventually has made a comeback? Frozen yogurt, only now it's not meant to taste like ice cream so much as like tangy yogurt, and now its marketing didn't necessarily promise low calories, low fat, or low anything, according to the The Seattle Times.