Discontinued Canned Foods You'll Never Eat Again

Nostalgia is a heck of a thing, especially when it comes to the snacks and foodstuffs of yesteryear. While we may have fond memories of our favorite flavors of canned soups, sodas, and other pre-packaged and sealed meals, time and the bottom line wait for no canned goods. Whether it's caused by low sales figures, issues with the FDA, or simply the ever-changing trends that pass from year to year, many classic canned foods have been discontinued and are forever off the grocery shelf. 

We've been eating canned foods in America since 1825, though the concept wasn't commercially successful until 1856 (via Food Ingredient Facts). That means we've been enjoying canned food since before Abraham Lincoln was president, and a lot of canned products have come and gone in that time. Some of these might be terribly missed today, but other canned foods have been forgotten. There are also a select few that make you wonder out loud, "Wait — they used to put that in cans?" We rounded up a list of canned foods you'll never be able to get your hands on again. If you have something on this list stashed in your pantry, good news: You are now in possession of a historical artifact.

At the height of the 1980s, the U.S. was introduced to its first commercially sold energy drink. While we have Red Bull and Monster today, Jolt Cola is considered America's original energy drink (via Better Marketing). Claiming to have double the caffeine of an ordinary soda, Jolt Cola was marketed toward younger consumers, acting as the fuel for parties, night owls, and for pulling all-nighters at school or work. Considering that this was during that time when Diet Coke and Caffeine-Free Coke hit the market, Jolt went against the prevailing trends in the beverage industry. It did this proudly, printing its slogan, "All the sugar and twice the caffeine," on the front of every can.

However, despite its reputation as caffeinated jet fuel, Jolt was limited to a mere 72 milligrams of caffeine per can because of FDA soda regulations. In truth, an ordinary cup of coffee had far more caffeine than a can of Jolt. Modern energy drinks have much more caffeine. While it did last a few decades, Jolt would eventually go under in 2009, only to make a sudden reemergence in 2017 at Dollar General and Amazon (via Drizly).

Some canned foods have only a brief moment in the sun before biting the dust, while others last for generations and then finally fizzle out. Such is the case with Campbell's Pepper Pot Soup. Pepper Pot Soup was one of Campbell's earliest products, debuting around the turn of the 20th century (via Philadelphia Encyclopedia). It was based on Philadelphia Pepper Pot, a recipe that came to Philadelphia by way of the West Indies in the 1700s. The soup was thick like a stew and contained beef tripe (or other meat), cayenne pepper, vegetables, and spices. Pepper Pot was quite popular in the early decades of the 20th century but later fell out of fashion. Pepper Pot would see a resurgence during America's bicentennial in the 1970s when interest in colonial-era culture hit a high point. However, the increased popularity didn't last, and Campbell's discontinued it in the 2010s.

Though you can't buy the canned version anymore, the recipe still survives, as it was embraced by the Philadelphia culinary scene. The soup continues to hold a place in our cultural consciousness to this day. One of Andy Warhol's iconic Campbell's Soup paintings is a picture of good old Pepper Pot (via The Guardian).

Way back in the early 2000s, Campbell ran a multi-year set of televised ads featuring popular NFL superstars enjoying Campbell's Chunky Soup. The soup line was actually born in the 1970s, and early marketing for the product claimed it was so thick and full of meat and vegetables that you could easily enjoy it with a fork (via Campbell's). The football commercials in the early 2000s were quite successful, and Campbell's Chunky doubled in sales between 1997 and 2002. Campbell's still sells Chunky soups, but not every flavor has been a hit. Campbell's axed short list of its Chunky items. These included the Meatball Bustin' Sausage and Rigatoni Soup as well as the Philly-Style Cheesesteak Soup. 

While it does sound like a rather paltry discontinuation list, losing the Meatball Bustin' Sausage was still enough to provoke some Twitter-level lamenting by at least one fan. But even a hit series of food products needs to trim the fat now and again, especially if the sales figures don't justify keeping a product around.

Not every food product combo can be an instant smash hit like say, chocolate and peanut butter. Sometimes in the mad science that is soft drink development, two great tastes might just go "meh" when put together. So it was with the very limited premiere of Black Cherry Vanilla Coke, a flavor line that opened and closed the span of one year, from 2006 to 2007 (via Insider). After that, Coca-Cola continued to sell both vanilla and cherry flavors but didn't combine the two. But this move might have jumped the gun for a section of the company's clientele who enjoyed the Black Cherry Vanilla combinations. 

According to CNN, Coca-Cola's Freestyle machines, which let people combine different sodas and flavor syrups in one drink, also collect data on consumer preferences. It turns out that there were enough people mixing cherry and vanilla to lead Coca-Cola to bring the combo back, only this time as simple Cherry Vanilla Coke, not black cherry.

Some products are not so much discontinued as being reformulated to the point of being incomparable to the original thing. Take Four Loko, which started life as a caffeinated alcoholic beverage. This might not seem so controversial — Red Bull and vodka is a party favorite, after all. However, mixing caffeine and alcohol can be very dangerous for the human body. Caffeine's ability to negate our feeling of tiredness makes us less likely to slow down after several alcoholic beverages. While it seems like you can party all night, you're also seriously increasing the threat of alcohol poisoning. The CDC even states that caffeine can fool your body into not realizing just how drunk you really are. And Four Loko combined energy drink levels of caffeine with a hefty 12% alcohol in a sugary, sweet package that appealed to underage drinkers. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

According to The Atlantic, several states moved to ban the sale of Four Loko, and eventually, the caffeine was lowered and soon removed altogether. Today, Four Loko is still for sale and is even keeping up with modern trends. It released a hard seltzer that, naturally, contained a whopping 14% alcohol by volume (via Syracuse.com).

One category of food that is often laden with gimmicks to encourage higher sales is meals aimed at children. Kids don't have discerning taste and can be easily persuaded, so they're soft targets for novelty food products. Chef Boyardee uses a ton of food-related gimmicks for its canned pasta products. It's perhaps only outdone in terms of novelty by breakfast cereal brands. Per the Pop Culture Affidavit, Chef Boyardee saw the success that Cambell's was having with its SpaghettiOs canned pasta and decided to one-up its competitor by adding X-shaped pasta to the mix. The result was Chef Boyardee Tic-Tac-Toe's, which embraced the idea that dinnertime could be game time, as kids could play tic-tac-toe with every spoonful. How someone can actually play tic-tac-toe with heaping spoonfuls of pasta was never really explained, but it was a successful novelty for the time it lasted. 

While the kids' pasta may not be well remembered today, we can still watch the product's iconic commercial featuring a young and very talented dancer who made something like playing tic-tac-toe during dinner seem more fun than it actually was (via YouTube).

Sometimes junk food is just junk food no matter how you market it. Many fruit juices can say they're packed with vitamins, but mostly contain vast quantities of sugar. Life Savers Soda made no bones about what it was made of. It was a liquified soda version of the classic Life Savers hard candy, and it came in a rainbow can like a larger, squatter version of a roll of Life Savers. It arrived on soda scene in 1995 and came in a variety of fruit-inspired flavors. One can only imagine just how sweet the soda tasted back in the day.

According to Brand Failures, the failure of Life Savers Soda could be seen as surprising to the company as it had done well in a taste test. While to this day, Life Savers is still a popular candy for those who like something sweet or to freshen their breath, drinking it as a beverage was not quite what consumers wanted. The soda was quickly scrapped and relegated to the bin of bad ideas by massively successful companies.