Your Grocery Cart Was A Lot Weirder Than You Remember
Grocery stores in the 90s were absolutely packed with products that seemed like they were going to be around forever. Some were genuinely good. Some were incredibly weird. And some disappeared so completely that seeing the package today feels like remembering a dream.
But seriously—how many of these do you remember actually putting in the cart (or maybe even your mouth)?
Pizzarias Pizza Chips
Keebler launched Pizzarias in 1991, with Cheese Pizza, Pizza Supreme and Zesty Pepperoni flavors. They were made with pizza dough and became a surprisingly big launch for the company. Then they vanished. Somehow, grocery stores found room for 47 varieties of barbecue chips instead.
Carnation Breakfast Bars
Long before the protein-bar aisle became roughly the size of a small hardware store, there were Carnation Breakfast Bars. The chocolate-coated bars dated all the way back to the 70s and even got another push during the 90s before finally being discontinued in 1997. People are still trying to recreate them.
Orbitz
Orbitz looked less like a drink and more like something somebody had forgotten on the counter during a science experiment. Introduced in 1996, the fruit-flavored beverage had tiny edible balls suspended inside the bottle. By 1999, the experiment was pretty much over.
Swanson Le Menu Dinners
Swanson spent the 80s trying to make the TV dinner feel a little classier with its Le Menu line, complete with more upscale entrées and an undivided microwavable plate. The meals were still hanging around in the early 90s, but Swanson discontinued the U.S. line in 1994.
Campbell Soup Company, Wikimedia Commons
Hidden Treasures Cereal
General Mills introduced Hidden Treasures in 1993, and the gimmick was right there in the bowl. The little corn squares looked alike, but some contained cherry, orange or grape filling while others were empty. Kids apparently did not treasure the mystery for long. It disappeared from store shelves by 1995, and most of our collective memories soon thereafter.
Planters P.B. Crisps
These peanut-shaped crunchy snacks were filled with sweet peanut butter, and for a few years they seemed like exactly the kind of thing Planters would sell forever. Introduced in 1992, P.B. Crisps were gone only a few years later. The internet has been complaining about it ever since.
Fruitopia
Fruitopia arrived in 1994 with flavors carrying extremely 90s names like Strawberry Passion Awareness and Kiwiberry Ruckus. Coca-Cola was chasing the booming alternative-beverage market, and for a while Fruitopia was everywhere. In the U.S., however, the standalone brand was largely phased out in 2003.
Swanson Great Starts
There was a time when the frozen-food aisle could provide an entire eggs-and-sausage breakfast before work. Swanson’s Great Starts line included frozen breakfast sandwiches and larger breakfast combinations, and it was still a grocery-store regular during the 90s. In 2004, the Swanson Great Starts name disappeared when the line was rebranded as Aunt Jemima Great Starts.
Sprinkle Spangles
Apparently regular cereal did not contain enough excitement, so General Mills introduced star-shaped Sprinkle Spangles covered in colorful sprinkles. The cereal arrived in 1993 with a genie mascot voiced by Dom DeLuise. Even that kind of star power couldn’t save it. General Mills says it was discontinued in 1994.
Josta
Before every convenience store cooler contained enough energy drinks to power a small city, Pepsi tried Josta. Pepsi began testing Josta in 1995, eventually expanding the caffeinated guarana drink across much of the country. It was billed as a high-energy soft drink, but Pepsi pulled it in 1999, leaving an entire generation wondering whether they had imagined the thing.
Oatmeal Swirlers
Oatmeal Swirlers came with packets of flavored topping that kids could squeeze into their oatmeal and swirl around themselves. It was basically General Mills admitting that oatmeal needed a little entertainment. The product began in the late 80s and remained part of the breakfast aisle into the 90s before disappearing.
Butterfinger BB’s
Butterfinger apparently looked at its full-size candy bar and decided what America really needed was a bag filled with tiny round versions of it. Butterfinger BB’s arrived in 1992, were advertised heavily with The Simpsons and stuck around until 2006. Today, the little chocolate balls are pure 90s grocery-store memory.
Dannon Sprinkl’ins
Dannon Sprinkl’ins took ordinary yogurt and added the one ingredient guaranteed to make a kid suddenly interested in yogurt: sprinkles. The sprinkles were stored separately in the lid so you could dump them in yourself. The trademark dates to the early 90s, and the product has long since disappeared.
PB Max
PB Max was basically Mars asking how much peanut butter it could pile onto a cookie before covering the whole thing in chocolate. The answer was apparently plenty. The bar arrived around 1990 and was discontinued in 1994 despite developing a loyal following that still wants it back.
WOW Chips
In 1998, Frito-Lay rolled out WOW versions of Lay’s, Ruffles, Doritos and Tostitos made with the fat substitute olestra. They sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth in their first year. Then the digestive side effects became a much bigger part of the conversation than anyone at Frito-Lay probably wanted.
Squeezit
Squeezit actually arrived before the 90s, but the colorful squeeze bottles became a lunchbox fixture during the decade. You twisted off the little plastic top and squeezed the fruit drink directly into your mouth. Squeezit survived until 2001, then quietly disappeared from American shelves.
Pop-Tarts Crunch
Kellogg’s apparently decided waiting for an actual Pop-Tart to toast was asking too much of America. Pop-Tarts Crunch hit shelves in 1994, turning the familiar pastry into tiny cereal pieces. It was gone remarkably quickly, although Kellogg’s briefly brought the idea back decades later.
Jell-O Pudding Pops
Pudding Pops were already established by the time the 90s arrived, but plenty of kids were still pulling them out of grocery-store freezers during the decade. They were essentially frozen pudding on a stick, and their disappearance created the kind of nostalgia most frozen desserts can only dream about.
Munch ’Ems
Were they crackers? Were they chips? Keebler did not seem particularly worried about choosing. Munch ’Ems were thin, crunchy crackers sold in flavors like cheddar, ranch and sour cream and onion. They arrived in the early 90s and lasted into the early 2000s before slipping quietly out of the snack aisle.
OK Soda
Coca-Cola created OK Soda in 1993 with deliberately strange advertising aimed at Generation X, then began test-marketing it in selected U.S. cities. Even the name seemed designed to shrug at you. By 1995, Coca-Cola had pulled the plug without ever taking it nationwide. Apparently “it’s OK” was not quite the slogan dreams are made of.
Viennetta
For a while, Viennetta was the frozen dessert you bought when regular ice cream apparently was not fancy enough. The layered ice cream cake reached American grocery stores before the 90s and was sold under Good Humor and later Breyers. Then it disappeared from U.S. freezers for decades before eventually returning.
cyclonebill from Copenhagen, Denmark, Wikimedia Commons
Soda-Licious Fruit Snacks
Soda-Licious took fruit snacks, shaped them like tiny soda bottles and gave them soda-inspired flavors. Because apparently the 90s did not believe a snack needed to make complete sense. Betty Crocker introduced them early in the decade, and they disappeared after a relatively short run.
Fruit String Thing
Fruit String Thing turned a fruit snack into a long, sticky string arranged in shapes on a backing sheet. The whole point was pulling it apart before eating it, which meant snack time could now double as an activity. It arrived in the 90s and eventually disappeared despite plenty of nostalgic fans.
Wavy Gravy
Ben & Jerry’s once sold an ice cream called Wavy Gravy, named after the famous counterculture figure. The flavor combined caramel and cashew-Brazil nut ice cream with a chocolate-hazelnut fudge swirl and roasted almonds. It survived through much of the 90s before Ben & Jerry’s finally retired it in 2001.
Starburst Fruit Twists
Before chewy fruit snacks completely took over lunchboxes, Starburst tried turning its familiar fruit flavors into soft, rope-like twists. Fruit Twists arrived in the second half of the 90s and hung around only a few years. Today, even plenty of serious Starburst eaters have probably forgotten they ever existed.
So...How Many Did You Actually Remember?
The 90s grocery store produced an astonishing number of products that showed up with huge advertising campaigns, occupied half an aisle for a couple of years and then vanished without so much as a goodbye. And somehow, we still remember exactly what some of them tasted like.
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