If you grew up in the 1970s or 1980s, grocery shopping could feel a little more adventurous than it does today. Burgers arrived in elaborate foam contraptions. Drinks came in bottles designed to be squeezed directly into your mouth. Cookies were enormous for no particularly sensible reason.
And honestly? That was part of the fun.
Some of those foods disappeared almost as quickly as they arrived, while others hung around long enough to become genuine childhood institutions. Here are 10 discontinued foods from the ’70s and ’80s that still inspire serious nostalgia.
McDonald’s McDLT
The McDLT was a burger with a mission: keep the hot side hot and the cool side cool.
McDonald’s served the beef patty and bottom bun in one side of a large divided foam container, while the lettuce, tomato, cheese, pickles, onions, condiments and top bun sat in the other. You put the two halves together yourself. It was part meal, part tiny assembly project.
The burger disappeared around 1990 as McDonald’s moved away from polystyrene sandwich packaging. Since the divided container was basically the McDLT’s entire gimmick, losing the package also meant losing much of what made the burger distinctive.
Hi C Ecto Cooler
Few beverages have ever looked more like they escaped from a cartoon.
Introduced in the late 1980s as a Ghostbusters tie in, Hi C Ecto Cooler was a bright green citrus drink featuring Slimer prominently on its packaging. Instead of disappearing when its promotional moment ended, it stuck around until 2001.
Fans never completely let it go. Coca Cola brought Ecto Cooler back for a limited retail run in 2016 and produced a tiny promotional batch again in 2021. That makes it one of the strongest candidates on this list for the title of “snack people genuinely keep asking for.”
Squeezit
Who needs a cup when you can aggressively squeeze fruit drink into your mouth?
That was essentially the genius of Squeezit. General Mills sold the drink in flexible 6.5 ounce plastic bottles with twist off tops. Later versions even had character faces and names such as Chucklin’ Cherry and Grumpy Grape.
A 1988 report priced a six pack at $1.79 to $1.99. Squeezit lasted until 2001 and briefly returned in the mid 2000s, but the comeback didn’t stick.
Jell O Pudding Pops
Pudding Pops weren’t ordinary ice pops. They were denser, creamier and unmistakably pudding like, available in flavors including chocolate, vanilla, banana and swirl varieties.
Tested in the late 1970s and rolled out nationally around 1981, they became closely associated with ’80s television advertising. The original product eventually disappeared, and a later Popsicle licensed version also vanished around 2011.
The exact economics behind the original cancellation aren’t firmly documented, although later accounts have described profitability problems. What is clear is that people still ask for them back.
Marathon Bar
The Marathon Bar wasn’t trying to be subtle.
Introduced in 1973, this candy bar was an eight inch braided lattice of chewy caramel covered in milk chocolate. Its bright red wrapper even included a ruler so there could be absolutely no confusion about just how much candy you were getting.
Early packaging showed a 15 cent price, and the bar reportedly disappeared in 1981. Fans looking for something similar today sometimes point to Cadbury’s Curly Wurly, but that’s a separate product, not a true Marathon comeback.
Carnation Breakfast Bars
Before supermarket shelves were packed with protein bars, energy bars and “meal replacement” everything, Carnation had Breakfast Bars.
Introduced in 1975, they combined crunchy cereal style ingredients with a chocolate coating, creating something that sounded like breakfast but looked suspiciously like candy. That was probably part of the appeal.
They disappeared in the 1990s. A later customer service response reportedly said sales weren’t high enough to justify the retailer shelf space they occupied. Fans have nevertheless kept petitions and comeback campaigns alive.
Nintendo Cereal System
Imagine opening one cereal box and finding two separate Nintendo cereals inside.
That was the Nintendo Cereal System, released around 1988. One bag featured Super Mario Bros. shapes; the other represented The Legend of Zelda. The box combined two of Nintendo’s biggest franchises at the height of NES mania.
It lasted roughly a year. Why did it disappear? Nobody seems to have a well documented corporate answer. Today, surviving unopened boxes are more collector’s item than breakfast food.
Oreo Big Stuf
Apparently somebody at Nabisco once looked at a normal Oreo and thought, “This needs to be enormous.”
Introduced in 1987, Big Stuf was about three inches across and weighed roughly 48 grams. Each oversized cookie came individually wrapped, with 10 packed into a box.
Nabisco discontinued it in 1991 without leaving behind a clearly documented public explanation. Double Stuf, Mega Stuf and other Oreo variations followed, but none recreated the giant cookie format.
Keebler Magic Middles
Magic Middles understood one important truth about snacks: hidden filling makes everything more exciting.
Advertised by Keebler in 1989, the cookies featured a shortbread style exterior surrounding a soft chocolate fudge center, with additional varieties following later.
Exactly when or why Keebler stopped making them remains unclear. Fans have spent years asking for their return, although a modern business using the Magic Middles name is independent of Keebler and shouldn’t be confused with the original.
Bonkers
Finally, there was Bonkers: chewy fruit candy launched by Nabisco in 1983.
But the candy may be less memorable than its wonderfully ridiculous commercials. The ads showed ordinary people eating Bonkers before being flattened by gigantic pieces of fruit. The tagline? “Bonkers! Bonks you out!”
Bonkers faded from shelves sometime in the 1990s, and although revival plans surfaced years later, a lasting retail comeback never materialized.
Maybe that’s why these foods remain so memorable. They weren’t always practical, healthy or even particularly logical. But they had personality.
And in an era when a breakfast bar could masquerade as candy, a hamburger needed its own engineering solution, and a cereal box contained two video games’ worth of breakfast, eating was rarely boring.
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