31 Discontinued Snack Foods We Wish They'd Bring Back

While scent may be the one of the five senses that is most closely tied to memory, taste comes in at a very close second making food from our childhoods especially nostalgic. There's nothing like biting into a favorite childhood snack and being transported, if only for a second, to a time when you didn't have responsibilities like a job, rent or a mortgage, and children of your own to look after. Those weekend mornings with cartoons and sugary breakfast cereals and the summer days with equally sugary drinks and whatever snacks were helping power us through remind us of simpler times. 

Unfortunately, some of our favorite snacks have been discontinued, leaving us with no way to enjoy that delicious nostalgia. Sure, some discontinued favorites have been revived in recent years so there's always a little hope, but until that time comes here are 31 of the best discontinued snack foods that we wish they'd bring back. 

We all know that the Simpsons can predict anything, so why Bart Simpson didn't warn us to stock up on Butterfinger BB's before they were all gone is beyond us. These bite-sized balls of Butterfinger goodness were, as the saying goes, a crispety, crunchety, and peanut buttery delight in Halloween pails all through the '90s and early 2000s. 

Introduced in 1992, Bart Simpson warned that no one better lay a finger on his Butterfinger BB's, but they didn't listen. In 2006, the candy was snatched from our chocolate-coated hands. Three years later we were given a bit of hope in the form of Butterfinger Bites, a seeming replacement for the beloved BB's. Our hopes were unfounded. Butterfinger Bites are not the same as Butterfinger BB's and we'd all be better off if they'd just give us our Butterfinger BB's back, thank you very much. 

Those Keebler Elves sure do know how to make some delicious cookies inside that magical tree of theirs, but none epitomized the confectionery sorcery more than Keebler Magic Middles. These soft shortbread cookies were filled with either chocolaty fudge or smooth peanut butter. The cookies were available for a single, enchanting decade — from 2001 to 2011 — before disappearing off shelves. 

Rumor has it the line was discontinued so Keebler could use the equipment to produce a different line of cookies and the double stuffed variety of the longstanding Keebler classic E.L. Fudge cookie did debut in 2002, but was it worth it? Not if you ask the thousands of Facebook users who are begging for the return of Magic Middles. Come on, little elves, we know you can do it!

For a kid, there's not much that's better than pudding, unless it's frozen pudding on a stick. In the '80s, Jell-O brand knew this and began selling its iconic Pudding Pops, marketed in commercials by none other than Jell-O Pudding spokesperson Bill Cosby dressed as an ice cream man and delivering the tasty frozen street throughout the neighborhood. By the time the early '90s rolled around, Jell-O Pudding Pops were a childhood staple. Despite their popularity, however, they started to fade to only a memory by the late 90s when they became just too expensive for Jell-O to produce. 

When Popsicle brand stepped in and re-introduced Jell-O Pudding Pops under its brand in 2004, they just weren't the same and were discontinued again in 2011 when not enough people bought them. Lucky for us, there is a way to get that original Pudding Pop fix, you'll just have to do it yourself. 

For '80s and '90s kids, no food says celebration quite like pizza. It was at every party, was the favorite food of the beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and even started being used as a reward for reading via the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! Program. So when Keebler started using fresh pizza dough to make Pizzaria Pizza Chips in 1991, we were all hooked! The sale of Pizzaria Pizza Chips accounted for $75 million of Keebler's revenue in the first year. 

Despite their success, they sadly didn't last long. In 1995, Keebler decided to focus solely on sweet treats and Pizzaria Pizza Chips were no more. Though they were short-lived, the chips developed a cult following that persists today, with thousands calling for Keebler to bring the cheesy, spicy deliciousness back into our lives. Sadly, those cries have thus far fallen on deaf elf ears. 

Another delicious, salty snack that fell victim to the pivot Keebler made into a sweet treat focus were Munch 'ems baked snacks. Introduced in the early '90s, Munch 'ems were thin, crispy crackers that were baked until they crunched like chips, making them equally addictive. You could get them in several flavors including original, sour cream and onion, ranch, and cheddar and they were delicious on their own, with cheese, or with whatever dips you fancied. 

They would certainly be having their moment today thanks to our collective charcuterie obsession had they not been discontinued in the early 2000s. While they've never been completely duplicated, according to Munch 'ems fans, the closest you'll get to them today is with Cheez-It Grooves, if you're desperate.

In 2006, McDonald's joined the snacking game with its incredibly popular Snack Wraps, which were eventually available grilled or fried and with either honey mustard or ranch dressing. They were the perfect tortilla-wrapped snack when you didn't want a heavy meal. 

Alas, McDonald's discontinued the Snack Wrap in the United States in 2016 because making it slowed down everything else at the fast food giant. Fans of the Snack Wrap have begged, pleaded, and demanded its return, but McDonald's doesn't seem to be budging. Unfortunately, if you're going to get your fix, you'll have to go to Canada or one of the other markets where it's sold.

Life Savers candies have been around since 1912 and while the flavors have evolved over the years, the iconic ring shape with a hole punched in the middle has persisted. Somewhere along the line, someone at the company realized that the byproduct from punching holes in Life Savers could be its own moneymaker just like doughnut holes. Thus, Life Savers Holes debuted in 1990. They were adorable, came in multiple flavors, and somehow made you feel cool to pop a few in your mouth. 

Unfortunately, they were recalled less than a year later because the lid on their packaging was a choking hazard. While they were re-released soon after with new packaging, sales never quite bounced back and they were discontinued for good.

The '90s was a time when sugary cereal reigned supreme so the sweetened corn cereal called Hidden Treasures that debuted in 1993 doesn't sound all that unique at first. However, there was a secret element in some of the sugary squares in the form of fruity frosting filling. The idea was that you would need to hunt for the hidden fruity treasure throughout the box, but that the cereal's mascot (for some reason a robot and not a treasure-hunting pirate) could figure out which pieces were treasure-filled and which were hollow. 

To say it wasn't a very well thought out concept would be an understatement and the cereal was very short-lived, disappearing off shelves by 1995. Despite that, we can still taste that cherry, orange, and grape frosting in our minds today.

The '90s were a confusing time. On one hand, we had adults telling us not to play with our food. On the other hand, we had snack companies literally making food that was meant to be played with (and marketed to us in that exact way). One of those fun snack foods was Fruit String Thing. Fruity, chewy, and shaped into an approximation of a shoelace, Fruit String Thing cashed in on the popularity of other chewy, fruity snacks like Fruit by the Foot and Fruit Roll-Ups, but marketed itself as even more fun since you could bend it into whatever shapes you could imagine. 

Interestingly, all of those aforementioned fruity snacks were made by the same company — Betty Crocker — and by the mid-2000s they seemingly realized they didn't need that many different chewy, fruit snacks and Fruit String Thing disappeared. 

If there's one thing the Hershey candy company knows, it's chocolate. So when it released the Hershey BarNone bar nationwide in the United States in 1987, chocolate fans took notice. It was marketed to "tame the chocolate beasty" inside all chocolate lovers and was made with chocolate wafers, chocolate filling, peanuts, and a chocolate coating. In the early '90s, the recipe changed and caramel was added, really amplifying the Kit Kat-meets-Snickers texture and flavor appeal. Still, sales weren't what Hershey hoped they'd be and it scrapped the bar in 1997 much to the chagrin of its biggest fans. 

These days, you can find BarNone bars in some stores, but be warned they aren't the same. They're now made by a brand called Iconic Candy, making us think chances are slim Hershey will ever revive the original.

KFC has never been like other fast food restaurants, thanks to its bone-in fried chicken, home style sides like mashed potatoes and coleslaw, and delicious potato wedges. The potato wedges in particular made for a near perfect snack. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and seasoned to perfection, the wedges offered something no other major fast food restaurant could. 

Because of their unique place in the fast food world, it seemed almost unfathomable when KFC announced in June 2020 that its new fries would be replacing potato wedges at all restaurants in the U.S. While there are petitions and social media accounts clamoring to bring back the KFC potato wedges, your best bet for now may be to try a copycat recipe on your own.

When you think of cheese crackers, you probably think of something like Cheez-It crackers before anything else, but in the 1980s people loved their Nabisco Swiss Cheese Crackers. The crispy, baked crackers had holes in them just like Swiss cheese and had a subtle but delicious flavor that made them easy to eat by the handful. While fans of the crackers insist they must have been big sellers because they're remembered so fondly, like many discontinued snack foods poor sales are to blame for their disappearance in America. 

In Canada, however, a company called Christie (owned by Nabisco, funny enough) still sells Swiss Cheese crackers that at least resemble the Nabisco favorite, though some fans don't find them quite as good as the originals. Unless Nabisco decides to bring them back, we guess we'll take what we can get. 

When you think of Jell-O, chances are you think of the jiggly gelatin snacks or pudding from your childhood (or your most recent hospital stay). However, the Jell-O brand has often branched out into other offerings that just couldn't stand the test of time. One such offering was Jell-O 123, a Jell-O dessert introduced in 1969 that with a single mix turned into three distinct layers once finished. The final product had a bottom layer of jiggly gelatin, a fluffy middle layer, and a creamy top layer. 

Though a commercial for Jell-O 123 from the 1980s shows a boy watching the layers form like magic, a keen eye will catch that it actually required at least three hours of refrigeration and that was after it was blended on low with boiling water, then blended on high, then blended with ice cold water. Not exactly the single step it was advertised to be and perhaps that's why it was ultimately phased out. Still, it's a pretty neat concept.

There's nothing quite like the crackle of Pop Rocks on your tongue to hearken back to childhood whether that was in the '70s, '80s, '90s, or even more recently. In the '70s, though, Pop Rocks weren't the only explosive candy on the block. Because Pop Rocks were so popular, General Foods decided to take its Pop Rocks and grind them up into a powder and sell that too. The resulting candy, Space Dust, sizzled rather than popped on your tongue. It wasn't long though before concerned parents decided the candy looked and sounded too much like the drug Angel Dust (PCP) and feared it would turn their kids into addicts. 

The candy was renamed Cosmic Candy, but still parents were afraid it wasn't safe or that it was being used to increase sexual promiscuity (seriously). Despite the inventor taking out a full page ad in the newspaper to assure parents it was safe, ultimately both Cosmic Candy and Pop Rocks were discontinued, with only the latter ever making a comeback. 

When you think of Planters and Mr. Peanut, you probably think of containers of nuts, but in the '90s Planters released a sweet, crunchy cookie product known as P.B. Crisps that had fans in a frenzy. Original P.B. Crisps were filled with peanut butter creme, while variations on the product were filled with either chocolate creme or a combination of peanut butter creme and fruity jelly. Sadly, they only existed for a few short years. 

While fans of other discontinued snack foods have started petitions and social media pages, the fans of Planters P.B. Crisps mean business, purchasing the PBcrisps.com domain specifically dedicated to their attempts to get Hormel Foods (now owner of Planters) to bring them back.

What's a snack without a drink to wash it all down? In the '80s and '90s the drink of choice among many kids was Squeezit. The fruit-flavored drinks in squeezable bottles were introduced in 1985, but the characters associated with different flavors didn't debut until the early '90s. Throughout the '90s, Squeezit went through a ton of variations including color-changing varieties, mystery flavors, a collaboration with Life Savers, and some made with 100% juice, but the drinks were discontinued altogether in 2001. 

While they've occasionally been spotted in stores as part of special promotions, the closest you'll get these days is if you head to the U.K. for their version called Squeeze It. 

Long before Pizzaria Pizza Chips gained their cult following in the 1990s, another pizza snack had a hold on Americans. Pizza Spins were introduced by General Mills in the summer of 1968 and capitalized on the nation's obsession with all things pizza. Pizza Spins used real pizza ingredients like Parmesan cheese, tomatoes, and pizza spices to make them taste like real pizza. The delicious snack even won a Putman Food Award in 1969, but by around 1975 the pizza pinwheels were no more. 

Given that General Mills talks about Pizza Spins only in the far away past tense, chances seem slim they'll be making a return anytime soon. However, pizza lovers can hope. 

If there's any company that's always coming up with some new innovation for a beloved product it's Oreo. From a continuously evolving slate of Oreo flavors to variations in size and amount of filling, there's always something going on with those delicious cookies. While lots of variations have come and gone over the years, the Oreo Big Stuf is a long-gone but never forgotten favorite. 

Popular in the '80s, Oreo Big Stuf was one giant Oreo cookie designed to be eaten on the go. Unlike the later introduced Oreo Cakester, which as its name implies has a cake-like texture on the outside, Oreo Big Stuf was just a giant-sized Oreo. Despite how great it sounds, it was discontinued in 1991 after just a few years on the market. It turns out that maybe it is just as easy to take a handful of cookies on the go as it was to take a single, giant cookie on the go. 

Another brand that is always evolving and marketing new products (especially in the '90s) is Cheetos. Those Chester Cheetah commercials were an iconic part of the decade and they only seemed to get weirder and wilder. 

The Cheetos Cheesy Checkers variety were shaped like a cross between a checkers board and a waffle, rectangular with holes that made a grid pattern. The shape made for extra crunch and the flavor had even more cheese than your average Cheetos (they were "dangerously cheesy," as the commercials claimed). They were only around from 1995 to 1998, but left a lasting mark on the Cheetos franchise.

If you ever needed proof that elves just don't know as much about gold as leprechauns, just look at the gold mine of salty snacks that the Keebler elves have abandoned. In the 1980s, Keebler took the concept of a baked potato and turned it into a chip with the introduction of Tato Skins. They were made with real potato skins and came in a variety of flavors including original Baked Potato, Sour Cream n' Chives, and Cheese n' Bacon. But those silly elves just didn't know what a good thing they had. 

Keebler sold its Tato Skins division to a new company in 1996 and in 2000 the new owner relaunched them under a licensing agreement with TGI Fridays. You can still buy the TGI Fridays version of potato skins chips, but like other snack food relaunches by different companies, they're just not the same.

For some discontinued snacks, it's the whole concept that goes missing; for others, it's a single beloved flavor that seemingly disappears out of nowhere. The latter is the case for Rold Gold Tiny Twists Honey Mustard pretzels. There are other flavors of Rold Gold Tiny Twists available and there are other sizes and shapes of honey mustard-flavored Rold Gold pretzels, but the holy grail of honey mustard-flavored Tiny Twists has been missing from our lives since around 2018. 

Over 10,000 people have signed a petition to bring them back so we can only hope that Frito-Lay is listening. After all, dipping regular pretzels in honey mustard just isn't the same. 

While some snacks are marketed strictly to kids, adults need an indulgence every now and then, too. Philadelphia Cheesecake Snack Bars took everything amazing about cheesecake and put it into delicious, easy-to-hold snack bars that were certainly a treat. 

Despite their popularity, they were apparently not easy to produce and they were quietly discontinued after just a few years in 2003. Nearly 50,000 people have signed a petition to bring these delicious, creamy dessert snack bars back, but so far the pleas have gone unanswered. 

Hershey's learned the hard way in the early 2000s that a catchy song in your commercials isn't enough for the brand recognition a product needs to succeed. The company launched Swoops, chip-shaped thin slices of candy, in 2003 in flavors like Reese's, Almond Joy, and York Peppermint Patty, among others, with a jingle that was a riff on Tag Team's song "Whoomp! (There It Is)." The candy came in cups of six slices with three cups to a package, suggesting the candy was meant to be a small treat on the go. 

While the thin slices did make for a delicious little treat, there just wasn't enough brand recognition to keep them alive. In a market research study in 2004, only 14% of people knew what Swoops were, much less that they were candy. They were discontinued in 2006. 

What happens when you combine the delicious milk chocolate of Hershey's kisses with the candy coating of M&Ms? You get Hershey's Kissables, mini Hershey's kisses coated in colorful candy. The concept seemed foolproof when they were introduced in 2005, but in 2007 the rising costs of cocoa butter led to a change in the candy's ingredients that also prompted a change to its label. 

No longer could Hershey call these delightful candies "candy coated milk chocolate" because it could no longer legally be called milk chocolate by the Food and Drug Administration's rules. Consumers didn't love the change, to say the least, and Kissables were discontinued in 2009. 

With an outside shell made from the Twizzlers we still all know and love, but an inside filled with tangy fruit flavoring, Twizzlers twerpz were bite-sized candy marketed as "naughty" in the same way Sour Patch Kids are; however, they just didn't take hold in the same way. Twerpz debuted in 2004, but only lasted for five years before being pulled off the shelves. It turns out, they just weren't different enough from other fruity snacks to pull in the needed revenue. 

According to nostalgic fans of the candy, the next closest options if you're missing Twizzlers twerpz are HI-CHEW Infrusions in juicy blood orange flavor and juicy strawberry flavor. You can also try Airheads Candy Soft Filled Bites or Warheads Ooze Chewz gummies for your fix. 

There was a time when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were plastered on virtually every product imaginable and Hostess dessert snacks were no exception. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pies were introduced in 1991 to tie in with the live-action Turtles movie from 1990. They featured a pie crust filled with vanilla pudding and coated in green icing. 

They didn't stay on the market for long, but thanks to a story line in season 16 of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" there's renewed interest in getting these snack pies back on the shelves. Whether the pudding-filled pies actually tasted good or we're all just blinded by nostalgia is unclear since so far Hostess hasn't announced any plans to bring the pies back.

In 2005, Kellogg's jumped into the fruit snack game and attempted to improve upon it by coating its fruit-flavored snacks in a creamy yogurt shell and calling them Yogos. Unfortunately, despite their yogurt coating making them seem somewhat healthy, the fruit-flavored snacks were very high in sugar, keeping health-conscious parents away. On top of that, they cost too much to turn any real profit. 

The fruity, yogurty snack was discontinued in the early 2010s and despite at least two petitions to bring them back it seems things will stay that way. In 2018, Kellogg's confirmed on Twitter that there were no plans to bring Yogos back.

Another beloved Cheetos variety from the '90s was Cheetos X's & O's. Like Cheetos Checkers, the abundance of edges on the X's & O's shapes made for an extra crispy crunch that snackers loved. They were also small enough that you could shovel a handful into your mouth at once. Plus, if you really wanted to, you could even play Tic-Tac-Toe with them. What's not to love? 

Still, they only lasted a year from 1999 to 2000 before they were relegated to our memories alone. Fans of the Cheetos variety are doing their best to make their voices heard on social media so maybe we'll see X's & O's back on the shelves someday.

For kids of the '90s, nothing was cooler than bringing Lunchables to school or having them as a weekend treat. Not only were they fun and delicious, they made you feel like a real chef preparing a masterpiece, even if you were just assembling some pre-packaged food. While Lunchables certainly still exist, gone are the days of the All Star Burgers and Hot Dogs. Launched in 1998, the burgers and hot dogs were the first Lunchables to contain either a special Lunchables soda or potato chips, making them a standout among the Lunchables crowd. 

Unfortunately, though, cold hamburgers and hot dogs just weren't that appealing to kids or adults so they didn't last long. But, as adults with microwaves, we bet these would make an awesome late-night snack these days. 

Altoids mints have been around for a long time (we're talking invented in the 1700s), but while the "curiously strong" mints might be the original, Altoids Sours were arguably the better addition to the Altoids brand. Introduced in the early 2000s, the sour candies came in round tins and were available in lime, apple, raspberry, mango, and tangerine flavors. They were sour enough to make your lips pucker (after all, they too carried the "curiously strong" tagline), but their round tin made them feel sophisticated. In short, they were the superior sour candy of the 2000s until they disappeared in 2010. 

Sadly, though, the national sales were simply too low to keep producing Altoids Sours. That's certainly enough to make your lips pucker.

There's certainly no shortage of granola bars on supermarket shelves these days, but that doesn't keep us from missing Kudos granola bars. Introduced in the 1980s as chocolate-covered bars with nuts and granola, Kudos started out in basic flavors like chocolate chip and peanut butter, but were eventually topped with candy under the Mars brand umbrella, including M&Ms and Snickers. 

Perhaps that leap from just a little chocolate coating to being literally topped with candy bars made it clear that Kudos weren't particularly healthy. After sales dropped, the delicious bars were sadly discontinued.

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