The Canned Chef Boyardee Pasta That Brings On The 90s Nostalgia

Many Chef Boyardee products that you may have eaten as a child continue to be sold by the brand today. For example, Chef Boyardee's ABC's and 123's came out in the 1980s and is still around, as is Chef Boyardee Mini Ravioli from the 1970s. Those who grew up in the '90s may also remember the Spider-Man pasta as being one of their childhood favorites; however, this particular Chef Boyardee product didn't end up becoming as timeless as some of the company's other canned pastas.  

A commercial and print ad announcing a new Chef Boyardee product that featured web- and Spider-Man-shaped pasta "smothered in secret sauce" debuted in 1995, in conjunction with the 1994 Spider-Man movie. Two versions of Chef Boyardee Spider-Man canned pasta were available, one in a tomato and cheese sauce, and one that also included meatballs. Commercials for Chef Boyardee's Spider-Man pasta continued to air in 1996, and the product was available into the late '90s. After this point, it was gone for good, like many other discontinued Chef Boyardee pasta shapes.

It isn't uncommon for food brands to release products that are only available for a limited time, like many of the novelty flavors of Lays potato chips or Oreos. However, that doesn't seem to have been the case with Chef Boyardee's Spider-Man pasta. Nowhere on the can was the product described as "limited edition," and the ads don't say anything along the lines of "while supplies last," or state that you should grab a can before it's gone. Plus, many limited-time offerings aren't available for longer than a year, and the Spider-Man pasta was said to be available until the late '90s.

So if it wasn't a limited-edition product, then why was it discontinued? There is no official reason shared by Chef Boyardee, but perhaps there wasn't much of a demand for canned pasta in the shape of a web, or maybe the pasta shapes cost too much to make. In 2002, Chef Boyardee still had Marvel licensing rights, because the company released a superhero-themed beef ravioli that featured other Marvel characters in addition to Spider-Man. Unlike Chef Boyardee's Spider-Man canned pasta from a few years prior, the only thing that made Chef Boyardee's 2002 superhero pasta different from its regular canned ravioli was the inclusion of superheroes on the can's label. Chef Boyardee stopped making Spider-Man canned pasta more than 25 years ago and never brought it back, so it seems like the company simply moved on to other products.