Ah, to be young again, and with a metabolism that can forgive a breakfast of French Toast Crunch, a lunch of Doritos 3D and WOW potato chips, and a tall glass of Fruitopia with every meal. The 21st century has been a much more enlightened era, what with its reduced servings of sugar and using all-natural ingredients. But for anyone with a sweet tooth, the 1990s offered an abundance of riches.
Many ’90s lunchbox items, such as Squeezits and Life Savers Holes, seem to be gone for good. Other discontinued foods, like Crispy M&Ms, Oreo O’s, and Surge, have been revived in the 2010s and ’20s. The following facts about ’90s snacks may make your mouth water with fond memories.
1. Crispy M&Ms Was Never Intended To Be A Permanent M&M Variety
The Mars company launched Crispy M&Ms in 1998 as a limited-edition variety. They left shelves in 2005, but demand for the crunchy candy never wavered.
According to a 2014 press release from Mars, Incorporated, the crispy flavor was “the No. 1 Mars variant no longer on the market requested to be ‘brought back'” – which is why the company did just that. In January 2015, Crispy M&Ms were re-launched, this time for good.
Allegedly, it was the 10 years of “phone calls, petitions, Facebook posts and countless other pleas” that changed the company’s mind.
2. Life Savers Holes Were Recalled Because The Packaging Was A Choking Hazard
Though Life Savers Holes weren’t actually the leftover “holes” punched out of the circular candy, they were at least as popular as their parent product. Released in the latter half of 1990, Life Savers Holes had gained nearly 10% market share of the “rolled-candy breath-freshener business” before they were recalled in January 1991.
A telegram released by the company explained that the recall was spurred by consumers “misusing” the packaging. Two toddlers and two teenagers chewed on the Holes’ flip-top cap, causing them to swallow or gag on it. Fortunately, no injuries were reported.
Four months after the recall, Life Savers Holes were re-released with new packaging, but the PR damage had already been done. Not even a commercial produced by Pixar could save them.
3. Coca-Cola Launched Fruitopia To Compete With The Rise Of ‘Healthier,’ Non-Soda Beverages
The New York Times reports that, in the early ’90s, soft drink sales for Coca-Cola and Pepsi were “stagnant.” By comparison, the “unconventional beverages” market was booming, rising 25% in 1993. These “unconventional” drinks included such “new age” products as Snapple, Mistic, and Clearly Canadian.
Coca-Cola, searching for a piece of that “new age” swagger, launched Fruitopia with such tongue-in-cheek flavors as Grape Beyond, Total Fruit Integration, Strawberry Passion Awareness, and Citrus Consciousness. One market analyst, Emanuel Goldman, told the Times, “There’s no question Fruitopia is very much of a me-too. […] It’s basically a Snapple knock-off.”
The Times did not hold back on its own assessment of Coke’s $30 million investment in Fruitopia:
Fruitopia is a risk for Coca-Cola, in that consumers could perceive it as the equivalent of a 50-year-old pulling his graying hair into a ponytail, donning a flannel shirt and attending a Pearl Jam concert.
Ultimately, the investment failed to pan out. Coke began phasing out Fruitopia in 2003.
4. Squeezits May Have Been ‘Squeezed Out’ Of The Market Because They Were Too Big To Fit In Lunch Boxes
Squeezits were the sugary fruit drinks in plastic bottles that invited kids to “Squeeze the fun out of it!” from 1985 to 2001. General Mills proudly touts that this was “the only fruit drink in a squeezable bottle” in the kids’ lunch market, but their unique shape may have been their undoing.
Squeezit differentiated itself from its competitors, Capri Sun, Minute Maid, and Hi-C, with its variety of cartoonishly named flavors and its invitation to throttle the plastic bottle for all it was worth. However, while its flavors may have changed over the years, its packaging failed to adapt to shifting trends. Advertising Age writes,
In essence, [Squeezit] was squeezed out. Although the company innovated with the plastic “fun bottles” that became a hallmark of the product, it was left behind as the kid-targeted juice drink category shifted toward pouches and boxes, known as aseptic packaging, that have become lunchbox staples.
In other words, Squeezit was still being sold in tall, uncompromising bottles when other brands offered compact boxes or flexible pouches to cram into kids’ lunchboxes.
5. After Almost 20 Years, Fans Finally Resurrected Doritos 3D
Launched in 1998 and then discontinued in 2004, Doritos 3D had a relatively limited shelf life. Neither Frito-Lay nor its parent company, PepsiCo, disclosed why the three-dimensional chips were canceled, but fan outcry finally convinced the powers-that-be to bring them back.
In late 2020, Doritos 3D was recalled from retirement. Tech Times reports that the “relaunch happened as a response to a huge wave of online petitions and social media buzz to bring back” the popular ’90s snack.
6. Surge’s ‘Extreme’ Marketing Contributed To Its Downfall
Originally released in Norway as “Urge” before expanding into Denmark, Sweden, and France, the drink hit American shores as Surge in 1997. The “extreme” beverage was Coca-Cola’s answer to Mountain Dew after their first contender, Mello Yello, failed to go the distance. Coke employees even began referring to Surge as “MDK,” or the “Mountain Dew Killer.”
Surge was marketed with wild ads and wilder slogans, leading many parents to fear this caffeinated drink was simply too much for their kids to handle. Ironically, Mountain Dew still contained more caffeine and roughly the same level of sugar as its Coke-backed competitor.
Ultimately, Surge was the victim of its own advertising. Convinced the soda was a menace, schools banned it across the nation. By 1998, sales of Surge were already dropping, and five years later, Coca-Cola finally discontinued it.
7. Oreo O’s Was Discontinued Because The Makers Could No Longer Use The Oreo Recipe
To an objective observer, Oreo O’s is a cereal that is one step removed from Little Chocolate Doughnuts, the parody cereal endorsed by John Belushi in a 1977 sketch for Saturday Night Live. (That one step is that it’s actually a real cereal.) But Oreo O’s, released in 1997, wasn’t discontinued due to any nutritional deficit. It was the casualty of a corporate split.
According to Business Insider, when Post separated from Kraft Foods Group in 2007, it lost the right to use the Oreo recipe for its cereal (because Oreo is a Kraft product). However, Oreo O’s lived on in South Korea, where its production was overseen in part by General Foods Corporation, which was acquired by Kraft.
The South Korean version of Oreo O’s included small Oreo filling-flavored marshmallows, and boxes of the stuff once sold on eBay for as much as $226.80.
8. Nostalgic Americans Were Willing To Pay A Hefty Sum To Get Their Hands On Some Canadian French Toast Crunch
While French Toast Crunch was discontinued in the United States in 2006, it never left Canadian shelves. According to Grub Street, Americans were willing to fork over $24.95 for a box of Croque Pain Doré on eBay – a sum that does not include its shipping costs or the “veritable migraine of customs forms” that went along with it.
Riding the wave of ’90s nostalgia that began in the 2010s, General Mills responded to popular demand by relaunching the cereal. Like Crispy M&Ms, French Toast Crunch returned to grocery store shelves in 2015. It retails for $11.99.
9. Lay’s WOW Chips Were A Huge Success – Until Consumers Got The Runs
When Frito-Lay released WOW Chips in 1998, they became the best-selling new product in the United States. It’s easy to understand why: One ounce of WOW Chips contained 0 grams of fat and 75 calories, a marked reduction from the 10 grams of fat and 150 calories of one ounce of regular chips. Americans gobbled up $347 million in WOW Chips that year.
As it turns out, WOW was able to reduce its fat content by replacing it with olestra – a molecule too large to be digested. That’s good for your hips but bad for your social life, because consumption of olestra can cause “abdominal cramping, diarrhea, fecal incontinence, and other gastrointestinal symptoms.”
WOW Chips became the center of one of the biggest PR disasters in snack food history when its miracle molecule turned out to cause “orange-yellow ‘globules’ of oil” to seep out of consumers’ rear ends.
WOW Chips were rebranded as “Light” chips but kept the olestra. Ruffles Light and Lays Light were discontinued by 2016.