Popular Discontinued Snack Foods We Really Miss

Americans spend a lot of their free time watching television and munching on their favorite snacks, reveling in their salty or sweet flavors. That helps explain why the snack and bakery market accounts for more than $100 billion in annual U.S. sales.

If anything, the pandemic and the trend of working from home have provided more opportunities for bound folks to chomp on chips, grab some pretzels, or dunk some cookies in milk. (Not everyone can find them, but these are 16 regional potato chip brands the whole country deserves.)  

Not all snacks have stood the test of time, though. 24/7 Tempo consulted numerous snack-food fan pages, company histories, media websites, and rating sites to compile this list of chips, candies, and other such items that have passed into the repository of history.

Many of the snacks that we enjoyed in our younger days are gone because sales failed to match projections, the product didn’t fit into the strategy of a company that bought the snack’s parent, or the public’s tastes shifted toward more healthful options. Some of the products no longer with us are versions of other beloved items that remain on the shelves. (Here are some junk foods that are actually not so bad for you.)

Because of the power of social media and crowd-sourcing platforms like change.org and ipetitions, jilted customers have pestered companies about bringing back beloved snacks. They’ve had some success. Successful consumer clamoring revived 3D Doritos, Dunkaroos, and Oreo Cakesters. 

Sometimes the snacks are still made in other countries, such as Mexico, Canada, or Australia, and these may be available by mail order. If the product is not found outside the U.S., collectors also sell unopened packages of the original on eBay and other sites.