Retro Round Table: Foods We Miss : The Retro Network

It’s time once again for another Retro Round Table! This time, we’re talking about our most missed foods from day’s gone by. There have been a lot of fast food choices and snacks that have come and gone over the years, and we are all nostalgic about one or more of them. I write all the time about foods I miss and could do an entire list by myself. But there’s more than just us in this world that misses these great old snacks, so once again we are inviting you to tell us what snacks YOU miss in the comments at the bottom of the page, or on social media. Just be sure to tag us using @trnsocial so we can see your comments! Let’s let our taste buds do the talking, and take a look at the snacks we miss!

The retro food I miss most has to be Crunch Tators by Frito Lays. They were hot and spicy potato chips with a really hard crunch and were available in the late ’80s and early ’90s. There was an alligator on the front of the bag for some odd reason that I could never figure out and they came in two flavors: “Hoppin’ Jalapeno” and “Mighty Mesquite BBQ”. They remind me of my freshman and sophomore years of college. Ate ’em all the time.

Incidentally, A bag of the “Mighty Mesquite BBQ” flavor chips can be seen in Home Alone (probably my all-time favorite Christmas movie) in the scene where Kevin is watching Angels with Filthy Souls and eating a rather large ice cream sundae.

– Eric Vardeman

Since we’ve had several drinks resurrected in the past two years, I’m longing for another soda I remember from my childhood, Slice. Technically, Pepsi has only discontinued Slice in the past decade after a failed attempt in diet soda market. Of course, Sierra Mist and even Tropicana have taken over Slice flavors from PepsiCo over the years but we’ve never seen the full line of flavors I remember in the ’80s.

With successful comebacks of Ecto Cooler, New York Seltzer, Jolt Cola, Surge, and Crystal Pepsi over the last couple years, now is the time for a Slice revival. Give us some of the traditional flavors like Apple Slice, Mandarin Orange Slice, Pineapple Slice, Fruit Punch Slice. If you need to add more than 10% juice it had back in the day to satisfy the health nuts, that’s fine. But if we get the Slice back, please give me the commercials with fruit being launched into streams of water.

– Jason Gross

While many of my favorite childhood flavors like the spicy crunch of Keebler’s Pizzarias have been lost to the ages, there is one combination of fruit flavor and texture that I miss above all others. Coming out of the fruit roll-up craze of the mid-80’s that gave us bizarre variations like Pudding Roll-Ups, Fruit Swirl Bars by Fruit Corners were a delicious anomaly that I’ll never forget. Imagine a lab experiment gone horribly wrong as a mad food scientist tried to combine the dimensions of a granola bar with the sticky sweetness of fruit roll-ups, then dropped a few yogurt covered Sunkist Fun Fruits Creme Supremes into the mix. The results were a deliciously gooey monstrosity that could barely hold it’s form, yet terrorized our tongues in the very best way with a burst of tangy fruit flavor that was mellowed out by the stripes of vanilla cream running throughout. For the short time they were available, these were my go-to pre-school lunch treat and I can’t believe there has never been an off-brand revival of the recipe available at questionable gas stations nationwide. I recently found a commercial for Fruit Swirl Bars on one of my old Saturday Morning VHS tapes so you can enjoy the celebration of this delicious snack in live action here

– Hoju Koolander

Man, I miss a lot of old foods. Most of the foods I miss don’t really pertain to the taste as much as the nostalgic memories surrounding them. I could name any number of items as my choice, but for today, I’m really missing the old Eagle Snacks Russet Valley Potato Chips. Way back in 1979, Anheuser-Busch launched a line of salty snacks to go along with the beer called Eagle Snacks. One of the snacks they rolled out with was Russet Valley Potato Chips. They were a kettle cooked chip and used russet potatoes instead of the more traditional new white potatoes for making their chips. This gave the chips a distinctive dark color and an amazing taste.

I still remember the first time I ever tried them. My brother brought home a large metal can adorned with the Anheuser-Busch logo, and inside were two bags of these glorious chips. From the first one I put in my mouth, I was hooked. We ate so many bags of those chips in the late ’80s that I started growing potato eyes all over my body. Sadly, they went away in the early ’90s, and it was years before I found a substitute. Now while not quite as good as the Russet Valley chips, Cape Cod brand makes a dark russet potato chip that is pretty dang swank.

– Mickey Yarber

Well that does it for us. But what about you? What cool old snack food do YOU miss? Tell us in the comments and we’ll see if we ever had the pleasure of enjoying it as well.