1. Reese’s Peanut Butter & Banana Creme Cups (Elvis Edition)
In 2007, Hershey’s released a limited-edition Reese’s Cup inspired by Elvis Presley’s infamous favorite sandwich: peanut butter, banana, and occasionally bacon, Faefyx Collington of Daily Meal explains. The candy skipped the bacon but kept the banana crème, resulting in a combo that tasted like a Reese’s Cup got lost in a Jell-O salad. The banana flavor was intensely artificial—like someone dropped a Laffy Taffy into a vat of peanut butter. It confused people’s mouths in a way that felt more like a prank than a tribute.
The product was released for the 30th anniversary of Elvis’s death, which made the whole thing just a little weirder. It came and went fast, with only the most adventurous snackers mourning its loss. It’s the kind of treat that sounds better in a press release than it actually tasted. But for a brief moment, candy got weird enough to rock and roll.
2. Orbitz Soda
This 1990s drink looked like a lava lamp you could sip, which is exactly as terrible as it sounds, according to Sandie Glass of Atlas Obscura. Orbitz was a non-carbonated fruit drink suspended with floating gelatinous balls meant to be “fun,” but mostly came off as vaguely menacing. The balls didn’t pop or dissolve—they just slid around your mouth like alien eggs. It was like drinking a science experiment gone wrong.
Despite its short shelf life (1997–1998), Orbitz gained a cult following for its sheer weirdness. Its failure was blamed on bad marketing and even worse taste. Critics at the time compared it to cough syrup with a side of “why?” Yet it’s still fondly remembered as that drink you dared your friends to try, not something you actually liked.
3. Jell-O Pudding Pops
If you were a kid in the ’80s or ’90s, there’s a good chance you had your childhood ruined by how good these things were—and then again when they vanished, Matt Crowley of Sporked explains. Jell-O Pudding Pops were frozen pudding on a stick, which sounds weird until you remember how smooth, cold, and creamy they were. They came in chocolate, vanilla, and swirl, and had this magical frosty texture that somehow felt like frozen velvet. Eating one felt like you were getting away with dessert at breakfast.
Despite their cult status, they disappeared from shelves in the early 2000s, thanks to complicated licensing issues and changing parent-company priorities. They made a brief comeback under a different brand, but the texture was off and the magic was gone. People still chase the memory of that original fudgy pop like snack archaeologists. Honestly, they were too good to last—and possibly too good to be legal in the first place.
4. Mountain Dew Pitch Black (Original Version)
Originally released for Halloween in 2004, Mountain Dew Pitch Black was a grape-flavored version of the already aggressively caffeinated soda, Stephanie Oliveira Nguyen of Daily Meal explains. It looked like motor oil and tasted like grape candy soaked in battery acid—which, to some people, was a compliment. It was shockingly dark in color, practically glowing under certain lights, and had enough sugar to keep you up through a full moon cycle. It wasn’t so much a drink as a commitment.
Fans loved its unapologetic weirdness, and it became a seasonal cult favorite. But over time, the formula was changed, the flavor tweaked, and the magic lost. The original version vanished for years, returning in brief bursts, each time a little more diluted. It was chaos in a bottle, and for a moment, we were all wild enough to drink it.
5. Pudding Roll-Ups
Think Fruit Roll-Ups, but filled with chocolate or vanilla pudding instead of fruit flavors. That sounds okay until you realize these things were sticky, floppy sheets of pudding goo that left your fingers coated in sadness. The texture was like eating pudding-flavored plastic wrap. They came out in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, right before the world collectively decided “this is a bridge too far.”
It’s not that they were awful—they just made no sense. Why unroll pudding like a scroll instead of using a spoon like a civilized person? Kids tried them once, maybe twice, before switching back to Gushers or real pudding cups. They quietly disappeared, and honestly, we were better for it.
6. Jell-O 1-2-3
This was a layered gelatin dessert that magically separated into three distinct textures: a dense bottom layer, a mousse-like middle, and a foamy top. It looked like science, tasted like sugar-flavored air, and felt like cheating death. It was popular in the ’60s and ’70s but was discontinued in the ’90s after a short revival. Why? Because nobody actually enjoyed eating it—they just liked watching it work.
The preparation process involved a blender and a ton of chilling time, which seemed excessive for glorified Jell-O. Still, it was a marvel of food engineering that delighted a generation of suburban moms. Its biggest crime was pretending to be fancy when it was really just triple-threat gelatin. You couldn’t serve it with a straight face at a dinner party.
7. Cereal-Inspired Snack Bars with Marshmallow Glue
In the early 2000s, everything from Froot Loops to Cocoa Pebbles got the “bar” treatment, held together with what could only be described as edible glue. These snack bars were so sweet they made your teeth ache on contact. Sure, they were convenient, but they were also aggressively artificial, with colors brighter than traffic lights. The marshmallow binder often had the consistency of melted plastic.
Parents bought them thinking they were breakfast shortcuts. Kids ate them and immediately developed a sugar twitch. Most brands quietly pulled these from shelves or reformulated them to be less… hyperactive. But for a time, they were like legal crack in a foil wrapper.
8. Crystal Pepsi
Crystal Pepsi was Pepsi’s attempt in the early ‘90s to ride the wave of “clear = healthy” marketing, even though it was just regular Pepsi without the caramel coloring. The idea was that it looked pure and refreshing, but still tasted like soda—except it didn’t quite. It had an oddly soapy, citrusy aftertaste that confused your brain and disappointed your tongue. Drinking it felt like listening to a karaoke version of a song you sort of remember.
Despite a flashy launch and a big-budget Super Bowl ad, it flopped fast once people actually tried it. It was briefly revived for nostalgia’s sake in the 2010s, but the reaction was more ironic than enthusiastic. The clear soda trend came and went faster than a sugar crash. It’s a prime example of why just because you can make soda transparent doesn’t mean you should.
9. Butterfinger BB’s
These tiny spheres of Butterfinger goodness were introduced in the 1990s and famously advertised by The Simpsons. They were basically Butterfinger bars in jawbreaker form, which seemed like a good idea until you actually tried to chew them. The candy coating made them hard as rocks, and biting into one risked serious dental damage. They stuck to your teeth like molten peanut brittle.
Still, people loved their poppable format, and their disappearance left many confused and angry. Nestlé discontinued them in 2006, possibly because they were expensive to make or a lawsuit waiting to happen. Butterfinger BB’s had charm, but also enough sugar and crunch to qualify as a low-grade weapon. Their memory lives on in nostalgic tweets and cracked molars.
10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pies
These Hostess snack pies from the early ’90s were bright green on the outside and filled with radioactive-looking vanilla pudding. Marketed to kids hopped up on cartoon turtle power, they looked like something Shredder would use as a biological weapon. The crust was waxy, the filling was aggressively sweet, and they stained your fingers (and probably your insides). Eating one felt like licking a melted crayon that had been dipped in frosting.
They were a sugar bomb disguised as a tie-in snack, which meant kids devoured them without question. Adults, on the other hand, realized quickly they had the texture of Play-Doh and the flavor of regret. Hostess quietly pulled them after the TMNT craze died down. But to this day, people still post blurry photos of them like ancient relics from a hyper-colored, tooth-decaying past.
11. Dunkaroos (Original Formula)
Yes, Dunkaroos are technically back, but the original 1990s version was something else entirely. The cookies were crunchier, the frosting was thicker, and the whole thing felt way more decadent. It was like someone took birthday cake, condensed it into a plastic tray, and gave it to children as lunch. That frosting was 90% sugar, 10% mystery ingredient, and 100% addictive.
The reboot just doesn’t hit the same, even though it tries to mimic the classic. The original was discontinued in the U.S. in 2012 before coming back in 2020 with a different formula. Snack purists noticed the change immediately—it was lighter, less aggressively sweet, and kind of… polite. The old ones were lawless, and that’s what made them so beloved.
12. Hershey’s Swoops
Hershey’s Swoops were chocolate shaped like potato chips—thin, curved, and stacked in a canister like Pringles. They were introduced in the early 2000s and meant to be a “sophisticated” way to snack on chocolate, but they melted in your fingers almost instantly. That slick texture plus the awkward shape made them weird to eat, like you were licking a chocolate contact lens. And trying to stop at one? Impossible and kind of gross.
They came in flavors like Reese’s, Almond Joy, and York, which sounds great on paper—until you realize they couldn’t compete with the real thing. They were expensive, fragile, and about as practical as chocolate snowflakes in July. Swoops were quietly discontinued by 2006, likely due to poor sales and confused consumers. Because sometimes, chocolate just needs to be chocolate—not cosplay as a potato chip.
