Who Remembers These 1970s Snacks?

Foods come and foods go. Processed foods, that is. You might find broccoli in different colors and forms at the market, but original broccoli doesn’t disappear. Our favorite snack food, no such luck. If we don’t buy it, it goes away and is replaced with something newer and shinier. Some of the processed food industry’s greatest achievements were 1970s snacks. Some are still around, some are but memories.

Which do you remember? And which are still your guilty pleasures? (And yes, we know some of these were around before the 1970s, but since the ads came from 1970s magazines, we ate them in the 1970s and we are not a rigorously reviewed scientific journal, we decided to include them anyway.)

Chex Party Mix

Before Chex Mix came from the market pre-made in a big bag, you had to make it yourself. (Same with Muddy Buddies.) And although we do like convenience, making it from scratch does not require high culinary skill and the taste is so much fresher.

While this ad is not exceptional, we do applaud the use of the heavy cut glass bowl. Too many pretty bowls languish in the back of china hutches. Get them out and use them! They are durable as heck.

Team Shredded Wheat saw that Team Chex had expanded their reach beyond breakfast into the snack market, and answered back with Spoon Size Shredded Wheat Snacks. Anyone have a memory of these? Anyone?

Kraft Cheese Snaks 

“A good time is only as good as its food.” Okay, let’s go with that. The dips left and right were entertaining staples at my home and let me assure you, we did not dip carrots, celery or green peppers in them as suggested in the ad copy. One of my favorite clean up tasks was licking the last bits of dip out of the ribs in the aluminum container of the Ready to Serve Dips. (I was a very helpful child.) It was not as satisfying as spraying Snack Mate now known as Easy Cheese directly in my mouth, but it was darned good.

There were so many delicious ways to enjoy processed pasteurized cheese food. Although some are not around, like Squeez A Snak, others like Cheez Whiz endure.

Pringles

Technically, Pringle’s were invented in 1967, but they came into their own in the 1970s snack world. It would be hard to describe a processed partially potato product is an improvement on a classic potato chip from a flavor perspective. But from a portability perspective, that can of Pringle’s could go places and not get crushed to fragments, something a bag of chips can only dream of doing.

And yes, Pringle’s are still part of the snack landscape, but one looks back on that day in snack history when one first put a can of Pringle’s into the beach bag and they arrived at the beach, still a stack of identically shaped potato flavored snack items.

While Pringle’s chips made an impact on our taste buds, the Pringle’s can launched a thousand craft projects. And it still does.

Breakfast Bars

Too busy for breakfast? No problem, pop a couple of these convenient General Mills Breakfast Squares in your purse and you’ll be powered all day. If the idea of a meal in a bar seems ho hum when there are entire supermarket aisles dedicated to bars making all kinds of nutrition promises, it was a tough concept for people to grasp in the 1970s. They didn’t last long.

Snack Pack Pudding

Not just a snack, a knife’s edge adventure, Hunt Snack Pack pudding in a can revolutionized school lunches. Pudding that didn’t need refrigeration. Pudding that came in a tiny can with a ring pull-top. Pop up the ring, pull back and get a crescent-shaped circle with a sharp edge covered in pudding that demanded to be licked clean. First marketed in 1968, the metal lid was made less risky in the 1970s. Of all the 1970s snacks, this one might well be the grand champion, the most revolutionary and the most enduring.

All kinds of shelf stable pudding snacks are available now, but none of them give the living-on-the-edge feeling along with the sugar rush that the original cans did.

Pizza Spins

General Mills was a the forefront of the novelty shaped shack. The early 1960s gave us Bugles, Whistles and Daisies, of which now only Bugles live on. They were a snack juggernaut, churning out 1970s snacks as well, like Onyums and Potato Crisps, both equally forgettable. But Pizza Spins, now that was a snack. The wheel shape and the zesty taste of pizza, oh Pizza Spins were a wonderful thing. Believe it or not, there is a Facebook group dedicated to convincing General Mills to bring them back.

Space Food Sticks

If the astronauts ate/drank it, it had to be good. A variation of  Space Food Sticks did go on Apollo missions. Their long, thin shape was so they could fit through a tiny hole in the astronaut’s helmets. Convenient to carry and packed with nutrients, they certainly had the right credentials to pass snack muster. But they didn’t last long in the 1970s, even after they were renamed Food Sticks to counter the narrative that the astronauts ate things that were dehydrated and not at all tasty.

Not sure Food Sticks was a good choice though. Note to Pillsbury: the only appropriate eating-related words that go before “sticks” are: potato, pretzel, carrot, celery and fish.

1970s snacks were not the most iconic ever invented. That title might go to the 1960s, a time when some of the finest processed snacks in the world came to market. But there were still some tasty creations, ones that we might remember wistfully as we nibble our artisanal cheddar wholemeal biscuits and herbed goat cheese.

If you like vintage snacks, you might also want to read about vintage shampoo brands we miss.