Children of the 90s Ode to Discontinued 90s Foods, Part Deux

Well, children of the 90s, it's that time again. I've had some email requests from readers about some of their favorites 90s snacks, so I thought we were due for another discontinued 90s food roundup. If these commercials bring back some cravings, you're probably out of luck. Most of these foods, despite their hearty nostalgic value, have been discontinued somewhere along the way. On a good day, you might be able to find a couple of these on grocery store shelves outside of the US, but for the most part any cravings for these goodies will go unfulfilled.

For one reason or another, the producing companies of these delicious (though often un-nutritious) treats decided it just wasn't profitable enough to keep churning them out on their assembly lines. In our day some of these might have had impressive cafeteria trade value, but they've since dropped in kid coolness capital. All we have left is our memories...and for some of us, imbalanced blood sugar and an increased risk for early onset diabetes. We weren't the most health-conscious generation of kids, but we knew what we liked. Food manufacturers must have known, too, as they supplied us with copious amounts of nutritionally devoid options like these:

Pop Qwiz




At the time, this seemed like a true technological innovation in kid's snack food. Pop Secret released this kid-pleasing product in the early 90s, proving that children are the only group of consumers willing to eat incredibly unnatural-hued foodstuffs. Pop Qwiz was mostly gimmick and little substance, but the gimmick was more than enough to hold our attention and prompt countless tantrums in the popcorn aisle of the supermarket. Hey, I'd still be willing to throw myself on the ground and wail inconsolably for a bag of Pop Qwiz.

The name sounds far more educational than the value of the product warrants. I guess that's why they misspelled "Qwiz", to let us all know this popcorn snack was not academically relevant, nor would it offer us extra credit opportunities. Instead, the concept was rather simple: each bag of Pop Qwiz featured a different food-colored mass of kernels. The packaging was unassuming, leaving us kids to impatiently speculate on the bag's contents while still in the microwave. Would it be blue? Green? Purple? This eagerness for answers undoubtedly led to many oil-based burns.



Doritos 3-D



Our good friends at Doritos had no shortage of creative nacho-flavored chip incarnation ideas in the 90s. Every few weeks or so, it seemed they were debuting a new member of the ever-growing Dorito family. The short-lived Doritos 3-D were especially popular, literally adding a new dimension to our Dorito consumption. They fit in well with the "X-Treme!" trends in 90s advertising and product promotion, but they clearly couldn't stand the test of time. Air-filled pockets of salty goodness can only hold our attention for so long.



Planter's Cheez Balls


I know this ad is older than the 90s, but it was the best I could find. I think at a certain point, these defied advertising. They were pretty ubiquitous as a nutrition-free party snack food

Remember when Planter's used to make a whole bunch of other snack foods? I always thought it a bit weird that Mr. Peanut veered from his legume comfort zone to promote all classes of salty snacks. Cheez Balls (and Cheez Curls, and the briefly available PB Crisps) were once a universal party food. People were forever setting these unnaturally orange puffed balls out in bowls at social gatherings. There was something uniquely satisfying to popping off the tub's cap and hearing the release of suctioned air when you pulled the foil top and released the Cheez Balls into the wild. Unfortunately, you'll have to settle for the generics if you're craving Cheez Balls these days; Planter's has since discontinued the snack. You can, however, get a no-brand version at Sam's Club or Costco if you really need to satisfy your urge. Unfortunately, they're only available in giant tub sizes.



French Toast Crunch

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90s children's cereal trends show an unprecedented obsession of taking ordinary foods, miniaturizing them, and then convincing us they're a perfectly natural part of a balanced breakfast. French Toast Crunch was a perfect example, giving us bowlfuls of tiny French toastlets that we were expected to drown in milk and eat with a spoon. They didn't taste all that much like French toast, but they were a novelty and were thus deserving of our attention.

If you're lucky enough to live in Canada, you've still got access to this delicious breakfast treat. Publicly-funded health care comes second to the allure of starting every day with a big bowl of miniature processed imitation egg-soaked cinnamon bread? Actually, scratch that, make health care first. Daily intake of this sugar-laden cereal probably warrants regular doctor's visits.



Sprinkle Spangles



Here we go again with the miniatures. Sprinkle Spangles were a sort of Cookie Crisp knockoff, featuring sprinkle-spangled miniature sugar cookies and passing them off as cereal. How any of us ever got this one into the grocery cart and past our parent's wary watchful eye is beyond me, but the concept has yet to lose its appeal for me. I still think a bowl of these would really hit the spot when I'm craving something sweet.



Cheetos Paws



Like Doritos 3-D, Cheetos came out with an alternately shaped version of its original product and tried to pass it off as something new. Naive as we were as kids, we were ecstatic to find out our favorite orange finger-dying munchies now came in an easily grabbable pawprint shape. It was sort of like a crystal ball, really. It showed us exactly what our hands would look like if we engaged in gloveless Cheeto consumption. Well, the color part, at least. They usually didn't morph into paws.



Sodalicious Fruit Snacks



Sodalicious wins for best made-up food flavor descriptor. It's not soda per se, but it is delicious in a way similar to soda. How can we hybridize these words? Genius, I tell you.



Magic Middles



I'm getting a little drooly just watching that commercial. The name is right on: those middles were pure, sweet magic. Those Keebler elves sure are crafty. They realized they could hide even more delicious chocolate inside of an already chocolate-laden cookie, obscuring the extra sugar content from our parents. Oh hey, I'm just eating this chocolate chip cookie. With a candy bar's worth of chocolate inside. Ha ha! Gotcha.



Dannon's Sprinklins




We weren't allowed much junk food at my house, so we had to settle for the best imitation. That is, foods that incorporated sugary goodness without actually being all that sugary or good themselves. In this case, we had to suffer through some does-a-body-good yogurt in order to get to the good stuff: sprinkles. I challenge you to find a kid who doesn't like sprinkles. They're pure sugar and they're colorful. It's basically a kid's confectionery dream. I always utilized good sprinkle strategy. I'd try to conserve as many as I could for the end, but to a healthy food-disparaging kid, I'd usually have to give in and spread them throughout the cup. I just couldn't stomach it without the "Sprinkl'" part.


Like many of you, I didn't notice the gradual disappearance of these goodies from my grocery store shelves. Over time I'd eventually notice that some of my old childhood favorites had gone the way of the Dunkaroos. Unless they decide to ignore low profit margins and get swept up in the 90s nostalgia, it's unlikely we'll be seeing most of these gracing our supermarket aisles any time soon. We'll just have to settle for our delicious memories. Either that, or trying to track down some packages on Amazon or eBay. It just comes down to how seriously you consider expiration dates.

Laser Pointers

It's strange to think a tiny red beam of light could bring so much childhood joy and so much adult annoyance all in its compact key chain-attachable form. Especially when you consider that this device was originally intended to aid lecturers in their presentations, it seems like a bit of a leap to imagine children having much of a use for the thing. I doubt the inventors of the laser pointers sat around their brainstorming table musing about alternative uses for their product. "Well, how about pointing it at people's crotches on movie screens? Do you think that could be a selling point?"

No, it was up to us kids to decide on the most irritating and teacher-grating uses for the laser pointer. Anyone who believes children aren't naturally creative simply have not examined the case of the laser pointer. It takes a savvy mind to take a tool meant for one of the most boring possible purposes and changing the function to delight their insatiable appetite for mischief.

Kids are far craftier and more inventive than adults usually give them credit for. The only problem is, they generally tend to direct this mind power toward the deviant. As kids we're not about finding solutions to the world's problems; we don't have that kind of mental breadth or empathy. We're in it solely for the entertainment.


Of course, kids have been partaking in this sort of tomfoolery for generations. It doesn't take much to entertain a child, and it doesn't take much to irritate an adult. The power of these two forces combined leads to a dangerous and potent cocktail of annoying proportions. The day a kid realized he could temporary blind a teacher by using the reflection of the sun off his watch, you better bet that's exactly what he did. It's not that he didn't care about her well-being. It's just that he cares more about delighting his impressionable classmates.

Such was also the case with laser pointers, a sort of updated version of this blinded-by-the-light childhood fancy. It's one thing to use "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" as an empty threat, but quite another to have to really mean it. That's not to say these things were actually capable of loosening an eye from its physical socket. I'd imagine they'd have been long banned from business conferences and conventions if that was the case. They could cause some temporary visual discomfort, though, and this was enough to have angry parent watchdog-type groups up in arms over the issue.

Fun for pets, too! From petside.com

Many of these uptight groups were enraged that parents were buying these little lights for their children. They wrote angry letters to school principals and district superintendents about the harm in these kids playing Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader with their makeshift light sabers. These devices, they stressed, were not toys. They didn't care how hilarious it was to illuminate their teacher's private parts with a pesky red dot. They just wanted them banned.

To be fair, there might eb some legitimately harmful implications of shining a little red dot on someone. I suppose if someone was intensely overly suspicious, they could assume that the telltale red dot was indicative of a sniper alignment. In fact, in a brief internet search on kids and laser pointers, I came across a very angry letter from a proud gun owner claiming it's not her fault if she panics over that little red light and pulls her gun on a kid. Now, I'm all for consequences for our actions, but that seems a tad harsh. That's like saying we should approve the death penalty for stealing lunch money. The sense of proportion seems just a smidge out of whack.

Incensed critics of laser-pointers-as-toys even cried foul on an episode of Seinfeld that chronicled George's misadventures with a laser pointer-wielding miscreant. The part I like best about this episode (entitled "The Puerto Rican", by the way) is that the perpetrator is actually a grown man. It just goes to show that immaturity is something we can all share. It's not exclusive to preadolescent boys. If anything, the drive to stir up trouble only grows with age. Well, to a point, that is. At a certain age, we all morph into the crotchety critics who cried foul on these glorious sources of entertainment in the first place. Until then, though, we have a free pass to behave like this:



The craze of young people utilizing laser pointers for pure entertainment was a short-lived one. At a point, the novelty wore off and we were once again able to attend a movie matinee without having to worry about the endless distraction of a roaming point of light. In a way, though, you have to miss the innocence and easy distractability of your youth. Sure, the things were annoying, but they represented a certain juvenile sense of humor that's tough to recapture in an age of ever-increasing technological output.

Now that kids today have a wealth of information and gadgetry at their immediate disposal, it's tough to imagine them getting as much of a kick out of a red bedotted movie. On the other hand, maybe there's a common bond that transcends generations that brings us together. I'm willing to venture that deep down, no matter in which generation you grew up, you will find certain things intrinsically amusing. So to today's kids, I say enjoy your easily amused youth. We'll catch you on the other side when you're getting all crotchety and George Costanza about it.

The Ones that Got Away: 90s Shows that Ended with Cliffhangers

Do you ever wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, worrying yourself awake over Angela Chase's eventual choice of high school beau? Do you find your mind racing over the endless possibilities, considering the implications of taking a pro-Jordan or pro-Brian bias? No, no, of course you don't. That's what I'm here for. To carry your unshouldered burden of those unsolved 90s pop culture mysteries.

It's the ultimate case of The One That Got Away. We found a TV series we enjoyed, we became invested in the characters and plot lines, and then suddenly the reality of poor ratings and low ad revenues kicked in and the network would yank it from its lineup. This is disappointing in any case, but it's especially vexing when the writers leave important plot threads dangling. We never saw it coming. At least when a series that plans its own finale, we get that closure we so desperately crave. Everything wraps up neatly and we can all sleep soundly knowing that our characters have found their peace.

Sometimes, though, the writers may not know they're teetering on the brink of imminent cancellation. They write a season finale as a cliffhanger, hoping to keep their loyal viewers in suspense of a surprising twist in the next season's premiere episode. We're all waiting anxiously for our favorite show's return, eager for the answers to our most pressing plot questions when we hear the bad news: the show has been canceled. The canon on its storylines is officially closed, and we're left to speculate forever on the true nature of the show's intentions. I'm still vacillating over the whole Jordan/Brian ordeal, and it's been over ten years.


Home Improvement

Like many young girls of my time, the show started its decline in my mind the minute JTT left. It just wasn't the same without his endearing floppy-haired precociousness. Aside from my own bitterness at his departure, most viewers had a bigger issue with the iffy series finale. After nine years, you would think they would at least have given us a little something to hold onto.

The final episode features a wealth of deliberations for the Taylor family. Tim films his final Tool Time and producers beg him to stay. Jill gets a job offer to be a psychologist in Indiana. It looks like they're going to Indiana, moving their house one piece at a time...or are they? Yup, we potentially got Dallas'ed. Is it a dream? We'll never know.

They did, however, at least have the common courtesy to leave us with a cheesy montage and a final curtain call:





Caroline in the City

This show may not have been quite as culturally persevering as Home Improvement, but it did fare pretty well for awhile in NBC's Thursday night line-up. The writers dish up another heaping serving of What Might Have Been, though they leave us to ponder whether or not it will be. Caroline's all set to marry Richard, he tells her he doesn't really want kids, she freaks out a bit. Fast forward six months, Caroline's about to marry Randy, and wouldn't you know it, there's Richard! Who would've thought? Anyway, the clip isn't available anywhere on the interwebs, so you'll have to settle for this montage of Caroline and Richard and just hope that was the finale's intention.





Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

Remember, if you can think back this far, a time before Terri Hatcher was a Desperate Housewife and Dean Cain a desperate Ripley's Believe it or Not host. In the 90s, these two embodied the updated Superman and Lois Lane. The series' last episode is a real puzzler, though. The two find a baby on their doorstep with a note. We don't get much more than that. They thought the show would get picked up for another season, but we were stuck with this ending. If it helps, though, one of the writers later revealed that the baby was a Krypton royal who they needed to shield from deadly assassins. I think I liked it better when I didn't know.





Moesha

Someone's pregnant! Moesha's brother's been kidnapped! It's all pretty exciting stuff, but unfortunately we don't get to find out what happened. They'd originally intended to resolve the issues on the spin-off The Parkers, but there just wasn't enough time. Besides, at that point, I'd lost interest anyway.





My So-Called Life

Ah, the classic cliffhanger ending. MSCL didn't have spectacular ratings, but it did gather a fiercely loyal fanbase. You can imagine the anger they felt when they found out that the eternal question of Angela's love life would never be resolved. Angela's all about hunky and semi-illiterate Jordan Catalano until she finds out at the end of the episode that his heartfelt love letter was ghostwritten by none other than geeky but kind-hearted Brian Krakow. Like I said earlier, this one still haunts me. I'm sort of a Brian fan, but I had a huge crush on Jared Leto. I don't know what I wanted, I just wanted an ending, dammit.





Models, Inc.

I'm still not totally sure why I loved this show as a kid. It wasn't particularly good, nor was it remotely appropriate for my young age. Regardless, I have a soft spot for this one and I'd really like to know how it all played out. This one was so bold to splash a big To Be Continued.... across the screen, meaning they were pretty cocky about their chances for a second season. There's a wedding, an assassin points a gun at several different characters, camera pans away, we hear a shot. And then...nothing. No answers. Several years down the road, E! aired an alternate ending that gave us some closure. Unfortunately, I never saw it. If any of you did, let me know what happened.

Oh, wait, never mind. Here it is. Thanks, YouTube!





Cybill

Did Cybill and Maryanne kill the infamous Dr. Dick or not? They thought not, just a simple blow-up-his-boat operation. Next, they're arrested for his murder. The show was canceled so suddenly, we never got a chance to find out what might have been. Either way, I think he deserved it.





Popular

I spent many of my high school years pondering the age-old question: was I Brooke or a Sam? I realize now that I'm probably not missing anything by not falling into the categories of bulimic cheerleader or repressed lesbian. I've really got to get some new role models.

Anyway, this show was, as the title implies, pretty popular for awhile. The WB pushed it into the black hole of the Friday night time slot and the ratings plummeted. The cliffhanger was pretty juicy, too--we probably all would've tuned in for a little tying-up of loose ends. Brooke's fellow cheerleader Nicole Julian gets drunk and runs over Brooke with her car. How could you not want to know what happened? My curiosity is pretty persistent.

I couldn't find the ending, so you'll have to settle for the intro. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to iTunes to go download that theme song.






We may never know what happened in most of these scenarios, but perhaps it's better off that way. Leaving the story open-ended lets it lives on and gives it a potential that probably exceeds whatever the writers would have actually come up with. They also taught us the valuable life lesson of learning to live with disappointment. Sure, I was upset when I didn't know how Home Improvement wrapped up, but it did prepare me for the continued grief associated with opening one of my current paychecks.


And for the record, Runner Up: Dallas. It got resolved in a TV movie, anyway. Plus, what kind of a 6-year old watched Dallas? I have no context for it. On the other hand, I watched Cybill, so my tastes may have been a bit more mature than I'd initially thought.