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1. Surge

That can. That violently green, jagged-edged can felt like a promise of pure, unadulterated energy. It was less a beverage and more a dare. Seeing the old convenience store, its windows now plastered with different ads, I remember pooling our change, the weight of the coins in our sweaty palms, the thrill of buying something our parents vaguely disapproved of. Surge was the official fuel of late-night video game sessions and misguided attempts at skateboarding.

It tasted like a lightning strike—a sharp, aggressive citrus flavor with more carbonation, more sugar, more everything than Mountain Dew, its intended rival. It didn’t just quench your thirst; it felt like it rewired your whole nervous system for an hour. Drinking one was an event, a small act of rebellion that tasted like lime and possibility. The hum it left in your veins was the same hum the world had back then, a feeling that something incredible was just about to happen.

2. Dunkaroos

The elementary school playground is still there, though the old metal slide has been replaced by a safer, sensible plastic one. I see it and I’m instantly back, sitting on a bench with my lunchbox, performing the sacred ritual of Dunkaroos. The small, kangaroo-shaped cookies were merely a vessel, a delivery system for the main event: that impossibly sweet, thick frosting.

The most iconic was the vanilla with rainbow sprinkles, a sugary Technicolor dream. The process was a delicate art. You had to ration the frosting perfectly, ensuring the last cookie received its fair share. There was a unique, almost granular texture to it, a manufactured perfection that no homemade frosting could ever replicate. Sharing a pack was a profound act of friendship. Finishing one alone was a private, decadent joy. It was a snack that demanded your participation, a tiny moment of interactive bliss in the middle of a long school day.

3. Crystal Pepsi

They’re building a new glass-fronted bank where the old movie theater used to be. Progress, I guess. It reminds me of the "clear craze" of the 90s, an obsession with transparency as a symbol of purity. And the king of that movement was Crystal Pepsi. The idea was so strange, so captivating: the taste of Pepsi, but without the color.

What did it taste like? It tasted like 1992. It was smoother, maybe a little less acidic than its caramel-colored counterpart, but the real experience was visual. Drinking cola from a clear bottle that contained a clear liquid felt like you were sipping something from the future. It was a novelty, of course, and a short-lived one. Coca-Cola even released its own clear "kamikaze" competitor, Tab Clear, designed to confuse consumers and kill the trend. But for that brief, shining moment, Crystal Pepsi was a phenomenon. It was the taste of something familiar made completely new, a perfect metaphor for being a kid, when the whole world felt like that every single day.

4. Doritos 3D's

I drive past a house where my friend Mark used to live. We’d spend hours in his basement, the glow of the television screen on our faces. And the snack of choice was always Doritos 3D's. These weren't just chips; they were a marvel of snack engineering. They were puffed-up, hollow pyramids of corn, a strange and wonderful hybrid of a Dorito and a Bugle.

The crunch was magnificent—an airy, satisfying explosion that was completely different from a flat chip. They came in those futuristic plastic canisters that popped open with a satisfying thwump. Flavors like Jalapeño Cheddar and Zesty Ranch felt more intense, somehow trapped inside their hollow shells. They were discontinued in the early 2000s, leaving a void in the chip aisle that has never quite been filled. Eating them was just… more fun. A small, edible piece of architectural genius.

5. Ecto Cooler

The sun has fully set now, and the sky is a deep, velvety indigo. The color reminds me of watching cartoons on a Saturday morning, cross-legged on the floor, still in my pajamas. And nothing says Saturday morning cartoons like a juice box of Hi-C Ecto Cooler. Tied in with The Real Ghostbusters, this drink was a cultural icon. It was a glowing, supernatural green liquid that tasted vaguely of tangerine and orange, but mostly, it tasted green.

The mascot, Slimer, was plastered all over the box, giving it an aura of mischievous fun. It was the drink you had to have in your lunchbox. It outlived the cartoon it was based on by years, a testament to its strange, citrusy magic. Even now, the memory of that color and that sweet, tangy taste is so vivid it feels like a tangible thing, a sugary green ghost from a simpler time.

6. Wonder Ball

There it is. The old candy shop on Main Street. It’s a boutique now, selling expensive candles. But I can still feel the frantic excitement of walking in there with a dollar bill crumpled in my fist, my eyes landing on the Wonder Ball. "What's in the Wonder Ball?" the slogan asked. That was the whole point. It was a hollow ball of milk chocolate, and when you cracked it open, a surprise was nestled inside.

Originally, it was small plastic Disney figurines, which led to a brief, panicked withdrawal over choking hazards. But they came back, this time filled with more candy. The chocolate itself was secondary. The real magic was the mystery, the anticipation. It was a treasure box you could eat. For a kid, that was the absolute pinnacle of candy innovation. It turned a simple treat into a moment of discovery.

7. Butterfinger BB's

The sound of the rain starting to fall, a soft tapping on the windshield, reminds me of the sound of Butterfinger BB's rattling around in their box. These were, perhaps, the most perfect candy ever conceived. They were tiny, marble-sized spheres of that classic Butterfinger combination: a crispy, flaky, peanut-buttery core enrobed in milk chocolate. But the spherical form changed everything. You could pour them directly into your mouth, a cascade of crunchy, chocolatey bliss.

No more shards of the candy bar getting stuck in your teeth. They were dangerously easy to eat. A whole bag could disappear in minutes, a fact I learned the hard way at the movies more than once. Their disappearance remains one of the great, unsolved mysteries of the candy world.

8. Planters Cheez Balls

I see the park where we used to have Fourth of July picnics. Red checkered blankets on the grass, the smell of hot dogs on the grill. And always, someone’s mom would bring a canister of Planters Cheez Balls. That bright blue can with the clear plastic lid was a beacon of snacking joy.

Unlike other cheese puffs, these were perfectly spherical, with a light, airy crunch that would dissolve on your tongue into pure, cheesy goodness. And the dust. Oh, that glorious, radioactive-orange cheese dust that would coat your fingers, a badge of honor that you’d inevitably lick off with great satisfaction. They vanished for years, and while Planters has brought them back intermittently, there’s a quiet consensus that they aren’t quite the same. The memory is better. The memory is perfect.

9. Ouch! Bubble Gum

The old middle school looms up on my left. I think of scraped knees and awkward growth spurts. And I think of Ouch! Bubble Gum. The packaging was pure genius. The gum came in a flat metal tin that looked exactly like a box of bandages. Inside, each stick of gum was wrapped to look like an actual bandage, complete with a little non-sticky "pad" in the middle. The gum itself was your standard, sugary bubble gum in flavors like grape, strawberry, and watermelon, but the experience was everything. Pulling out that tin to "treat" yourself to a piece of gum was a small piece of playground theater. It was a novelty, a prop, a piece of childhood comedy that also happened to be a sweet treat.

10. Squeezit

I remember hot, endless summer days, the kind where the asphalt gets soft and the air shimmers. We’d be outside for hours, and the ultimate refreshment was a Squeezit. These drinks came in plastic, squeezable bottles that were molded into the shapes of cartoonish characters like Chucklin' Cherry and Silly Billy Strawberry.

To drink it, you had to twist off the top and then, as the name implied, squeeze the bottle, forcing the brightly colored, 10% fruit juice liquid into your mouth. It was a gimmick, sure, but it was a glorious one. There were even "mystery" flavors in black bottles and tablets you could drop in to change the color of the drink. It was a beverage that understood a fundamental childhood truth: things are always better when they’re interactive.

11. Keebler Magic Middles

Passing a row of identical suburban houses, I remember sleepovers. Staying up too late watching scary movies, whispering secrets in the dark. The snacks were always the best part. And if you were lucky, someone’s mom had bought Keebler Magic Middles. These were shortbread cookies with a secret. Baked inside was a soft, melt-in-your-mouth chocolate filling. It seemed like pure wizardry.

How did the elves get the chocolate inside the cookie? The contrast was perfect: the crumbly, buttery cookie giving way to a rich, fudgy center. They were a comforting, unassuming cookie with a delightful surprise, the perfect treat for making a strange house feel a little more like home.

12. Josta

This was the 90s attempt at an "edgy" soda, before the energy drink boom truly took over. Josta was Pepsi's answer to a question nobody was really asking yet. It was a dark, reddish-brown color and tasted fruity and spicy, with a kick from guarana, an ingredient that seemed mysterious and exotic at the time.

Its slogan was "better do the good stuff now," and the commercials featured old men lamenting a youth they hadn't lived to the fullest. It felt grown-up, a little dangerous. Drinking one felt like you were in on a secret. It was too weird to last, discontinued after only four years, but it was a pioneer, a strange, spicy harbinger of the energy drink craze that would soon sweep the nation.

13. Shark Bites

The community pool is dark and still as I drive by. But in my mind, it’s a brilliant blue, shimmering under a summer sun, and I’m sitting on the hot concrete with a pouch of Shark Bites. These fruit snacks were legendary. They were shaped like different sharks, and they had a unique, almost opaque and slightly greasy texture that no other fruit snack has ever managed to replicate.

The flavors were indistinctly fruity and delicious. But the ultimate prize, the holy grail of the fruit snack world, was finding the rare, chalky-white Great White shark. It was a moment of pure triumph, a small lottery win in the middle of an ordinary day. Even though they still technically exist, the formula has been changed, and the magic, fans say, is gone. The Great White has swum off into the sunset.

14. Orbitz

Of all the strange 90s beverage experiments, Orbitz was the strangest. It looked less like a drink and more like a lava lamp. It was a non-carbonated fruit drink with tiny, colorful, gelatinous balls floating suspended within it. It was a visual spectacle.

The flavors were futuristic, like Raspberry Citrus and Pineapple Banana Cherry Coconut. But the experience of drinking it was… bizarre. The little balls were chewy and weird. It was a drink you bought for the novelty, to see if you could stomach it. It was a failure, but a glorious one. A testament to a time when a beverage company was willing to launch something that looked like a science experiment gone wonderfully, beautifully wrong.

15. O'Boises

The grocery store at the edge of town is still a grocery store, but the name has changed. I remember going there with my mom, and the thrill of being allowed to pick one snack. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I could convince her to buy O'Boisies. "O'Boises, O'Boy!" the commercials sang. They were potato chips, but they were different.

They were light, crispy, and somehow airy, almost as if they were puffed. They had a distinctive salty, savory flavor that was utterly addictive. They weren't greasy like other chips. They just… melted in your mouth. Of all the snacks on this list, O'Boisies feel like the most distant, a half-remembered dream of a perfect potato chip that flickered into existence for a few years and then vanished without a trace.

The rain is coming down harder now, washing the streets clean. The town is quiet. The ghosts are receding, fading back into the houses and the trees, into the asphalt and the dying light. This drive hasn't brought anything back. Not really. You can’t go home again, they say. The people are gone, the places have changed, and the kid who loved all these things is just a memory, too.

These snacks, these discontinued dreams, they're more than just sugar and food coloring. They’re anchors. They are fixed points in a past that is otherwise constantly shifting, eroding with every passing year. To taste one again would be to taste a moment when the world was simpler, when joy was cheaper, when the future was a bright, undefined glow on the horizon. It’s a foolish wish. I know that. But as I pass the town limits sign, heading back into the life I’ve built somewhere else, it’s a wish I can’t help but make.

This list is just the tip of the iceberg. What legendary discontinued snack did we miss? Let us know the treat you're still craving in the comments