The Post 11 Grocery Store Items From the 1960s That Vanished From the Shelves. Can You Remember Even 5? first appeared in Crafting Your Home
From 1962 to 1968, a tablet that fizzed in a glass of water was as big as Kool-Aid. That’s how the Christian Science Monitor described Fizzies in 1996, when the brand tried a comeback. If the name draws a blank, you have company. Plenty of 1960s grocery staples slipped away just as quietly.
Here are 11 of them. Keep count as you go.
1. Fizzies
Drop one tablet in water and you had instant soda pop. Warner-Lambert took Fizzies national in 1962. The recipe relied on cyclamate, a sweetener federal regulators moved against in the late 1960s, and the tablets left the shelves. Later revivals came and went.
2. Funny Face drink mix
Pillsbury’s answer to Kool-Aid arrived in 1964 with a cartoon face on every packet: Goofy Grape, Loud-Mouth Lime, Rootin’ Tootin’ Raspberry. Two of the first flavor names leaned on ethnic stereotypes, and the company replaced them with Choo-Choo Cherry and Jolly Olly Orange.
3. Moo Juice
Pillsbury tried again in 1966 with a powder you shook up with milk to make a milkshake. It didn’t last. By 1970, the company had stopped making Moo Juice.
4. Salvo detergent tablets
Not everything in the cart was food. Procter & Gamble launched Salvo in 1960: laundry detergent pressed into a tablet you tossed in the washer. The tablets didn’t always dissolve, and P&G dropped the brand in the 1970s. Tide Pods showed up in 2012, more than 50 years after the idea first reached the laundry aisle.
5. Post Country Squares
Pop-Tarts were not the first toaster pastry. Post tested its version in 1963 and unveiled Country Squares in February 1964. Kellogg scrambled, and Pop-Tarts reached stores that September. Post renamed its pastry Toast’em Pop Ups, then left the business in the early 1970s. Another company still sells Toast’em. The Country Squares name is long gone.
6. Whistles and Daisy*s
Bugles had siblings. General Mills entered the snack aisle in 1964 with three corn snacks at once. Whistles were cheddar-flavored tubes. Daisy*s were flower-shaped puffs. Both were gone within a few years, while Bugles are still on the shelf.
7. Jell-O for salads
In the 1960s, Jell-O sold flavors meant for dinner: celery, mixed vegetable, seasoned tomato, and Italian salad. Home cooks used them as a base for molded salads packed with vegetables, seafood, or meat. As the molded salad fell out of fashion, the savory flavors went with it.
8. Jell-O 1-2-3
This one was a magic trick in a box. Introduced in 1969, a single mix separated into three layers as it chilled: a creamy top, a mousse middle, and plain gelatin on the bottom. It hung on until 1996.
9. Space Food Sticks
In 1969, the year of the first moon landing, Pillsbury put a chewy snack stick in grocery stores and tied it to the space program. Within a few years the company cut “Space” from the name. Plain Food Sticks proved a harder sell, and the product was gone in the 1980s.
10. Screaming Yellow Zonkers
Glazed popcorn in a jet-black box covered with jokes. The snack came out of Lincoln, Nebraska, at the very end of the decade. One box told buyers to turn it upside down: if the Zonkers fell out, that was the bottom. The brand was retired around 2007, apart from a brief limited return.
11. Fruit Stripe gum
Here’s the easy one. The striped gum with the zebra on the pack had been sold since the 1960s. In January 2024, its owner, Ferrara, confirmed it was ending the product. If this was the only item you knew, you have until item 12 to feel bad about it. There is no item 12.
What your score says
Look at why these products vanished. Regulators moved against a sweetener. A rival got to the toaster faster. A tablet wouldn’t dissolve. The moon landing stopped being new, and so did the molded salad.
A few of them never caught on. Others had loyal fans and still lost their spot because something changed around them. A grocery shelf has room for only so much.
So if your count stalled at three or four, ask someone who packed school lunches in 1966. Odds are they can name the rest, and tell you which one they still miss.
Other Posts You Might Like:
- 6 Classic Foods from the 1970s That Have Vanished From Modern Kitchens
- 8 Things That Are Quietly Disappearing From Modern Homes
If you like what you just read, then subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media.
