It’s Saturday night. Nickelodeon’s SNICK is about to start. Your pizza Lunchables have been microwaved, and you popped out the perforated 3D glasses from the box.
For dessert, you’re debating between a bright yellow and pink Trix yogurt or Scooby-Doo gummy snacks washed down with Surge soda.
And for that moment in time, you don’t know how good you have it.
Nostalgia has been the hyper-focal point for Millennials and Gen Z in recent years, fueled by digital fatigue and a longing for more tactile experiences. With the growing fixation on products, media, and traditions from yesteryear, a recent Reddit thread asking users which discontinued snack they’d bring back drew thousands of responses.
And the comments felt more like a walk down memory lane than a vote on what should be resurrected.
With more than 4,000 upvotes, the winner was Pizza Hut’s original pizza recipe.
Aside from the “greasy, crispy-bottomed crust,” as one user put it, it was the overall experience — soda included, served in a red cup that is nearly impossible to hold because your hands are dripping in oil.
“One of my youngest memories is spilling a pop on myself at Pizza Hut and my dad was holding me up to the vent in the bathroom haha,” said another user.
SoBe drinks must also hold space, because 2,000 users upvoted one user’s post about Energy Lizard being the specific flavor profile to revive. One user even credited the beverages with helping them make it through the tail end of a school semester.
“We never had ‘fancy’ drinks at home but my mom allowed me to buy those during finals week,” the comment said.
Equally as compelling: the original McDonald’s snack wraps, which inspired 2,000 upvotes on the thread — and spawned an entire side debate about the quality of chicken selects vs. “these bulls–t things they’re pawning off now.” Users speculated that the current “McCrispy” strips are actually just ground chicken-shaped patties, not actual strips of chicken breast, which made the original recipe so iconic.
Either way, many users said they’d still eat whatever was being served to them.
The Choco Taco, Klondike’s quirky ice cream dessert that is exactly as it sounds — chocolate-covered and in a taco-shaped waffle cone — was another heavy hitter. Aside from questioning why they were discontinued, the favorite treat also sparked memories.
“I only remember ever having them when I was at summer camp in Boy Scouts as a kid. They had a small little shop where you could buy various things, but me and my buddies would get a choco taco a couple times during the week,” one user wrote.
The thread was also full of cream cheese lovers, 1,600 of them, who longed for the Philadelphia Cream Cheese bars to be back in the rotation.
Users questioned how the world is solving problems with AI, but couldn’t figure out how to restart manufacturing with cream cheese.
“You just know if they brought it back it would be 20% smaller, a recipe change for cheaper ingredients, and cost twice as much. It was a special and rare time for snack foods,” said another heartfelt post.
Other honorable mentions included the pop-in-your-mouth Butterfinger BB’s, which do, in fact, taste different than the squares, according to one user.
While it’s unlikely any of these snacks will resurface, especially given the restrictions on dyes and coloring and companies taking the route of high-fructose corn syrup or frozen over fresh, there are still countless social media posts on Instagram and TikTok dedicated to nostalgic snacking.
And if they did make a return, it probably wouldn’t be the same. Because, well, you can’t go home again.
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