Few places were as magical for a child as the candy aisle. Whether you surveyed your options at a general store with colorful penny candy or a convenience store with endless rows of chips and chocolate bars, choosing a treat was almost as impossible as convincing your parents to buy it. But the candy aisles are different today.
Is your favorite pick still on the shelves? Here are some goodies we’d love to see make a comeback.
Close your eyes and you can taste it: Peanuts, caramel, and fudge — a mainstay of your childhood sweet tooth. Oh Henry! bars were a hit soon after their introduction by a Chicago candy company all the way back in 1920. And while it appears that there are still some Oh Henry! bars lurking around Canada, the brand’s new U.S. owner, Ferrara, pulled the plug on this classic after buying it from Nestle a few years ago.
Mars introduced this “candy you can’t eat quickly” in 1973. A long braid of chocolate-covered caramel, it had a cartoon cowboy mascot that was forever reminding us of the candy’s longevity — just check out this classic commercial. Though the candy was discontinued in the early ’80s, all is not lost for fans: You can still track down the closely related Cadbury Curly Wurly online.
Related: Foods We Miss From the ’70s and ’80s
Candy Favorites proclaims these bright blue discs, made with real peppermint oil, “one of the best-selling hard candies of all time.” Even so, this refreshing candy-dish mainstay is no longer listed among Brach’s array of treats, leaving us with those ubiquitous red-and-white Star Brites peppermints to freshen our breath instead. If you're willing to settle for an approximation, Candy Nation offers its own Ice Blue Mint Squares, alongside a bevy of other brand name treats you ate as a kid.
Seven Ups were produced by Trudeau Candy, then Pearson’s, starting in the 1930s. As candy bars go, they were ambitious: Each one had seven sections filled with a different flavor, from orange and mint to caramel and nougat. But they were costly to produce, and disappeared by the end of the ’70s. The closest thing available today: The Sky Bar, which was recently brought back to life after maker Necco folded in 2018.
Released in the early ’70s to coincide with the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Wonka Bars weren’t exactly a runaway hit: Made by candy newbie Quaker, they often melted during shipping. Though subsequently passed off from company to company, they managed to stick around for years, especially as the movie went on to attain cult-classic status. Sadly, the bars were discontinued by Nestle in 2011. While Ferrara currently makes a few Wonka favorites including Everlasting Gobstoppers, the Wonka Bar is nowhere to be found.
Kids of the ’80s and ’90s probably remember sinking their teeth into these fruity, chewy, oh-so-sticky candies that were probably hated by dentists everywhere. (And who could forget the commercials of giant pieces of fruit crushing candy lovers from above?) While Bonkers fell off the radar for a long time, Leaf Brands bought the brand several years ago. However, there’s still little sign of a renaissance anytime soon. Leaf promised a comeback in … well … 2015.
These fat, chewy squares of caramel and walnuts were especially popular in the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s, but if you remember them from the ’60s or ’70s, there’s a good reason for that: “Want a Walnetto?” was often tossed out as a one-liner by dirty old man Tyrone on “Laugh-In.” They were last made by a company in California, but judging by the distinct lack of Walnettos available online today, the brand may have reached the end of its stored history.
You can still get a toothache from a Sugar Daddy, the ubiquitous caramel lollipop, as well as its bite-size companions, Sugar Babies. But whatever happened to Sugar Mama? This chocolate-coated version of the Sugar Daddy was produced starting in 1965, according to Old Time Candy, and was eventually discontinued in the ’80s. Today, Tootsie Roll produces Sugar Daddy and Sugar Babies, with no signs of bringing mama back into the family.
What kid could resist an out-of-this-world treat called Space Dust? Introduced in the ’70s, Space Dust was essentially a fine-grain version of Pop Rocks, which are still widely available today. This “sizzling candy” ran into problems, though, with parents complaining the powdery substance was a little too reminiscent of illegal drugs, according to Gone But Not Forgotten Groceries. That prompted a name change to “Cosmic Candy,” but rumors persisted, and the candy eventually disappeared.
Launched in 1989 by Mars, the PB Max was true to its name: Peanut butter — lots of it — slathered onto a whole-grain cookie, surrounded by chocolate. A square standout in a sea of rectangular bars, it tasted vaguely homemade, and the commercials reminding everyone what “PB” stood for (not “pineapple beanie,” not “pet barracuda”) are certainly memorable. Still, PB Max disappeared in the mid-’90s, and you can join others pining for a reboot on its Facebook fan page.
These balls of chocolate and caramel were a precursor of Milk Duds. First made by Welch’s, then Nabisco, they were a mainstay at movie theaters, just like their still-in-production siblings, Junior Mints and Sugar Babies. Tootsie Roll acquired the brand in the early ’90s, and despite churning out many old-school favorites (Charleston Chew or Dots, anyone?), Pom Poms bit the dust.
These colorful quarter-sized candies looked a little like overgrown M&Ms, but as the name implies, they had peanut butter inside, plus some chocolate, too. One of the first products launched under the Willy Wonka brand in the early ’70s, they stuck around for about a decade before disappearing.
Related: 18 Things You Didn’t Know About Peanut Butter and Jelly
Another erstwhile Mars candy spawned in the ’70s, Summit Bars were chocolate-covered wafers and peanuts, twin-wrapped just like a Twix. Take a look at this time-capsule of a commercial touting Summit as the source of “peanuts, wafers, and light” from 1979 to jog your memory. But Summit bars were quick to melt, and even though they were reformulated, they disappeared by the mid-’80s.
You’ll have to hop in the wayback machine to remember the Chicken Dinner bar, produced from the 1920s through the 1960s. And while it contained no actual poultry (whew), it was stuffed with nuts and marketed as nutritious, much like a granola bar or protein bar would be today. Because of that, it even earns a spot on Time’s list of the most influential candy bars of all time.
These bite-sized offerings, introduced in 1992, seemed to solve one of the most annoying issues of the crispety, crunchety, peanut-buttery Butterfinger: They were small enough to pop in your mouth whole, eliminating those pesky orange flakes from your fingers and clothes. Today, Butterfinger Bites attempt to fill the void, but they’re just not the same.
Oh Henry! isn’t the only defunct candy bar with an exclamation point. The Reggie! bar was named after Reggie Jackson, the star slugger who played for the New York Yankees in the late ’70s. This mashup of peanuts, caramel, and chocolate was even handed out to fans as they headed into Yankee Stadium. Though popular, the candy bar disappeared in the ’80s, but enjoyed a brief comeback in the ’90s.
Related: We Tried 15 Brands of Chocolate and These Are the Best
Despite tasting nothing like peaches, Peach Blossoms (really crunchy, candy-coated peanut butter) endured for more than a century. First made in 1905 by Necco, they stuck around until 2018, when Necco closed its doors. Though Spangler Candy Company saved the company’s eponymous Necco Wafers, Peach Blossoms weren’t as lucky.
Nestle’s Choco’Lite was a big seller after hitting the market in the early ’70s — just check out this delightfully wholesome commercial touting its release. The “puffed milk chocolate with crispy chips” might be best described as a combination of two still-available Nestle bars, the Crunch and the Aero. Despite finding plenty of fans, Nestle pulled the plug on Choco’Lite sometime in the '80s.
Perk up, ’90s kids, because this one’s for you. The decade dawned not just with “Home Alone” and George H.W. Bush’s war on broccoli, but with tubes of fruity Life Savers Holes on seemingly every shelf in the country. These colorful, pellet-sized candies weren’t on the market long before being pulled because the packaging posed a choking hazard. Though they were quickly reintroduced, Life Savers Holes didn’t stick around for much longer, possibly because they were siphoning sales from other Life Savers brands.
This candy bar of the ’70s and ’80s was a tasty combination of chocolate, caramel, and crisped rice, but it’s probably better remembered for its whimsical commercials. This Peter Paul creation stuck around until the late ’80s, then disappeared — perhaps because it was a bit too similar to the still-in-production Nestle 100 Grand.
White chocolate remains one of the most polarizing treats out there. But love it or hate it, you have to respect Nestle for leaning all the way in with its almond-studded Alpine White bar, proudly made with just five ingredients. This candy bar of the ’80s also happened to have what might be the most ’80s of commercials, which will live on in infamy thanks to YouTube.
If you have hazy memories from the ’60s or ’70s of picking up a loooong tube of bubble gum in striped packaging from the store, chances are good it was Bub’s Daddy. It was made by the Donruss company (perhaps better known for making baseball cards), and while Bub’s Daddy seems to have disappeared in the ’80s, the formula actually lives on in another form, as Ferrara’s Supper Bubble.
Another oldie-but-goodie, the Milkshake Bar was produced by Minnesota’s Hollywood Candy Company in the ’50s and ’60s, and if you’re a fan of the Milky Way, you probably would have dug the nougat-heavy Milkshake, too. It was known for being especially tasty right out of the freezer on a hot summer day.
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