The One Iconic Food That Was Launched the Year You Were Born

Happy birthday, McRib! The polarizing McDonald's sandwich is turning 40 this year, having made its debut as a test item in 1981. As history has shown, the saucy, sloppy seasonal staple has developed a devoted fan base, but it's far from the only food that has become a part of our national appetite. Wondering whether you share a birth year with some of your favorite grub, or maybe a tasty product you miss? Read on to find out. 

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This now-iconic soft drink, invented by Tennessee brothers, started out as a mixer for booze, and its name sprang from a common nickname for moonshine. Indeed, for years it was marketed using twangy Appalachian stereotypes that bear little resemblance to its current image as the ultimate sugar rush for young people. Just check out its first-ever commercial, released in 1966.

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One of America's most ubiquitous breakfast cereals first appeared on grocery shelves not as Cheerios but "Cheerioats." General Mills aimed to highlight the cereal's main ingredient (oats) at a time when most competitors were still using corn. But that didn't fly with rival Quaker Oats, which objected to the use of "oats" in the new cereal's name. General Mills backed down and switched to "Cheerios" instead.

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A Croatian immigrant, Franjo Vlasic, started a creamery in Detroit in the 1920s, but soon found he could make a tidy profit selling hams and pickles to the region's large Polish community. In 1942, those pickles made the leap from barrels to small glass jars, marking the birth of those stork-emblazoned jars of pickles we still see on shelves today.

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The first documented appearance of this favorite game-day food came during World War II, in a Mexican border city near Texas' Fort Duncan. Ignacio Anaya, who was working at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, served fried tortilla chips, melted cheddar, and sliced jalapenos to a group of hungry military wives. His nickname, “Nacho,” proved a handy name for the new concoction. 

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We have World War II to thank for Orbit Gum. Wrigley, which was sending brands like Doublemint and Juicy Fruit overseas to keep morale up among the troops, produced sugar-free Orbit for civilians as a stop gap for gum lovers on the homefront. In 1946, the company stopped production, figuring no one would want it anymore. Orbit wouldn't reappear on U.S. shelves until 2001.

There's just something about gumdrops that screams "classic," and Dots definitely fit the bill. Originally made by the Mason Company, Dots are still available in their original flavors: cherry, strawberry, lemon, lime, and orange. But the brand was later snapped up by Tootsie Roll, and today you can also find Tropical Dots as well as Sour Dots. 

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Minute Maid also has wartime roots. Uncle Sam ordered a half-million pounds of powdered orange juice from Florida Food Corporation in 1945, but the war ended before the company could fill the request. Inspired, the company decided to pivot to the consumer market with frozen, not powdered, orange-juice concentrate. The new-fangled stuff was called Minute Maid because it was so easy to prepare.  

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Cake mix didn't gain national prominence until after the war, when women who had helped fill jobs on the homefront started looking for ways to save time in the kitchen. General Mills' first foray into cake mix was Betty Crocker Ginger Cake Mix, which was quickly followed by devil's food and a host of other new flavors. Interestingly, sales improved once dried eggs were removed from the mixes, because women felt less guilty using mixes if they added their own.

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If you remember using Nestle Quick, not Nesquik, to sweeten up milk during your childhood, you aren't wrong. The chocolate drink mix was named the former in the United States, but the latter in Europe. Nestle didn't consolidate the brand names until 1999, when Nesquik won, notes Mashed. Strawberry was introduced after the original chocolate, but plenty of varieties have come and gone over the years, including caramel, cookies and cream, grape, cherry, and even mango. 

The Jolly Rancher Company, founded in Colorado, originally sold not just hard candies, but ice cream and chocolate. But it turns out ice cream wasn't a big seller during frigid Rocky Mountain winters, while the company's fruity hard candies retained their appeal all year. Hershey makes Jolly Ranchers today, including the most popular flavor of 'em all: watermelon.

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Imagine a world where you had to slice your own cheese (shudder). Kraft's Deluxe Process Slices took grocery shelves by storm in 1950, but customers had to grow accustomed to the new-fangled cheese. Many store managers had to demonstrate how to pull the slices apart, according to Culinary Lore. Kraft decided to up its game in the '60s, wrapping the individual slices in plastic much like it does today.

Bananas foster has made its way onto the menus of many a fancy steakhouse in the past several decades, but for the truest rendition, go to the source: Brennan's, where this treat made with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and liquor-soaked bananas was invented. At Brennan's, the dessert is still flambéed tableside. If you're feeling ambitious, you can also try to replicate the recipe at home (but keep a fire extinguisher close at hand).

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So named because it set up shop near the Oregon-Idaho border, Ore-Ida started out by producing flash-frozen corn, a product they quickly followed with their eponymous French fries. In the process of making the fries, the company got an idea for another iconic product: The potato scraps from making fries could be ground up, mixed with spices, and reshaped — and Ore-Ida's resulting Tater Tots made their debut in 1953.

Breakfast got a whole lot easier in the 1950 with these iconic toaster waffles, but when they first hit the shelves, they weren't called Eggos —they were "Froffles" (a mashup of "frozen" and "waffles"). But their eggy taste inspired customers to start calling them "Eggos," and the name stuck. Twenty years later, one of the most famous phrases in advertising — "L'eggo my Eggo!" — entered the lexicon after Kellogg bought the brand. 

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After Thanksgiving 1953, a Swanson salesman found a creative use for the company's hundreds of tons of leftover frozen turkey. The company could load up oven-safe aluminum trays with the turkey and frozen sides like stuffing and potatoes, and a buyer could bake their dinner in one fell swoop. Swanson soon had a runaway hit on its hands, selling 10 million TV dinners in 1954.

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Special K was special indeed when it was introduced in the mid-'50s: It was the first cereal fortified with seven vitamins and iron, according to Mr. Breakfast. And Kellogg's has turned the brand into a full-blown health empire in the decades since, adding diet shakes, protein bars, and special protein versions of the cereal.

In the late 1930s, Greek immigrant Leo Stefano opened up a sweet shop selling candies and ice cream on a Chicago corner. It was there that he invented the Dove Bar in 1956, slicing blocks of ice cream and dipping them in chocolate. Still, the treat wouldn't go national until the '80s, when it made a splash at a Washington, D.C., food show. Mars would buy the brand in 1986.

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This icon debuted in Miami to help Burger King, then just a few years old, compete with other restaurants that were slinging bigger burgers. It originally sold for 37 cents, or about $3.52 in today's money. It has been a menu staple ever since, spawning spin-offs like the Whopper Jr., the Impossible Whopper, and (for a brief time in 2015) a black-bunned Halloween Whopper that turned customers' poop green.  

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The "San Francisco treat" got its start when the Golden Grain Macaroni Company decided to try something new: A boxed mix of rice, pasta, and seasoning inspired by an Armenian rice pilaf. It was a hit, and the company added new flavors and styles over the years; today, there are 17 varieties, not including Pasta Roni. Quaker Oats bought Golden Grain in the mid-1980s.

Little Caesars Pizza Treat opened its doors in Garden City, Michigan in 1959, serving not just pizza, but fish, shrimp, hot dogs and chicken. Only a few years later, franchised restaurants opened their doors, and there were 50 locations within a decade. Of course, the chain re-focused on pizza (or make that "pizza pizza") and continues to focus on keeping prices low with its pickup-only model.  

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When McKee Foods decided to start selling family packs of their bakery's snack cakes, there was just one problem: They needed a catchy name. The founder's 4-year-old granddaughter, Debbie, proved just the inspiration they needed. The Oatmeal Creme Pie was the first variety to hit the shelves, but within four years, there were 14 kinds of Little Debbie Cakes, including Nutty Buddies and Swiss Cake Rolls. 

Quaker Oats' first cold cereal, Life, is still as popular as ever, and its inescapable ad from the '70s has gone down in history. "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!" screams Mikey's older brother, pleased that the finicky child approves of the cereal. The spot, one of the longest-running commercials of all time, eventually spurred an urban legend that the actor who played Mikey died after Pop Rocks and soda exploded in his stomach. But nope — little Mikey grew up and became, fittingly enough, an advertising executive.

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This snack has been "smiling back" since the early '60s, when Pepperidge Farm founder Margaret Rudkin discovered a similar product in Switzerland, striking a deal to bring them to the U.S. Even more interestingly, the uber-popular cheese flavor wasn't introduced until 1966; the first flavors to hit the shelves were Lightly Salted (Original), Cheese, Barbecue, Pizza and Smoky, according to Campbell's.

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Nabisco's famous chocolate-chip cookie debuted with a very specific promise: Each cookie would contain exactly 16 chocolate chips. But by the '80s, the decade of excess, that wasn't enough for the public's growing sweet tooth, and Nabisco doubled the number of chips to 32, according to Mental Floss. Eventually, Nabisco backed off that number and simply promised at least 1,000 chocolate chips in each 18-ounce bag. 

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Who knew? When Frito-Lay began selling Doritos in the mid-'60s, they were essentially just tortilla chips — none of that pesky orange dust to be found. A few years later, a taco flavor hit the market, and then nacho cheese, but not until 1972. Today, the line includes everything from Cool Ranch to Poppin' Jalapeno.

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Gatorade was actually concocted in a laboratory at the University of Florida, after a football coach complained the heat was too much for his players. Researchers made Gatorade to replenish all of those carbohydrates and electrolytes players were using up and sweating out, and it quickly became a sensation among college football teams, and then the NFL. 

A Dairy Queen owner in Kansas City invented this iconic drink by mistake in the 1950s. Because his soda fountain was on the fritz, he popped some soda bottles into the freezer to cool them quickly. Customers who loved the icy result requested the sodas that had been in the freezer longer, leading him to create a slushy machine using a car's air conditioner. But the drink wouldn't gain national prominence, and its iconic name, until 7-Eleven licensed the machine and christened Slurpee in the mid-'60s.

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Pennsylvanians were the first to sink their teeth into what may be the world's most iconic burger. A McDonald's franchise owner in Uniontown came up with the Big Mac, creating the big burger to satisfy hungry steelworkers. He also quickly found a fan in Ray Kroc, and the Big Mac was on menus nationwide only a year later.

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Is the Pringle the perfect potato chip? That's what Procter & Gamble was hoping for. It spent seven long years developing Pringles, a mission driven by customers who were tired of broken, stale chips, according to Food & Wine. The brand actually didn't take off until the 1980s, making food chemist and Pringles creator Fredric Baur so proud that he asked to be cremated and buried in a Pringles can. (His children respected his wishes.)

When the first Wendy's opened in Ohio in 1969, there were just five items on the menu. The Frosty was one of them, along with burgers, chili, fries, and soft drinks, according to Reader's Digest. Wendy's founder Dave Thomas wanted the consistency to be such that diners had to eat it with a spoon, and the recipe reportedly remains unchanged except for including a bit less butterfat.  

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Winter's end is a time to cheer for anyone who despises cloudy skies and cold temperatures, but it also brings another treat: The Shamrock Shake. McDonald's disturbingly green drink has been around since the early '70s, when it was actually made with lemon and lime sherbet and no mint flavoring, according to Chowhound. The shake is so beloved that in 2020, McDonald's auctioned a golden Shamrock Shake cup adorned with emeralds and diamonds to celebrate its 50-year anniversary, with the proceeds going to charity.

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In the early '70s, families were looking for ways to stretch a pound of ground beef, and the one-pot wonder that was Hamburger Helper proved to be a big success. The Betty Crocker brand was introduced with five flavors, and has grown to more than 50 today. It wouldn't get its cheerful mascot, the helping hand known as "Lefty," until 1977. 

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This still-popular brand got its name from, of all things, a botched batch of apple juice, according to Mental Floss. When a shipment of carbonated apple juice fermented in the warehouse, caps started popping off the bottles with a distinctive "snap." And with "snap" plus "apple," Snapple was born.

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This enduring low-calorie beer was rolled in test markets in 1973, with Miller carefully studying whether the beer-drinking public would embrace it. As history would show, of course, it did. Helping the effort: Ads featuring famous athletes touting it as "less filling," a tagline that endures to this day.  

It was actually the British who got to "taste the rainbow" first. Skittles were made exclusively in the U.K. until 1979, when they cracked the U.S. market as an import. Americans loved the colorful, fruity candies, and production started here in 1982, according to The Daily Meal. 

This longtime staple of Subway's menu is a "big, meaty, tasty" combo of ham, salami, pepperoni, but that's not where it got its name, according to The Daily Meal. It was actually named after the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation, which connected two of the Big Apple's most famous boroughs via subway.

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Compared with some competing brands like Totino's, Red Baron was a bit later to the frozen-pizza game. Part of the Schwan's Company, Red Baron still managed to become a best-seller within a few years of its release, and even had a real-life squadron of stunt pilots and planes that performed at air shows around the country. Sadly, at least three of the pilots lost their lives in the late '90s, and Red Baron eventually shut down the squadron within the next decade. 

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Initially launched by a medical products company, SlimFast was at first a simple powdered meal-replacement supplement meant to be mixed with milk. The brand grew by leaps and bounds in the '80s, especially when it brought on Tommy Lasorda as a spokesman. It would later expand with pre-made shakes, snacks, and bars.

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This ice cream empire got its humble start when Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield used $12,000 to open their first scoop shop in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont. According to Thrillist, the Long Island natives had actually been intent on selling bagels, but the equipment was too expensive. So ice cream it was, and the rest is history: Pints of Ben & Jerry's whimsical flavors started appearing in stores by 1983.

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Whether you have fond childhood memories of Happy Meals or think they've made unhealthy fast food far too accessible to youngsters, one thing is for sure: They're as iconic a part of the McDonald's experience as Big Macs, fries, or Egg McMuffins. And while the origin story is murky, with several people claiming to have introduced the idea of the Happy Meal, kids know the real story: We never cared about the food, only the toys.

Sriracha's extreme popularity in recent years might make it seem like this hot sauce was a new entrant to the U.S. market, but it's actually been here for more than 40 years. Huy Fong Foods founder David Tran first sold the stuff in glass bottles from his Chevy van, which he drove all over Los Angeles' Chinatown. The hot sauce got its name from the town of Sri Racha, Thailand, where a sauce that inspired the Huy Fong version is still made. 

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Love it or hate it, the McRib is officially middle-aged. Interestingly, the sandwich was created as an alternative to another relatively new product, the similarly named chicken nugget. But there just weren't enough chickens for Mickey D's to keep up with demand, so McDonald's got creative and turned to pork, according to Retroist. The heavily processed result was initially tested in Kansas City in 1981, and it slowly made its way into more restaurants over the next few years.

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Coca-Cola already had a successful low-calorie soda brand in Tab when it released Diet Coke in the early '80s. Diet Coke was a runaway hit partially because of its closer association with the Coke name. It also tasted better, partially because of a new (and eventually controversial) sugar substitute called aspartame. Still, Tab soda hung on for quite awhile, and was only recently discontinued in 2020. 

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Hot Pockets were the brainchild of two Iranian immigrants who initially found success making and selling frozen Belgian waffles, according to Saveur. But they saw an opportunity for growth with portable, easy-to-prepare savory snacks, and the Hot Pocket's forerunner, the Tastywich, debuted in 1980. After tweaking the recipe, they reintroduced it as the Hot Pocket a few years later. 

Compared with some of the other big-name cereals — for instance, Cheerios, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, or Lucky Charms — General Mills' Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a relative newcomer as an '80s baby. And if you wonder what happened to its jolly mascot, Chef Wendell, your guess is as good as ours. In 2009, he was unceremoniously replaced with the Crazy Squares, who have a disturbing habit of licking and eating each other. 

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Amazingly, Dairy Queen's most well-known treat didn't appear until the mid-'80s, when a franchisee in Missouri was inspired by a competitor's frozen custard. He added candy to soft serve, and voila — the Blizzard was born. Dairy Queen sold 175 million of them, with the chain's profit zooming up 25% because of the new treat, according to Mashed.

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Created by the Topps Company, the Push Pop was an unabashed attempt to appeal to kids with a novel concept: A lollipop that can be pushed out of a container when they wanted to enjoy it, then retracted and saved for later if they didn't finish the whole thing. It was genius — and, of course, kids loved the gimmick. They're still produced by Topps today, in flavors from berry to cotton candy to cola.  

A moment of silence for Kudos, please: These candy bars masquerading as granola bars, made by Mars, were a familiar sight on grocery shelves throughout the '80s and '90s. And believe it or not, they didn't disappear entirely until 2017, notes Click Americana. Why Kudos were discontinued, we're still not sure, but maybe there will be a comeback: Mars filed a new trademark registration for Kudos at the end of 2020.  

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Lunchables have endured mostly because they're convenient for parents and fun for kids, but neither of those attributes figured heavily into their origin. Instead, Oscar Meyer invented them to get people to eat more bologna, which was suffering from sinking sales in the '80s, according to The Atlantic. It worked, big time, with a staggering $200 million in sales in the first year. 

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Though Magnum Bars have been around since the late '80s, they didn't make their way to the U.S. until 2011. Billed as "the first handheld ice cream bar targeted as a premium adult offering," Unilever's Magnums have tried to set themselves apart from competitors like Dove by using Belgian chocolate. Magnum even set up a storefront where customers could top off their bars with rose petals, goji berries, and espresso sugar, among other fancy toppings. 

After the '80s gave us Lean Cuisine and the Lunchable, Kid Cuisine was an obvious next step. Essentially TV dinners meant for kids, Conagra's creations featured food like corn dogs, macaroni and cheese, corn, and Oreos — all of which were to be tossed in the microwave for a few minutes by busy parents (or possibly latchkey kids). If it doesn't sound good, that's because it wasn't, but you can judge for yourself: Kid Cuisine is still around.    

The Honeycrisp apple didn't hit produce sections until the '90s, and its commonly accepted origin as a cross between Macoun and Honeygold apples has since been disproven, the USDA notes. Researchers with the University of Minnesota found that the popular apple was actually a cross between a Keepsake apple and an unreleased specimen that descended from the Duchess of Oldenburg and Golden Delicious varieties. 

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One of Starbucks' most famous drinks wasn't invented at Starbucks at all. The owner of a competing chain in Boston wanted a new way to draw customers during the warmer months, and the cool, creamy Frappuccino (named for frappes, New England's answer to the milkshakes) was the answer. Starbucks took notice, buying both the coffee chain and the rights to the Frappuccino in 1994. 

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Much to Pepsi's chagrin, Crystal Pepsi remains one of the most notable food-and-drink flops of the past 50 years. Pepsi knew customers were clamoring for healthier, caffeine-free soda, but the food scientists creating Crystal Pepsi weren't even privy to Pepsi's recipe, according to Thrillist. Unsurprisingly, customers weren't sold on the taste, and even worse, the soda spoiled when bottles were exposed to too much sunlight. Pepsi yanked it from shelves after not quite a year. 

Richard Branson's soda was a hit in the U.K. after its 1994 launch, and its subsequent release in the U.S. featured Branson crushing 3 tons of Coca-Cola cans with a massive tank in Times Square. Unfortunately for Branson, Coke didn't take too kindly to the new kid on the block, and the soda giant leveraged its clout with retailers to drive Virgin Cola out of business. "If you are taking on a business far larger than yours, you have to be so much better than them," Branson later acknowledged. "But with two cans of red cola, there wasn't that much difference in the product."

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If you're a McFlurry fan, you have our neighbors to the north to thank. The sweet treat was created by a New Brunswick franchisee, and has become a staple at McDonald's not just in the U.S. or Canada, but around the world. (And if you've ever tried to suck McFlurry with that weird hollow spoon, you're not alone — but sadly, it's hollow only to serve as a mixer-machine attachment.)

Few fast-food items have failed quite as prominently as McDonald's Arch Deluxe. Rolled out with a pricey ad campaign in 1996 in an effort to appeal to a more grown-up, "sophisticated" audience, the burger just didn't appeal to customers, who wanted convenience instead of culinary refinement from the Golden Arches.

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Undeterred by the failure of Crystal Pepsi and Virgin Cola, Clearly Canadian launched its oh-so-'90s drink, Orbitz, in 1997. The concoction of flat, fruity liquid and disturbing amorphous blobs resembled a lava lamp. Not so shockingly, customers weren't sold on knocking back the disturbing mix, and Orbitz lasted less than a year.  

Remember olestra? The fat substitute was supposed to let us enjoy our guilty pleasures without the guilt, but it turns out that it gave us tummy troubles and a lot more toilet time. Ick. Lay's WOW! Chips were among the first big product lines to jump on the olestra train, but the name was soon changed to Lay's Light in an effort to distance the chips from the controversial olestra, which they still contained. Eventually, the chips were discontinued.

It's hard to believe, but kids have only been sucking yogurt out of a tube for a couple of decades. And if General Mills' first attempt at portable yogurt had taken off, Go-Gurt wouldn't have been a tube at all, but a cone. However, distribution and material costs led food scientists to ditch the cone for a tube that would be easy enough for kids to tear open with just their fingers, and Go-Gurt remains a lunch-box staple to this day.

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J.M. Smuckers Co., maker of this kid-friendly riff on peanut butter and jelly, probably figured it had little to lose by patenting the "sealed crustless sandwich," which it began selling in 2000. It didn't take long for a smaller company to challenge the patent, touching off a legal battle that made Smuckers an easy target for mockery. Smuckers lost its patent in 2005, when a federal appeals court decided that the crustless sandwich was "not novel or non-obvious enough." Still, Uncrustables have faced few major competitors, and Smuckers has expanded the line to include non-PB&J offerings like taco bites, chicken bites, and turkey and cheese.

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