About 6-8 years ago, McDonald's had a line of like, "gourmet" burgers that came with grilled onions on them and big leafs of Romaine lettuce, those things were delicious but they discontinued them after only like, six months. For a while afterward I would order grilled onions on a regular quarter pounder but one day they said they didn't do that anymore either.
I'm still not over Taco Bell discontinuing the Quesarito. One day when I tried to order it, they told me you could only get it through the app anymore, but I hate installing apps for every little thing so I didn't bother. I occasionally ordered through the website and was able to get it there but it eventually disappeared altogether.
Then one day I spotted the chipotle ranch grilled chicken burrito on the value menu and I got hooked on those, but that also disappeared recently. The chicken enchilada burrito that replaced it is a banger, though, and surprisingly cheap.
And before anyone calls me a shill, I'll say I fucking hate how everything else on their menu is now like $6 or more unless you order it as a combo.
IMO, combos shouldn't be more than 20% cheaper than ordering items a la carte. Like, it shouldn't be legal to price things that way. It's just ridiculous that you get ripped off unless you order like, 500 more calories worth of food than you should really be eating in a single meal.
The chicken enchilada combo box is fucking stupid because of how much food comes in it, and the stacker taco is garbage. They stuff that thing with so many stale, rock hard chips that it's like eating glass.
A few years ago, Morningstar used to have a vegetarian rib patty. Once I realized its potential as a vegetarian McRib, I bought a pack. It was delicious. I bought another pack.
And then it was gone from shelves in every store that had it.
They were at least twice as big as the current brands (the most prominent being ugh Nestlé) of pre-made ice cream cookie sandwiches, and were only around a dollar or two. Not to mention 10 times tastier.
I miss them. I miss them so fucking much... 😖
Learning how they operated the business while trying to figure out why they suddenly stopped being sold around me, it makes sense. They just relied on word of mouth while also changing the areas they serviced making it difficult to actually acquire product.
I've never seen anyone bring it up, so there's probably no chance it ever gets brought back. How come banana ice cream is so uncommon? It's the obvious secret fourth flavor, and this one was good. Why do we live on hellworld?
Pop Tarts. They still make them but the ingredients have changed and the quality declined so significantly that they are a different product than they used to be.
EDIT: There used to be this brand of pickled prawns in a jar you could get at the super markets here. You can't find them any more, but the brand name escapes me. I miss those.
Lots of chip flavors. In the UK and probably other countries Frito-Lay makes a Thai Sweet Chili kettle chip under the Sensations sub-brand. They sold it in the U.S. too but dropped the whole Sensations line after the corn chip side did not do well at the same time as Sun Chips were growing (used the same production lines). Hal’s of New York does a really good version of this but I only see them at one hotel I often stop at in Albany.
Later they had a white cheddar and cracked peppercorn flavor, also a kettle chip but with a cut that made it more like Ruffles. Fantastic chip, but gone.
When I was a kid I remember a brand called O’Boise’s. I think it was connected to Keebler. The sour cream and onion was really good. Schlotzsky’s sour cream and onion chips are extremely similar.
Panera used to use chips from a brand called Krunchers. Panera only had the plain kettle chips, but in grocery stores they had a lot of good flavors. Haven’t seen those in years. Now Panera’s chips are private labeled, but taste the same.
Reese's used to have an "Elvis" Reese's peanut butter cup that had a layer of banana cream in them and they were FIRE and I think about them at least 5 times a year.
DNL - 7up with a twist! Flipped upside down. Instead of lemon lime, it was lime lemon and was actually pretty good. The company discontinued it and I hate them for it. I still get 7 up here and there but dnL was the best.
Tostinos used to have a pizza called "zesty italian". It was the best pizza there was. A Lil spicy with Canadian bacon, pepperoni, fennel, and Italian sausage.
Full-sugar Coca-Cola Vanilla. Was a bit of a hit in the UK in 2000s, was revived in 2013, then discontinued in favour of their aspartame-filled mess. I tried the "zero sugar" variant and it just tasted like cheap cola with a hint of vanilla. I've since gone for Tim Hortons' French Vanilla since they started expanding here.
In Germany we had a joghurt back in the 90s called "Frufo" (a portmanteau of Frucht (fruit) and UFO), which was basically just a strawberry joghurt in a flat, round package with a hole in the middle for a small toy. They even released pralines, which were filled with the same joghurt and were pure delish, especially cold out of the fridge on a hot summer day.
Everywhere I go, people my age miss that. It just needs the question "Hey, remember Frufo?" to send them to memory lane :)
Eggo Waf-Fulls. These things had an incredibly good filling in them that made for a decent breakfast on those mornings I'd oversleep and needed a quick bite.
There was a short boom of all different kinds of Fassbrause here in Germany. Fassbrause is a carbonated drink, that gets its carbonation from brewing, is made of grain malt and fruits and non-alcoholic (literally barrel-fizz).
It was then followed by a short trend of every rapper and streamer making their own iced tea and now the trend still going on is energy drinks.
I miss the selection of Fassbrause. It was not to sweet, malty and fruity, just perfect. Now I have to look for what feels like the two last brands still producing.
Those cheesecake bars made by Philadelphia cream cheese.
The Mickey and friends popsicles
Ice cream bin bons.
The fruit snack variety boxes you could get from Price club. I think it came with 4, Garfield and Odie, Dinosaurs, Airplanes/fighter jets, and I wanna say the last one was unicorns?
I was quite fond of Altoids sours and cherry vanilla coke. Though I don't miss the latter much because I'm not much of a soda drinker anymore and those mix in fountain drink dispensers exist now. Still a fiend for mints though.
In the 90s, the local Taco Bells in Portland had a menu item called "Mexi-nuggets" which were a Mexican spiced tater tot. In the combo meals, they filled the role of fries like you get in your burger combo (like the two tacos and Mexi-nugget combo)
I was quite surprised to find out the stores in Washington didn't sell them, and instead of Mexi-nuggets, the combos just had... Another taco.
Bassett's Wine Gums.
After Eight.
Had they only been discontinued, I would be almost fine with it. But the packages are still in the stores, filled with off-brand weak copies of the original products. Fuck Mondelez and Nestlé and everything they stand for. Not just because of this, but especially because of this.
QFC used to make seltzer water flavored like root beer, Dr. Pepper (it was called "Hint of the Doctor Flavor which is downright hilarious), and cola. The product line was discontinued due to lack of popularity and I miss it every day.
It was always a favorite cereal but always super expensive compared to other cereals so I only bought it occasionally. It got discontinued a few years ago.
Monster has a line of canned coffee-like products they call their Java series. One of them was Swiss Chocolate flavored. It is discontinued, always separated, left an awful sludge in the bottom of the can, but I loved those things.
Josta. Pepsi's first "energy drink" that they released in the mid 90's, made with guarana AND caffeine.
This was back in the days when Pepsi could "sponser" a middle school by putting a branded soda machine in a common area. It's how I ended up drinking grape Fuitopia every day at lunch, and every day I'd get a bottle of Josta for the walk home.
It wasn't immediately palatable. Reminiscent of Moxie but without the waxy aftertaste. It was like drinking carbonated cough syrup. But just like the other energy drinks that would follow a few years later, I really came to appreciate the taste.
It recently popped up in the background of a scene of the first season of Loki which had me hopeful for a revival, but no such luck.
Croissant Pockets. Hot Pockets also had a Beef and Cheddar flavor a long time ago and whatever equivalent they have now is not the same.
Smart Foods also used to have a spicy cheese popcorn but they changed it to an even hotter version. I can barely taste the cheese now. Bring back the original!
When I was a super young kid, I remember going to the store occasionally, where my mom would rarely buy me these yogurt gummy candies as a treat. I absolutely loved them, they were delicious. However, they were discontinued or something like 20 years ago. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to get more of them. I’d even make them myself if I could find a recipe.
I think the brand name was Campinos. IIRC they were mostly a hard candy brand, but those soft candies were a million times better than any other candy I could have had as a kid.
Quaker Crunchy Corn Bran was a cereal that had a terrible name, but was SO yummy. Puffins are similar, but not quite right.
Ocean Spray made a Cranberry Key Lime cocktail for a very short while and I loved it.
Eggo used to make a Nutragrain version, and since I only eat toaster waffles with peanut butter and syrup, I couldn't taste the difference and it made for a healthier breakfast.
I have nostalgia for things like Clearly Canadian and Orbitz, but pretty sure I wouldn't actually like them anymore.
I don’t know if it’s discontinued or not sold in the US anymore, but there used to be this European cereal called Pocketini that was square’s filled with chocolate. Kellogg'scame out with cheap rip off that had much less and waxy tasting chocolate and smaller squares that just sucks.
Does it count if they still make the product but something changed so it doesn't taste the same anymore? If yes I definitely miss Termix don't know what they did but it's not the same. Also am lactose intolerant so can't really eat it anymore anyway. There's probably more things but this one I remember the most, also Pribináček.
Devil's Food cake/cookies. Originally they were Nabisco:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9b/a0/af/9ba0af2803a08d55bdc523ad21648559.jpg
The red and yellow box. These were a wonderful memory from my childhood.
Then you could only find Snackwell's version. They were like 95% of what I remembered, not exact but so close they were still good. The last box I got (in the before times) tasted absolutely terrible and nothing like they used to. Tasted like dryness and absence of sweetness with no chocolate flavor. Texture wrong, everything wrong. Amazon would not accept my review of the new recipe. I may have compared them to the Devil's butthole.
Evidently those are discontinued now. I guess they went the route of making the new recipe so hateful we would celebrate the end of the production.
I'd love to be able to have something that tastes like the original ones though.
Now and laters had some less common flavors that were soooo good. Cherry Cola 🤤Now it's impossible to find anything outside of the 4-5 flavors in big containers.
They introduced two new peanut flip flavours. One was Mexican and the other was oriental or something. They kept the Mexican one and ditched the superior oriental for some reason. Still thinking about them from time to time.
There used to be boxed ice cream with blueberry and egg yolk flavor. Loved it as a kid, got discontinued by the ice cream truck that had it. No replacement found. I probably won't even like it since I have forgotten the taste at this point.
Mountain Dew Throwback. As far as I can tell it hasn't been fully discontinued, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere around me. It used real sugar instead of corn syrup. I hate the basic, corn syrup stuff but thought the throwback stuff tasted pretty good.
I don't remember the name but there was an energy bar with the flavor a specific juice that got really popular at some point when I was a kid. I think they suddenly discontinued it due to ingredients causing cancer. I had eaten so much of it that it was a bit worrying.
I swear there was a lollipop brand that looked like chupa chups or chupa chups themselves used to have a different flavor because they were the only lollipops I liked but can't find them anywhere after leaving middle school so I guess they stopped making them.
I miss the Twinkies. Not the cloud cakes. Not the bitter chemicals they sell called Twinkies. The actual american decadent sponge cake with a cream center.
Also, my father used to buy circus peanuts around the same time every year, when I was a boy. I don't know the flavor, but it wasn't fake banana that's common now.
There was this candy back home called Choco bytes, which was essentially one of the pipe wafer things that a filled with chocolate but cut into small pieces, they tasted amazing but I think they were sold at a loss and so Cadbury pulled them. Loved those things and can't get a close enough equivalent any more.
Fresh & Easy frozen Indian meals, specifically the Chicken Makhani and the Methi Malai Chicken. It's been years since they left the US market and I still think about those 2. I've never found anything close.
I miss the fruit juice with whey that two large milk producers in my region used to sell, a decade or so ago. I'm almost sure that both companies stopped producing it altogether.
Nut fudge clusters from the Neilson candy company.
Nutchos, from before Nestle bought the company, f**ked up the product, and then discontinued them because their f**kery caused their popularity to crash. Apparently there are almond flour chips with the same name now - not talking about those.
Not the new age bar drink but the old school member of the Strawberry Cow, Chocolate Cow syrups line for kids to make Chocolate/Strawberry/Banana milk.
As someone that likes fizzy drinks and squash, but has an intolerance to artificial sweeteners, basically every fizzy drink that isn't Coca Cola is now off-limits.
The one I miss the most is Irn Bru. The "original" one in the bottle is fine, but the pre-sugar-tax Irn Bru was greatness in a can. Yet another way that Jamie Oliver has fucked the UK...
In China I used to be able to buy hotpot flavored Lay’s potato chips. Typical beef hot and spicy flavor. Somehow they disappeared but they were the best