Have you ever eaten something that you thought about decades afterward? 

I’ll always remember my grandpa’s chocolate pancakes he used to make when my sister and I would stay over at my grandparents house. That and my grandma’s «No Bake» cookie recipe that she would make especially for me, even when I was home visiting from university. These were basically just a big chuck of chocolate, peanut butter, and sugar. I never did get the chance to ask grandma how she made those and now it’s far too late. So that one is just going to have to live on in my memory.

Personal family recipes that have been lost are one thing, but when it’s a mass produced product that suddenly blinks out of existence because someone on a board room decided it wasn’t worth producing… well that’s a whole other type of nostalgia-fueling situation. In these cases, you have entire generations of now grown up kids whose collective consciousness of these long-discontinued foods turns them from failures into legends

And that’s what this collection is about.

When it comes to subtlety, that wasn’t really the 80s thing. The packaging literally shouted at you from the shelf, an entire mob of bright colors each yelling out for the attention of your magpie-like kid brain.

Maybe that’s what turned so many of these foods into evocative nostalgic goldmines. By comparison, the minimalism design ethics and muted colors of recent years doesn’t really attach itself into your consciousness like the tantalizing promise of bright colored packaging containing what was, in reality, a chalky, cheaply produced snack. But, thanks to the power of the rose-tinted glasses and nostalgia so many of these live on in our hearts as beloved favorites.

Are there any here that you remember personally? Any others that should make the list?