38 Discontinued Candies People Desperately Want to Return
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There’s something about candy that can take you right back to your childhood. Bite into a chocolate bar you loved as a kid, and you’re age eight again.
Unfortunately, some of those much-loved candies you associate with the good old days are no longer available to buy. Whether it’s due to lack of sales, ill-advised recipe tweaks or, um, choking hazards, these sweet treats are mere memories.
Prepare yourself for a nostalgia trip as we revisit 38 of the most missed discontinued candies.
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Reese’s Peanut Butter & Banana Creme Cups
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It’s well-known that Elvis’s favorite sandwich filling was peanut butter and banana, so how better to pay tribute to him than to recreate it in chocolate form? That’s what Reese’s did with its Peanut Butter & Banana Creme Cups, and they were such a hit that their initial limited run was extended. They disappeared in 2008, but there’s an active petition to bring them back.
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Skittles Bubble Gum
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Rainbow-colored treats used to last a lot longer. In the 1990s, Skittles came in the form of bubble gum (in a handy flip-top box), but only lasted a couple of years before being discontinued, taking the “X-treme Fruit Skittles Gum” flavor with it.
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Hershey’s TasteTations
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In 1996, Hershey’s branched out into hard candy with TasteTations, which came in multiple flavors, including peppermint, caramel, butterscotch and chocolate. There’s little intel out there on why they were discontinued in the early 2000s — maybe the candy-buying public simply thought Hershey’s should stick to softer, squishier, creamier varieties of sweet treats. Whatever the reason, TasteTations are simply one on a long list of discontinued Hershey’s products.
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GatorGum
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Fashioned after the thirst-quenching, refueling sports drink Gatorade, GatorGum went one step further — but not in a good way. It was so tart, it actually hurt people’s mouths, leading to its demise in 1989. However, there are people who want to bring it back, desperate to experience that unique gum experience one more time.
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Kinder Surprise Eggs
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Kinder Surprise — chocolate eggs with toys hidden inside — were banned in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration due to the potential choking hazard posed by tiny toys. In 2017, Kinder Eggs made a legal comeback, but in a slightly different — safer — form.
Kinder Joy is made up of two individually wrapped pieces, one half with the chocolate and the other half containing the toy. It’s the next best thing to Kinder Surprise, but it’s just not quite as much fun as biting into the chocolate to reveal the yellow toy case, then prising it open to discover what’s inside.
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Bubble Beepers
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For a bonafide candy controversy, look no further than Bubble Beepers. Another must-have for kids of the 1990s (yes, gum was big then), the neon-colored sticks of gum came in a container shaped like a beeper — another of the decade’s big trends.
It was the packaging that was an issue for many people, including a former DEA agent who was quoted in the Philadelphia Daily News in 1992 as saying, “What if it's misinterpreted, and this kid goes through someone's turf wearing that beeper, and they misinterpret that beeper? It could possibly cause someone to lose their life or get hurt...To me, it's similar to carrying a toy gun. If it looks real, you may have to pay the consequences.”
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Wonka Bar
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The Wonka Bar is a key part of Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” and fans were delighted when fiction became reality.
Launched by Chicago's Breaker Confections in 1976, and purchased by Nestle in 1988, the Willy Wonka Chocolate Company brand sold the Wonka Bar (consisting of small graham cracker pieces dipped in milk chocolate) in the United States until January 2010. To promote Tim Burton’s 2005 film adaptation, a Wonka bar was packaged with a Golden Ticket, entitling the winner to a $10,000 cash prize.
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Nestle Alpine White
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You’d think there would be enough white chocolate lovers in the world to stop Nestle’s almond-embedded Alpine White bar from going extinct. But sadly, it disappeared from stores at some point in the late 1980s, and all we have left is the moody commercial from 1986 and a Facebook “bring it back” page Nestle probably doesn’t pay too much attention to.
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Hershey’s Swoops
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Hershey’s Swoops — the curvy-shaped chocolate pieces in all the flavors of your favorite Hershey’s candy bars — created a buzz when they were introduced in 2003. Their popularity was short-lived. Hershey’s insisted that there was a sensory benefit to candy that was shaped like potato chips — it conformed to the roof of the mouth for a slow, chocolate-melt experience. But not enough people agreed, and Swoops were discontinued in August 2006.
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Butterfinger BB’s
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Fans of Butterfinger bars got a treat in 1992 in the shape of Butterfinger BB’s, which were basically little balls of Butterfinger. Unfortunately, they were as messy as they were moreish, thanks to the low melting point of the chocolate. Still, there was a backlash when they were discontinued in 2006, leading to the introduction of the Butterfinger Bites in 2009. Not the same.
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Wonder Ball
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More proof that the 1990s was the golden era of candy is the Nestle Wonder Ball, which delighted kids on two levels. Inside the milk chocolate sphere was a small, plastic figurine, typically a Disney or Pokémon character. The Wonder Ball rolled off shelves for good in 1997, due to mass complaints from parents and rival candy companies about safety. Nestle denied the toy posed a choking hazard, but withdrew it anyway.
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Ghost Dots
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When Dots, a brand of gumdrops marketed by Tootsie Roll, decided to get on board with Halloween 2006, the result was Ghost Dots. They weren’t all that groundbreaking — they maintained the original Dots flavors, like cherry, lemon, lime and orange, but were all the same pale translucent green color, meaning you didn’t know what you were eating until it was in your mouth.
Just like regular Dots, but green, then.
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Seven Up
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Long before 7-Up was soda, it was candy — sort of. In 1951, the Pearson Candy Company created the Seven Up milk chocolate bar, which was split into seven squares, each with a different filling (coconut, fudge, cherry cream and orange jelly all featured over the years).
Sadly, disputes over the name with the American Bottling Company lead to Seven Up’s demise in 1979, and there’s never been anything like it on the market since.
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Wonka Donutz
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The Willy Wonka Chocolate Company didn’t just give us the Wonka Bar; other products included Wonka Donutz, donut-shaped pieces of chocolate with sprinkles on the outside and truffle on the inside. They may have been discontinued due to poor sales — or maybe people bought them expecting actual donuts — but there were loyal fans.
“You claim it was because you were lacking in sales but I for one bought Wonka Donutz every day, and I usually hate chocolate,” wrote one passionate campaigner.
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Bonkers
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If you don’t remember Bonkers, the chewable, rectangular-shaped candy from Nabisco in the mid-1980s, you might remember the commercials. They showed people dissolving into uncontrollable laughter after taking a bite of the candy and being hit by a giant piece of fruit, like an enormous strawberry. Understandably, this had quite an impact, as per the tag line: “Bonkers! Bonks you out!”
After losing their beloved Bonkers at some point in the 1990s, diehard fans were overjoyed to learn that Leaf Brands was bringing the candy back. But despite the company being “hopeful” that the revival would happen in 2015, Bonkers still aren’t available to buy.
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Spice Girls Lollipops
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When the Spice Girls were at the height of their fame in 1997, Chupa Chups grabbed a slice of girl power with their Spice Girls Lollipops. The strawberry-flavored suckers came with a sticker with a picture of one of the band members inside. Sadly, while the band made a U.K. comeback earlier this year, there’s no sign of their lollipops returning.
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Marathon
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The Marathon bar was introduced by the Mars Candy Company in 1973, marketing it as “the candy bar you can’t eat quickly.” Millions rose to the challenge and endured years of sticky teeth to enjoy its braided, caramel, chocolate loveliness. It even came with a ruler on the wrapper, if you just need to know how long your candy bar is. (Eight inches, in this case.)
Marathon was discontinued in 1981, but fans later found a replacement — Cadbury’s Curly Wurly bar. It’s not quite the same (no bright red wrapper and no ruler, for a start), but it’s better than nothing.
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Hershey’s Kissables
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Hershey’s had a massive hit with Kisses — a candy classic since 1907 — but took it too far with Kissables, colorful mini-Kisses that were basically like M&M’s with a different shape. They were pretty successful for a couple of years after their 2005 launch, but a 2007 cost-cutting reformulation (cocoa butter was replaced with cheaper fats and — surprise, surprise — people noticed) led to their 2009 demise.
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Hershey’s S’Mores
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Another Hershey’s product that didn’t set the candy world alight was S’Mores. Launched in 2003, it didn’t last long, with some consumers complaining about the ratio of graham cracker to marshmallow to milk chocolate. It turned out that people really did prefer making their own campfire treat.
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Candilicious
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Sometimes, attempts to branch out into a completely different kind of candy works really well. And sometimes it doesn’t. When Bubbalicious tried to venture out of the world of gum in 1998 with Candilicious Chewy Candies (available in Delicious Fruit or Exotic Tropical), it didn’t quite go to plan, and within a few years, Candilicious was a mere memory.
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Garbage Can-dy
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The success of Garbage Can-dy in the 1980s proves that you can sell candy shaped like anything, even trash. Created by Topps (the brains behind Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids trading cards), Garbage Can-dy was popular until the mid-1990s, but when the company closed its Pennsylvania factory in 1996, it closed the doors on this particular product too.
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Berries and Creme Starburst
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Starburst, the Wrigley Company’s individually-wrapped, soft taffy candy, is still around, but the berries and creme flavor a mere distant memory. Whether people actually loved the flavor or get all nostalgic about it because of the 2007 commercial that went viral. “The Little Lad Dance” featured Jack Ferver in Victorian costume, doing an impromptu song and dance routine to show how excited he was about Starburst.
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Life Savers Holes
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Life Savers Holes (basically Life Savers but not rings) were plagued with problems from the start. They were recalled in early 1991 for being a choking hazard, less than a year after they were launched. Four months later they were back on the shelves in different packaging, but never quite recovered from the initial drama and were later pulled again — this time for good.
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Jumbo Nerds
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Bigger than regular Nerds and available in a wider range of flavors, Jumbo Nerds should have been a big success, but for some reason failed to hit the spot with more consumers. “The bigger, the better,” might often apply, but not in this case.
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Hershey’s Bar None
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Released by the Hershey Company in 1986, Bar None consisted of milk chocolate-covered wafers filled with chocolate cream, coated with crushed peanuts, then encased in milk chocolate. They were a hit until 1992, when Hershey’s decided to split the bar in two and throw caramel into the mix. This wasn’t such a hit, and by 1997 they were gone for good. Rumor has it, they can still be found in Mexico.
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Summit
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There’s definitely a place for melted chocolate in every candy lover’s heart (and mouth), but the problem with Summit bars was that they melted too easily. That just shouldn’t happen to wafers topped with peanuts and covered with chocolate, and people got mighty pissed at having to store their Summits in their freezer. Even a recipe overhaul in 1983 didn’t rescue their reputation, and by the following year they were gone.
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Dweebs
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Produced by the Willy Wonka Candy Company, Dweebs were softer than Nerds, but too similar in every other way (although Dweebs had three compartments compared to Nerds’ two, meaning there was one extra flavor), and they just couldn’t compete. Accordingly, their time in the early 1990s candy market was short-lived.
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Wonka Peanut Butter Oompas
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Similar to Reese’s Pieces and peanut butter M&Ms, the original Wonka Oompas were discs made up of equal parts peanut buttercream and milk chocolate, coated in hard colored candy. They weren’t around for long before they were replaced with an entirely different product; the new Oompas tasted a little like Skittles and came in six flavors: Green Apple, Lemon, Cherry, Orange, Grape and Strawberry. This Oompa incarnation didn’t stand the test of time either, probably because Skittles already had such a loyal fan base.
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PowerHouse
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PeterPaul’s PowerHouse bar is yet another bygone chocolate bar you’ll never taste again. It certainly did pack a punch, with four ounces of caramel, peanuts and fudge, wrapped in milk chocolate. By comparison, today’s full-size Snickers is a paltry 1.86 ounces.
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Milkshake
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Introduced in the 1920s, the Milkshake bar lasted for 50 or 60 years before it was discontinued, probably because of upheaval in the Hollywood Candy Company and not because the bar wasn’t selling. In 1988, the company was bought by the Leaf Candy Company, which was acquired by Hershey in 1996. By that time, the only remaining original Hollywood Candy Company products were PayDay and the Zero Bar.
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Reggie!
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The Reggie! bar made its debut at the Yankees’ 1978 home opener against the Chicago White Sox on April 13, two years after Reggie Jackson declared, “If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.” The Standard Brands company responded accordingly, with a circular bar of peanuts dipped in caramel and coated in chocolate that was handed out to Yankees fans as they entered the stadium. Hall-of-Famer Jackson left the Yankees in 1981, but the Reggie! bar stayed around for a year longer.
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Tongue Splashers Gum
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Anything that stains the hell out of your tongue can’t be good for you. But 1990s kids didn’t care about stuff like that (although their parents and teachers did), and they couldn’t get enough of Tongue Splashers Gum.
Candy in a tin is seriously cool, right?
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Chicken Dinner
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This one wins the prize for the candy bar with the weirdest name. The Sperry Candy Co. Chicken Dinner contained absolutely no poultry (although there was a picture of a roast dinner on the package), but it did have peanuts and a “light sweet coating.” It was introduced in 1923 and endured until 1962, when Pearson’s, the makers of Bit-O-Honey, bought Sperry. Strange name aside, Chicken Dinner remains a celebrated product — even ranking sixth on Time’s list of the most influential candy bars.
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Space Dust
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Another candy that got the collective knickers of 1980s parents in a twist was General Rocks’ Space Dust (basically ground up Pop Rocks). It was the name they had an issue with — the sugar content was NBD — because it was too similar to Angel Dust, a hallucinogenic drug.
General Rocks changed the name to Cosmic Candy and took a full-page ad out to reassure parents, but the damage had been done, and Space Dust/Cosmic Candy was eventually discontinued.
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Max Headroom Candy
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Fictional AI character Max Headroom (portrayed by Matt Frewer as “the world’s first computer-generated TV host”) was so popular in the mid-1980s, he even had his own candy. You know you’ve made it in pop culture when kids race to buy candy dispensers modeled on your head. The candy died a death when Headroom did, but you can still get a set of 10 sealed Max Headroom candy dispensers in the original display box for $250 on social shopping site depop.
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Cookies-n-Creme Twix
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The Cookies-n-Creme Twix, launched in 1990, was arguably superior to the regular Twix — at least in terms of crispiness, thanks to those cookie pieces inside the creme. The candy jury is out on when this one was discontinued; whatever the official date, it was way too soon.
However, there’s good news for all those who’ve been pining after Cookies-n-Creme Twix for too many years to count. It’s coming back.Mars Wrigley announced it is releasing a Cookies & Creme Twix (in snazzy blue packaging) in January 2020.
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