There’s something almost cruel about a truly great snack disappearing from shelves forever. You reach for it one day, and it’s just… gone. No farewell. No explanation. Just an empty space in the chip aisle and a hollow feeling that no amount of Chex Mix will ever fill. For kids who grew up in the 1970s, that feeling is deeply familiar.
The post-war era of American abundance gave rise to an explosion of innovative convenience foods that captured the nation’s imagination, fueled by a fascination with scientific progress, space exploration, and new flavors. These nostalgic treats weren’t just snacks – they were cultural artifacts representing an optimistic time when food technology promised to revolutionize everyday eating. The snack industry boomed alongside it all. And then, one by one, the best of the bunch quietly vanished. Let’s dive into the six discontinued savory snacks that 70s kids still can’t stop thinking about.
1. Crisp-i-Taters – The French Fry That Thought It Was a Chip
Here’s a snack concept so brilliant it honestly hurts that it no longer exists. Crisp-i-Taters was a new potato snack from General Mills. After these, French fries and potato chips would never seem the same again. That tagline wasn’t exaggerating – it was genuinely a head-spinning hybrid. Were they French fries that tasted like potato chips? Or were they potato chips that looked like French fries? Either way, they were entirely unique.
Cheddar Taters, Bugles, Pizza Spins, Onyums, Crisp-i-Taters, Dipped Taters, and Betcha Bacon were all part of the same General Mills snack universe of the era. It was a golden age for potato-based innovation. Crisp-i-Taters debuted around 1971 and captured the imaginations of a generation. Food historians note that many discontinued snacks were removed due to production costs, ingredient changes, or declining sales – not necessarily a lack of popularity. Crisp-i-Taters fits that profile perfectly: a product loved by those who tried it, but lost to the relentless economics of shelf space.
2. Cheddar Taters – The Cheesy Bite That Lingered on Your Tongue
If Crisp-i-Taters was the cool kid, Cheddar Taters was its equally awesome sibling. When your ears started off with a crunch, your tongue ended up with a tingle. Chomping into Cheddar Taters gave you quite a surprise – not just the flavor of potatoes, but the taste of mellow cheddar cheese topped off by tangy chives. They were a new product from General Mills.
Vintage print ads from 1973 confirm these were very much a real part of the grocery landscape of that decade. Think of them as a bolder, cheesier, more character-filled version of what today’s snack companies try to replicate with every new “loaded” chip flavor. The 1970s saw a genuine boom in processed convenience foods, driven in part by increased freezer and kitchen appliance ownership, and General Mills was right there surfing the wave. Cheddar Taters didn’t survive long past the decade, but the people who remember them describe the flavor with the kind of detail that only true snack love produces.
3. Pizza Spins – The Wheel-Shaped Wonder That Tasted Like a Slice
Honestly, the concept of a pizza-flavored crunchy wheel-shaped snack sounds like something someone invented yesterday as a gimmick. But Pizza Spins did it decades before anyone else. In 1968, General Mills debuted these wheel-shaped pizza crisps that tasted like tomato, pepper, cheese, and other spices. By the time the 1970s rolled around, they were a staple in many households.
Despite the fact that Pizza Spins had a slew of fans who loved the crispy pizza-flavored pinwheels, the product was discontinued in 1975. It’s unclear exactly why General Mills took it off the market, but to this day, there are still fans who call for its return. Many say the closest thing to old-school Pizza Spins is Cheez-It’s Snap’d Extra-Crunchy Margherita Pizza flavor. That’s a kind substitute – but ask a 70s kid if Cheez-It Snap’d hits the same, and you’ll get a very firm no. Imagine the flavor of an entire pepperoni pizza – the tangy tomato sauce, the herbs, the cheese – concentrated into a single, crunchy, wheel-shaped cracker. That was the bold promise of Pizza Spins.
4. Nabisco Doo Dads – The Party Mix That Had No Equal
Let’s be real: Chex Mix has been living rent-free in the snack aisle for decades, pretending to fill the void left by Doo Dads. It doesn’t. Not even close. Introduced by Nabisco in the late 1960s, the Doo Dads snack mix was made up of crunchy pretzels, roasted peanuts, Cheese Tid-Bits, rice squares cereal, and wheat squares cereal. Nabisco was ahead of the game with Doo Dads, as people loved the convenience of being able to simply open a box and pour out a ready-to-go party treat. Many say the flavor was far superior to Chex Mix.
Nabisco made the Doo Dads product and sold it from the early 70s until the late 90s. The five components of this snack mix were toasted peanuts, pretzels, rice squares, wheat squares, and cheese Tid-Bit crackers. The nostalgia for this product is so fierce that a Change.org petition calling for their return still circulates online, with fans pleading for Nabisco to bring them back. Over the years, the popularity of Doo Dads gradually declined. Some attribute the decline to the changing preferences of consumers who had become more health-conscious. Others believe that a lack of marketing and advertising by Nabisco contributed to the decline. Either way, their absence is deeply felt.
5. Nabisco Cheese Tid-Bits – The Little Cracker With a Massive Following
These were so beloved that they earned their own standalone legacy – separate even from their fame as an ingredient in Doo Dads. Cheese Tid-Bits by Nabisco were small cheddar crackers formed into sticks. Nabisco stopped making these in the early 2000s even though they seemed to be popular. That’s the kind of corporate decision that genuinely baffles longtime fans.
Nabisco’s Tid-Bits sold from 1968 to 1972 as a standalone product, meant to compete against Frito-Lay’s Cheetos. Tid-Bits was a component of the Doo Dads mix, along with Mister Salty pretzels. In the long run, Cheetos proved more popular. Still, Tid-Bits had an intensely devoted fan base who described them as cheesy, crunchy, and deeply satisfying at any time of day. Tid-Bit crackers were discontinued by Nabisco in the 2000s. They were a critical piece of the iconic Doo Dads snack mix, and it’s difficult to find a good substitute for them. Cheddar-flavored sesame sticks found in the bulk section of a grocery store are considered the closest substitute. A bulk bin substitute for a beloved childhood snack – somehow, that feels both resourceful and deeply sad at the same time.
6. Betcha Bacon – The Snack That Was Too Weird and Too Good
Sometimes a snack is so strange and so bold that it earns a kind of cult devotion even while it was failing commercially. Betcha Bacon was exactly that. General Mills put out a bacon-flavored snack in the early 1970s called Betcha Bacon. The snack itself looked like mini pieces of bacon, but it was made with corn and rice with artificial bacon flavoring. You could also catch a little cheddar cheese and buttermilk in the flavor profile, which was an interesting twist.
Despite all the print and television advertisements claiming that Betcha Bacon’s flavor was “blissful,” they must not have been blissful enough – because they never made it out of the 70s. The company discontinued making Betcha Bacon after some four years. Even after attempting to improve it by adding more bacon flavor, it just wasn’t flying off the shelves like the company had hoped. Interestingly, the concept seemed to work better in the U.K., where you can still get a similar bacon-flavored corn snack called Frazzles. So there’s a parallel universe out there where Betcha Bacon survived. It’s just not this one.
Why Do These Snacks Hit So Hard, Decades Later?
It’s not purely about taste. It never is. In so many ways, it wasn’t just about the taste or the packaging – but about the times, the memories, and the nostalgic feelings these delightful old-fashioned munchies evoke. A 2023 survey by Innova Market Insights found that more than half of all consumers enjoy nostalgic or retro food products, which is exactly why companies occasionally dust off old names for limited-time relaunches.
Snack foods, instant meals, cereals, and drinks tend to come and go, but the ones we remember from childhood seem to stick with us. Children of the 1970s and 1980s had a veritable smorgasbord of ill-conceived and nutritionally suspicious fare to enjoy, and still miss their unusual packaging, unique smells, off-the-wall flavors, and the sheer creativity that went into conceptualizing them. Social media platforms like TikTok and Reddit have dramatically amplified this nostalgia. Viral posts in 2023 and 2024 regularly racked up tens of thousands of likes from people sharing memories of these exact snacks, calling for their return, and tagging brand accounts directly. The hunger for these lost flavors, it turns out, has never really gone away. It’s just been waiting for someone to listen.
The U.S. snack food market was valued at over $150 billion as of 2024, according to Statista – which makes it all the more ironic that a few legendary bites from the 1970s remain stubbornly absent. In a market that size, there is clearly room. So here’s a thought worth leaving you with: if nostalgia drives real purchasing decisions and half the consumer base craves retro flavors, why haven’t Crisp-i-Taters come back yet? What snack from your childhood are you still waiting to see return?
