Swanson TV Turkey Dinner
Your parents probably grabbed Swanson’s original turkey dinner more times than they’d like to admit. The first Swanson-brand TV Dinner was produced in the United States and consisted of a Thanksgiving meal of turkey, cornbread stuffing, frozen peas and sweet potatoes packaged in a tray like those used at the time for airline food service. When it launched in 1954, Swanson sold ten million trays in just that first year. The rectangular slices of processed turkey might have tasted like cardboard, but it solved the “what’s for dinner” problem when Mom was working late. At 69 cents per meal, it was cheaper than takeout and faster than cooking from scratch.
Banquet Fried Chicken
Banquet became the go-to alternative when your family wanted something different from Swanson’s offerings. Banquet Foods and Morton Frozen Foods soon brought out their own offerings, winning over more and more middle-class households across the country. Their fried chicken dinner was legendary among kids in the seventies and eighties, even if the coating sometimes turned soggy and the meat was questionable. My favorite was when Banquet graduated into selling large boxes of just several pieces of many different cuts of frozen chicken–either fried, or battered! I thought they were the bomb! When I was a kid and my parents went out on a Saturday night, that’s when I’d get to haul out a bunch of pieces and have ’em on a dish with a big dollop side of ketchup. The brand is still available today, proving some childhood favorites never truly disappear.
Stouffer’s Lasagna
When your parents wanted to feel fancy without actually cooking, Stouffer’s lasagna was their secret weapon. Stouffer’s, the brand of frozen dinner favorites such as lasagna, Salisbury steak, and meatloaf, was the top selling single-serve frozen dinner brand in the United States in the twelve weeks ending February 24, 2024. The brand generated sales of over 243.08 million dollars in the U.S., followed by Healthy Choice and Marie Callender’s, which had sales of 168 million and 153 million dollars respectively. Starting in 1954, Stouffer’s built its reputation on restaurant-quality frozen foods that actually tasted decent. The layers of pasta, meat sauce, and cheese made family dinners feel special, even when they came from a cardboard box. Parents loved that it looked impressive enough for unexpected guests but required zero cooking skills.
Hungry-Man Dinners
The first Swanson “Hungry-Man” dinners were marketed; these contained larger portions of its regular dinners. The American football player “Mean” Joe Greene was the “Hungry-Man” spokesman. These oversized meals launched in 1973 when regular TV dinners weren’t filling enough for growing teenagers and hungry dads. To combat this, Swanson upped the portions, creating the larger, heartier “Hungry-Man” dinners that can still be seen on shelves today. To promote the meals, Swanson hired the famous football player Mean Joe Greene to act as spokesman for the brand. The turkey pot pie version weighed nearly a full pound, and parents knew it would actually satisfy their biggest eaters. The Hungry-Man XXL line of dinners (discontinued in the early 2010s) boasted about the sheer weight and often clocked in at a gut-busting 1,500 calories or more per meal.
Morton Frozen Dinners with Dessert
Morton distinguished itself by including actual desserts in their frozen dinner lineup, which made them an instant hit with families. Just before the dawn of the 1970s, Morton joined the TV dinner fray with a three-course version. The meal included the usuals — buttered peas and whipped potatoes — but also a “frosty fruit salad” with bite-sized marshmallows that could be removed to thaw before putting the tray into the oven. Dessert was a “luscious walnut brownie.” What really grabbed attention was when Morton got creative in 1974, introducing TV dinners of beef patties, spaghetti, and pizza that shoved a Twinkie into the mix. What happened to the company that brilliantly combined fruit and marshmallows, or supplied a “luscious” brownie, you ask? Delicious cream filling happened, that’s what. Unfortunately, the company was bought by ConAgra in the 1990s, and ConAgra eventually shuttered Morton Frozen Foods around 2000 in the name of streamlining.
Libbyland Adventure Dinners
Your parents probably bought these more for the entertainment value than the food quality. First on this list is something that looks like an early 1970s version of Kid Cuisine: the Libbyland Adventure frozen dinners. Produced by Libby’s, the company also known for its canned food, the dinners came in themed boxes such as a Sea Diver’s dinner with fish sticks. Other versions included the Safari supper that included a puzzle, a Pirate picnic, a Goldstrike supper, and so on. The dinners didn’t last long; they were available only from 1971 to 1976. Libby’s went after the younger set with their playful Libbyland meals. Originally, they came with “Magic Milk,” which was later replaced with the branded Nestle’s Quik. The box popped up into a cartoon backsplash, and the options included Pirate Picnic, Sundown Supper, Sea Diver’s Dinner and Safari Supper. Kids begged for them because of the games and pop-up characters, not because the mystery meat tasted good.
Lean Cuisine
When your parents decided to get “healthy” in the eighties, Lean Cuisine became their frozen dinner of choice. In 1981, Stouffer’s took advantage of the decade’s health obsession and launched a new line of food, Lean Cuisine. Consumers were eager for diet food products that didn’t sacrifice portion size, taste, and convenience, and Lean Cuisine answered their needs. The meals in the original line contained a maximum of 300 calories and were available in ten varieties. The brand was instantly a huge hit, quickly outselling its competitor, Weight Watchers. Parents felt virtuous ordering the chicken and vegetables or Oriental beef, even though the portions were tiny and left everyone hungry an hour later. In 1981, Stouffer’s launched a comeback with this low-cal version of the TV dinner, promoting the dubious claim that “never before have so few calories tasted so good.” Lean Cuisines were huge at the time, due largely to the marketing tactic promising that those who ate them — mostly women — were, “On Your Way to Being Lean.”
Swanson International Style Dinners
By the mid-seventies, your parents wanted to feel worldly without leaving the suburbs, so Swanson created their international line. In the mid-1970s, Swanson introduced its international-style line of TV dinners, which included options like “Mexican Style” (featuring tamales and an enchilada), “Polynesian Style” (featuring sweet and sour chicken and pork and an orange tea cake, “German-Style” (featuring spaetzle and a prune-apricot compote) and “English Style” (capitalizing on the fish & chips craze). The German dinner with spaetzle was particularly bizarre, The Italian dinner, for example, had lasagna. One interesting thing about the line was that it contained dinners you don’t really find in the freezer case now, such as a German-style dinner with sauerbraten, which is a marinated roast beef dish, and spaetzle, a type of egg pasta. The dinners were available until around the 1980s. These meals let parents feel adventurous while staying safely within their comfort zones, even if the “Polynesian” dinner bore zero resemblance to actual Pacific cuisine.
These frozen dinners shaped an entire generation’s relationship with convenience food. While today’s frozen meals might have better ingredients and more sophisticated flavors, nothing quite captures that nostalgic feeling of peeling back foil and discovering what treasures awaited inside those compartmentalized trays. Did you expect that these simple meals would become such an iconic part of American family life?
