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Do you remember ….

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Let’s take a walk back in time to my childhood.

I’m a tail end boomer and remember every one of these questionable gastronomic delights. My mother didn’t allow them in our house because she was determined her only child would eat healthy food. Which is one of the reasons I enjoyed spending time at my friends, whose parents weren’t nearly as vigilant.

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A taco shaped artificially flavored banana sponge cake with overly sugared cream filling. A heavenly treat for my 7 year old self.

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Cheese in a can! This was the height of cool when I was young. The fact I’m still alive after consuming it all those years ago is a testament to its high level of preservatives.

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Required lunch box dessert when I was growing up.

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The pungent aroma hit you as you walked past Spencer’s gifts and Sam Goody’s… half a mile away. And it was guaranteed someone in your family would receive a gift box filled with inedible sausage for Christmas.

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My parents never ate a frozen dinner in their life but when they went to the city for the evening and I had a babysitter? Swanson fried chicken with that horrible little apple cobbler was my consolation for having to stay home .

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I remember eating the vanilla version of these when I was a teenager. God only knows what they were made of. We questioned nothing back then.

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And finally, the only product I might still eat today. I remember them being quite tasty.

Do any of these items bring back nostalgic food memories for you?

And if not, what were some of your favorite childhood horrors?

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49 thoughts on “Do you remember ….”

  1. Not familiar with any of these… I grew up in Switzerland as you know.

    The one thing I remember from 1980 when we moved to Canada (I was 11) was Kraft Dinner onto which people poured ketchup. Even while growing into a teenager in Canada, we never had either product in the house. Also Oreo cookies. I never had them at home but I saw the commercials and wanted to dip them in milk so I had to do that at my friend’s house.

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      1. Oh I know what you mean. I have had so many disappointments from things ordered online. It’s really handy though, having so many things come right to the door.

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  4. I’ve heard of some of them but I’ve never eaten any! Cheese in a can, dear lord! It’s not so much that my father was a food snob (which he was) but we were too poor to be able to afford processed/convenience food. Back in the day fresh homemade food was less expensive.

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  5. OMG, the TV dinners. So awful. By the time I was eating cheese snacks, it was called “cheese whiz.” The food in my houses growing up was not good. No wonder learning my husband was an excellent cook sealed his fate.

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  6. I’m a tail end boomer or depending on who’s doing the figuring, an early gen-xer. I remember the chocolate pudding in tins and the tv dinners only because I saw them advertised. They were never in my parents’ house nor did my friends have them. These items from back then are so laughable but it’s much worse now. Processed “food” everywhere.

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  7. I remember all of these things! I loved Snack Pack pudding in the cans.

    And some I had forgotten about — Figurines! What a fun trip down memory lane.❤️

    And you’re right….we questioned nothing.

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    1. I remember another awful diet product called Ayds. It was a fudge like candy supposed to be an appetite suppressant. They pulled it when the AIDS crisis hit. Just looked up what it contained…

      Formulas commonly included benzocaine (a mild numbing agent for the taste buds) or phenylpropanolamine (PPA), a decongestant later linked to an increased risk of strokes.

      Yikes.

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  8. Hungry Man Chicken dinner, Orange Julius, Wacky Packages with that gross hard powdered pink gum, Candy Cigerettes, razzles, I remember everything in your post except the tidbits & figurines. I love Sumner sausage from Hickory Farms, the cheese squares were gross though.

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  10. The canned pudding is vaguely familiar to me.

    The mall Hickey Farms shop and going there with my parents around Xmas time are distinctly familiar to me.

    As, unfortunately, are the TV dinners.

    Then again, I saw Star Wars at a drive-in movie theater. And fell asleep in the back of our station wagon before the end.

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  11. We got the Swanson’s TV dinners also when mom and dad went out and we had a babysitter. We also got to sit with a TV tray and watch TV. None of that was allowed if mom was home!

    My lunch box had the Hunt’s Snack Pack pudding, too!

    Yes, you gave me some great nostalgic memories.

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      1. My mom would circle to half hour shows on PBS that we were allowed to watch after school. That was it. The big thrill was the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night!

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  12. Chocolate Snack Pack pudding cups, are you kidding me? I’d fight my little brother over these, lol. Swansons TV dinners, my mom worked so we had these from time to time as well. TidBits were so good, my mom would put these in her homemade Chex mix on my parents monthly poker night. Ah yes, 70’s and 80’s food what a great trip down memory lane 😉

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  13. I remember most of these, but the banana flip is new to me. It looks amazing!

    The pudding in the metal can was so good. It tasted 1,000x better than the plastic stuff they sell now. (Presumably. I haven’t had it in many years.)

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  14. Man, I don’t think we had a single one of these products over here – and I’m most certainly old enough to remember them. Did you ever have cheap luncheon meat slices with a teddy bear’s face printed on it over there. No? You definitely win!

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  15. I used to love going through Hickory Farms and eating the cheese and cracker samples.
    Plus, we still have some of those Chicken TV Dinners in stores but I rarely get them and when I do, most of the Chicken goes to the cats.

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      1. You know, of them all, those are the ones I don’t think I ever tried. Were they good? I agree with your commenter that the chocolate pudding tasted way better than it does now, too…

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      2. Probably because they used real sugar back then instead of high fructose corn syrup.
        And yes, the Tidbits were the best cheesy cracker snack. Better than any they sell today.

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