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by Terri Schlichenmeyer
From Celery Jell-O to chocolate French fries, here are ten foods that didn’t have a very long shelf-life.
1. Coffee-Flavored Jell-O® (Celery, Too!)
In 1918, the makers of Jell-O introduced a new flavor: coffee. Its release was ostensibly based on the logic that, since lots of people like to drink coffee with dessert, they’d be game for combining the two after-dinner treats. Not the case. The company soon realized if anyone wants dessert coffee, they’re going to have a cup of it. In fact, if anyone wants coffee at all, they’re going to have a cup of it. Not surprisingly, this realization came about the time they yanked the product off the shelves. Coffee wasn’t Jell-O’s only misstep: Cola-flavored Jell-O was sold for about a year starting in 1942, and for a brief while, the clear, wiggly dessert was sold in celery and chocolate flavors, too.
2. Reddi-Bacon
Any company smart enough to bless mankind with sprayable whipped cream—the sort that promotes direct-to-mouth feeding—has got to know a thing or two about immediate gratification. But sadly, the makers of Reddi-wip® were unable to meld their keen understanding of human laziness with one of processed meat. They figured, if you’re cooking breakfast in the morning and you’ve got a hankering for bacon, why dirty up a pan you’ll only have to clean later? The solution: foil-wrapped Reddi-Bacon you could pop into your toaster for piping-hot pork in minutes.
While it seemed perfect for the busy 1970s household, the absorbent pad designed to soak up the dripping grease tended to leak, creating not only a fire hazard, but also a messy (if not totally ruined) toaster. Ultimately, the product lasted about as long as it took to cook; the company scrapped it before it went to market nationwide.
3. Cereal Mates
Sometimes, new products fail because they’re simply bad ideas (ahem, New Coke). Other times, it’s because they’re just impossible to market. Such was the case for Cereal Mates. Beating the dead horse of über-convenient breakfast foods, Kellogg’s introduced Cereal Mates in 1997. The idea was simple: a small box of cereal, a container of specially packaged milk (no refrigeration required!), and a plastic spoon. It was the perfect A.M. answer for the person on the go … who enjoys warm milk on cereal. Trying to patch up one mistake with another, Kellogg’s then moved the product to the dairy section, where no sane person looks for cereal. On top of all that was the price. At about $1.50 for only four ounces of the stuff, Cereal Mates was deemed too expensive for most consumers. After two years, Kellogg’s pulled it from the shelves.
4. Flower-Flavored PEZ®
No, that’s not a typo. Although it would be equally disgusting, we’re talking about flower, not flour. Introduced in the late 1960s, flower-flavored PEZ was designed to appeal to the hippie generation—complete with a groovy, psychedelic dispenser. But even in the decade of free love, no love could be found for the flavor power of flower. Floral scents make for great perfume, but nobody eats perfume, and apparently, there’s a reason why. The flower version flopped, and became the next addition to PEZ’s long and disturbing list of flavor failures. Since its introduction in 1927, the company has also sold coffee, licorice, eucalyptus, menthol, and cinnamon flavors.
5. “I Hate Peas!”
For as long as children have been shoving Brussels sprouts under mashed potatoes and slipping green beans to the dog, parents have been hunting desperately for a way to end the vegetable discrimination. Finally, in the 1970s, American Kitchen Foods, Inc. came to the rescue (or at least tried) with the release of “I Hate Peas!” Since kids love French fries so much, the company decided that disguising peas in a fry-shaped form was a sure-fire way to trick tots into getting their vitamins. Not a chance. Children all over America saw through the ruse. After all, a pea is a pea is a pea, and the name of the product was more than apropos, no matter what it looked like. There were other thinly disguised vegetables in the company’s “I Hate” line, but kids hated those, too.
6. The Chicken Dinner Candy Bar
Fortunately for gastrointestinal tracts worldwide, this candy bar didn’t actually include chicken in its list of ingredients. And equally lucky for Sperry Candy Co., which introduced the “treat” in the 1920s, consumers actually figured this one out on their own. The company introduced the chocolate-and-peanut butter bar right before the onset of the Depression, hoping the name would give consumers the feeling they were about to have a big home-cooked meal at Grandma’s house—hence the juicy roast chicken on the advertisements. Strangely, the gimmick worked, even well after the economy recovered, and Chicken Dinner candy bars were available until the 1960s. Does this mean it qualifies as a true marketplace “flop”? No. Did we put it on the list anyway because it sounds like it really should have been? Absolutely.
7. Heublein’s Wine & Dine
In the mid-1970s, Heublein introduced Wine & Dine, an upscale, easy-to-make dinner that included a small bottle of vino. How refined. How decadent. How confusing. Consumers knew Heublein for their liquor and wines, so how were they supposed to know the wine included in Wine & Dine was an ingredient for the pasta sauce? Hasty consumers who didn’t read the directions closely ended up pouring the contents of the bottle into a nice glass and getting a less-than-pleasant mouthful of salted wine.
8. Funky Fries
In 2002, hoping to follow the success of Heinz’s new “kiddie” ketchup versions (in green and purple), Ore-Ida introduced Funky Fries: chocolate-flavored, cinnamon-flavored, and blue-colored French fries. An awful lot of money was sunk into the product, but after a year of marketing, consumers still found the idea funky—in the bad way. Funky Fries were pulled off the shelves in 2003, and images of blue fries with green ketchup were once again relegated to the world of Warhol-esque pop art.
9. Pepsi A.M.
Creating a super-caffeinated soda worked well for the makers of Red Bull, but not for the folks at Pepsi. With 25 percent more caffeine than a cup of Joe, PepsiCo introduced the cola-flavored product in 1989, only to discover that most people just couldn’t bring themselves to drink soda with their cornflakes. For those who wanted a Pepsi in the morning, regular Pepsi did just fine, thankyouverymuch. Pepsi A.M., like the coffee-flavored Pepsi Kona before it, was scrapped after just a few months.
10. Gerber Singles
At some point in time, almost every adult has tasted baby food and discovered that the stuff isn’t half bad. But that doesn’t mean people want to make a meal out of it. For some reason, Gerber had to learn that lesson the hard way. In 1974, the company released Gerber Singles, small servings of food meant for single adults, packaged in jars that were almost identical to those used for baby food. It didn’t take long for Gerber execs to figure out that most consumers, unless they were less than a year old, couldn’t get used to eating a pureed meal out of a jar—particularly one depressingly labeled “Singles.” Baby food for grown-ups was pulled from the marketplace shortly after its birth.
This article originally appeared in the March-April 2005 issue of mental_floss magazine.
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Comments (33)
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Flower-flavored PEZ … well, rosewater is an important flavoring in many cuisines, particularly in the middle east. It’s the flavoring in Turkish Delight, for instance. But am I weird because I think coffee-flavored PEZ sounds good?
The celery Jell-O was meant for Jell-O salads. Not that I’m saying that is a good idea, but it’s not like people were going to be eating celery jigglers or something.
And … um … I miss “I Hate Carrots”. Those things were GOOD. They were basically an extruded stick of potato/carrot blend, the ridges (it was star-shaped in cross section) got wonderfully crispy, and the inside was nice and fluffy and didn’t taste of carrots. It wasn’t until years after they were off the market that I outgrew my dislike for carrots, but I’d still love to get my hands on some of those fries. I’ve been seriously wondering what I could do with a blender and a big star-shaped cake decorating tip.
posted by WW on 11-21-2009 at 3:57 pm
“Floral scents make for great perfume, but nobody eats perfume, and apparently, there’s a reason why.”
This is not true! Flower scents are used for flavor in a lot of cuisines – particularly rose, which is used to flavor candies in the Middle East and India and is quite delightful. Japan flavors their seasonal candies with cherry blossoms in April – not the cherries, but the blossoms. The French and British make candies out of violets, and in Australia you can buy musk sticks – as in musk, as in drug store cologne. It’s a little different than what the American palette is accustomed to, but it’s lovely.
If they tried marketing flower-flavored Pez overseas, I bet they’d do very well. And I would clean out my local import stores.
posted by Anneke on 11-21-2009 at 4:30 pm
They figured, if you’re cooking breakfast in the morning and you’ve got a hankering for bacon, why dirty up a pan you’ll only have to clean later?
Because that’s the way things are. I can understand not wanting to put the effort in to cook the bacon, clean the pan, deal with the grease in the morning. I rarely do it. But if you’re not willing to do that, *you don’t get bacon*. There aren’t shortcuts to bacon. You earn your bacon (bring it home, as it were) by doing those things. And it tastes great, because it’s bacon. There’s the tradeoff, and Lord help any human construct, especially a corporation, that aims to profit by turning that equation on its head. It angers the Bacon Gods.
posted by Jeff K. on 11-21-2009 at 4:43 pm
I agree with the previous commentors… flavors that flop in the US may not in other countries but, when most of these items were made and marketed, I don’t think international marketing is what it is today so they probably never thought to look to other countries.
posted by Sarah in CA on 11-21-2009 at 4:48 pm
I use the only short cut to bacon I know: Oscar Meyer’s ready bacon. I’m not sure how they do it but basically it’s already cooked so you just nuke it a bit, surrounded by paper towels, of course, ha, and you’re done. It’s great for when I want BLTs, mmmmm.
posted by Sarah in CA on 11-21-2009 at 4:51 pm
I remember when Funky Fries first came out. The tagline was “All I want is my FUNKY FRIES!”. It was ridiculous, but after we saw that horrid commercial, we couldn’t resist from mocking it. That resulted in uncontrolable fits of laughter, screaming of the tagline, and ultimately getting kicked out of whatever house we were in. *sigh* Childhood…
posted by Scotti on 11-21-2009 at 11:07 pm
Cola Jello doesn’t sound too bad to me.
Speaking of Jello: did Pudding Pops bomb or did they just stop supplying them in my area?
I liked those things.
posted by holly on 11-22-2009 at 12:35 am
I’ve had Choward’s violet flavored candy it was rather tasty. I agree about the rose flavoring too.
Too bad for Pepsi that the whole video gamer energy drink crazy came too late for their AM version.
posted by Nihil on 11-22-2009 at 1:08 am
Chocolate jello sounds like it might not have been bad at all (says a chocoholic).
Hmmm, my husband once made Gatorade gelatin and reported that it was pretty good (I didn’t try it, since I don’t like Gatorade). Wonder if a similar concept might be applied to cola or chocolate.
posted by Seanette on 11-22-2009 at 1:11 am
I think it’s about time for Gerber to reintroduce those singles. I would buy them, only certain kinds, of course, but I would.
posted by Bill on 11-22-2009 at 2:13 am
I like warm milk on my cereal! Jeez way to be patronizingly sarcastic. Meanie.
posted by Barbara on 11-22-2009 at 2:59 am
I personally tasted every bit of baby food I fed my nephew (though I rarely tried flavors more than once…) and I’ve got to say that whoever thought adult baby food was a good idea was off their rocker. The fruits are good because, hello, it’s applesauce; and the deserts are usually okay because it’s pudding-y or jello-y and flavored and that’s just fine (though I do recall a vanilla pudding or custard that I apologized to the little boy about before I fed it to him– he seemed to like it, though). But anything else is awful awful awful awful. Especially the entree ones that have some kind of meat, sauce, vegetable and starch all mixed in.
Oh, and the mac & cheese was okay if you didn’t mind thinking that it tasted like mac & cheese but had the texture of pre-chewed mac & cheese.
80% of baby food is terrible, being my point, and no one would eat it willingly unless they had made a deal with an infant.
posted by Lacey on 11-22-2009 at 3:00 am
If Pepsi Kona came out before Pepsi AM, they never did learn as I was at a Champ Car race in Nazareth in the late 90s and they were test marketing the crap again–they had a tough time giving it away as nobody wanted to touch the stuff.
As for new coke–the real story is all about money. Coke was slowly replacing real sugar with HFCS for almost a decade anyway. They just tweaked the then current recipe to taste a little more like Pepsi (as if people would really buy Coke just because it tasted like Pepsi). New Coke was born. Then the company stock tanked to about half its value (from about $70/share to just under $35/share). Coke bought back a large amount of their stock, then “brought back” original Coke. By this time there was no sugar in the recipe, just the cheaper HFCS, and it tasted good enough for peoples short memories and everyone was satisfied.
If you really want something good, look for a bottle of Coke from Mexico or Hawaii, it’s still cheaper to use real sugar there, and it is THE REAL THING! I found some Mexican Coke in the international section of my local supermarket and it tastes wonderful! Too bad it costs $1.50 a bottle, so it is a rare treat for me and my wife.
posted by Wayne on 11-22-2009 at 10:22 am
I read somewhere (probably the Snopes.com forums) about the Gerber Singles, and, where I was reading, people were hypothesizing that the product was meant to target college students, who, at the time, apparently ate a lot of baby food because it was inexpensive compared to, well, “grown-up food.”
I also remember Funky Fries. Those things were good.
posted by Michelle C. on 11-22-2009 at 10:34 am
You can still get coffee jello! It’s a dessert option at Durgin Park in Boston, along with another signature dish: indian pudding.
posted by Bort on 11-22-2009 at 11:41 am
Perpsi has successfully marketed Cucumber flavored soda in Japan
posted by Jeremiah on 11-22-2009 at 12:46 pm
I love floral gums….flower favoured Candy, and I also love rose and violet flavoured dipped chocolates! Guess I am weird. Other than that “gaff” this was a good article.
posted by Sandie on 11-22-2009 at 1:07 pm
I swear we had coffee-flavoured jello in the cupboard when I was a kid. I certainly wasn’t around when it was introduced, but my great-grandparents probably passed it down to their kids and so on, each generation in my family as unwilling as the last to actually throw food out.
posted by Mark on 11-22-2009 at 1:23 pm
As some have said floral flavoring is big in some countries. If you got to Coca-Cola’s tour faciltiy in Atlanta there is a room where you can sample all the different flavors they sell around the world – including a floral Fanta sold in Japan. It tasted like drinking weak perfume.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 11-22-2009 at 4:53 pm
What? No mention on Crystal Gravy?!
posted by Stacy on 11-22-2009 at 9:11 pm
In our kitchen cupboard, for many years, we had a box of stuff called “Jello 3-2-1″
It was a fancy type of Jello that for some reason would separate into three layers as it set(gelled). They said to pour the liquid into the serving dishes so that everyone gets the three separate, similar colors. I think the top layer was supposed to imitate whipped cream. My mom had bought it during the short time it was a product. She eventually threw out that last box.
posted by Tdave on 11-23-2009 at 7:40 am
Loyal fans of The Daily Show would recognize a product that will be in a future food flops post…Baconnaise.
From Wikipedia…”Jon Stewart satirized Baconnaise in his The Daily Show as a combination of gluttony and sloth: “for people who want heart disease but are too lazy to actually make the bacon.” Outside of the United States, baconnaise seems to characterize the U.S. in the same way Stewart proposed, as suggested by the French blog Écrans.”
posted by Ken on 11-23-2009 at 8:10 am
Coffee Jello is awesome! ‘Coffee Jelly’ is huge in Japan, and can be found at most cafes, with a little dab of whipped cream. I make it to take to parties a lot, and it’s always a big hit once I get people to actually try it. It’s sweet, but not too sweet, very cool and refreshing. It doesn’t taste cloying the way the fruit gelatins do to me.
You just need coffee, sugar and unflavored gelatin to make it at home. (Still working on a way to make these into jello shots)
posted by Ann on 11-23-2009 at 8:51 am
My personal favorite is the Chicken Dinner Candy… Very creative. But I’d have to say that the Harry Potter jelly beans beat this candy bar with flavors like vomit and grass.
posted by cincinnati personal injury attorney on 11-23-2009 at 1:16 pm
What I remember most about the Blue Funky Fries was that the next morning, they resulted in, how to tactfully state this, blue bowel movements. Frito-Lays blue corn chips and black cake icing produce the same entertaining result.
posted by Soup on a stick on 11-23-2009 at 1:53 pm
Pepsi A.M. sounds a lot like Red Bull or DIET PEPSI MAX. A bit ahead of its time, I suppose.
posted by Robert on 11-23-2009 at 4:48 pm
The saga of New Coke is pretty interesting; here’s an article on the whole story: http://bit.ly/61BPl9
(Site is acting weird; that link is to the Google cache.)
posted by MadMolecule on 11-23-2009 at 5:07 pm
Sarah in CA, glad someone mentioned the ready bacon. Jeff K, there ARE shortcuts to bacon-shortcuts we buy frequently. They’re great to have when some bacon would be perfect on a sandwich or something, especially since I have a tendency not to plan very far ahead for meals. And unlike real bacon, they don’t go bad. Maybe not a selling point to many (I’d prefer not to know why it doesn’t go bad, although if my chemist husband doesn’t care I assume we’re alright) but my fridge is kind of where fresh food goes to die.
Sorry for the ramble-great list!
posted by Kate on 11-23-2009 at 6:25 pm
i loved the chocolate funky fries. i was about 10 when they came out and thought they were the best thing ever.
posted by nester on 11-23-2009 at 7:25 pm
‘crystal gravy! ahahaha! and i want some cola jell-o, unless it’s made with new coke.
@holly–go to popsicle.com and click on ‘where to buy.’ i didn’t even know anyone had picked up the idea again, and i don’t know why it ever went away in the first place. as a kid, i think i could have lived on those things, given the chance.
posted by cc on 11-24-2009 at 1:53 am
I’ve had coffee gelatin in Japan.
posted by Elissa on 11-24-2009 at 12:14 pm
In Canada, Coke is still made with sugar, too.
Also, a few years back Jell-O had a ‘fizzy’ version that you made with Club Soda, I believe. It was quite good and retained its fizz even after it set.
posted by Susan on 12-4-2009 at 5:09 pm
I love violet candies and SenSen and Turkish Delight – I think I would love the flower pez too!
posted by kelly on 1-8-2010 at 8:52 pm