Easy Squirt Ketchup and Colgate Dinners: 20 Strange Cancelled Food Products
Did We Miss Out, or Were These Cancellations Good?
Grocery stores are home to many dependable products that we know we can always count on. However, every once in a while, companies decide to roll the dice and produce something absolutely… strange. Ranging from purple ketchup to lava lamp soda, let’s recall some of the 20 strangest foods humans have tried to ingest.
1. EZ Squirt Purple Ketchup
In the early ’00s, Heinz apparently felt that tomatoes weren’t exciting enough for kids. So, they created “Funky Purple” and “Blastin’ Green” ketchups that resemble Elmer’s Glue more than tomato paste. It was initially popular until parents grew tired of violet hot dogs and realized they tasted the same as regular hot dogs.
2. Gerber Singles
We have no idea who thought this was a good idea, but we’re glad they didn’t pull it off. Gerber Singles were jars of pureed meat marketed toward adults. Supposedly meant for college students and “busy foodies,” Singles were basically baby food for grown-ups. Needless to say, the product flunked.
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3. Pepsi A.M.
Before there was Monster and Red Bull, Pepsi tried to make people think soda was just as good as coffee in the mornings. With extra caffeine and designed to pair with breakfast foods, Pepsi A.M. was widely disliked and kicked to the curb within a year of its release.
4. Colgate Kitchen Entrees
Colgate’s main business is toothpaste, but they also tried selling frozen dinners in the sixties. Their line of Kitchen Entrees featured foods such as beef lasagna, which shoppers avoided because they thought it would taste like Colgate toothpaste. Sad as it may be, people just aren’t interested in eating mint-flavoured dinners.
5. New Coke
Simply put, this is known as the worst marketing decision of all time. In the 1980s, Coca-Cola changed their beloved recipe to a sweeter taste. After fans revolted with protests and hoarding of original Coke, they caved and brought back Coca-Cola Classic.
6. Funky Fries
Can someone French-fry an asteroid? Ore-Ida sure thought so, because they tried selling blue fries you’d never find in nature. If extraterrestrial tubers weren’t weird enough for you, they also sold cinnamon-sugar fries to confuse the heck out of everyone trying to decide between dinner or dessert.
Steve Collis from Melbourne, Australia on Wikimedia
7. Orbitz Soft Drink
Kinda looks like a lava lamp, and not something you want to drink. Orbitz was filled with little balls of jelly-like substance floating around in a clear fluid. Texturally, people compared it to sucking down a bottle of liquid Pepto-Bismol filled with mini jellybeans. Not great!
8. Frito-Lay WOW! Chips
Fat-free chips were all the rage in the late nineties, as snack lovers rejoiced over munchies made possible by Olestra. Those celebrations ended when news spread about the ingredient causing some severe digestive reactions. The government eventually stepped in, forcing bags to include a warning label that scared off anyone craving a “healthy” chip.
9. Crystal Pepsi
Seeing as how the early nineties were all about translucent products, crystal-clear soda was born. No matter how heavily they marketed this stuff, people were just baffled by Sprite-looking soda that tasted like regular cola. It has returned for fun, limited runs here and there, but has never fully taken off again.
10. Jimmy Dean Chocolate Chip Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick
Jimmy Dean took your average “pancake and sausage” breakfast and made it as unhealthy as possible. Chocolate chip pancake batter was used to coat a breakfast link, served up on a stick for your convenience. It may sound like a beautiful union to a sugar-loving youngster, but it was a little too intense for most adults.
11. Dr. Pepper Berries and Cream
Berry-flavored Dr. Pepper? More like desert-flavored Dr Pepper. The excessive artificial berry smell overpowered everything else in the can. While it has maintained a small cult following years later, not enough people purchased it for mass production to continue.
Vladislav Glukhotko on Unsplash
12. SnackWell’s Devil’s Food Cookie Cakes
Remember when everyone thought eating low-fat was the best thing since sliced bread? SnackWell’s took full advantage of this trend and practically worshipped these cookies. Made with hardly any fat but twice the sugar, these were far from nutritious. Once people realized “diet” didn’t mean “calorie-free,” sales started to plummet.
13. Squeezit
You had to squeeze these fun plastic bottles of juice to get the liquid out. They were wildly popular on school playgrounds because each bottle had a silly face molded into the plastic. Because of competition with boxed juices and parents freaking out about plastic waste, these ended up disappearing from store shelves.
14. Life Savers Soda
The popular candy wanted to test how well their fruity favorites would do in soda form. Despite testing well with consumers, people couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that they were drinking candy-flavored soda. There are just some brands that are too successful to dabble in other markets.
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15. Maxwell House Ready-to-Drink Coffee
Before you could find cold brew at your local bodega or gas station, there was Maxwell House pre-brewed coffee in a box. All you had to do was pour it into a mug and heat it. There really wasn’t much time you saved by not brewing it yourself in the morning. Also, you couldn’t microwave it in the canister it came in.
16. McDonald’s Arch Deluxe
The fast-food chain spent $100 million marketing this “adult” burger to customers tired of traditional McDonald’s food. It used a secret sauce made from mustard and mayonnaise, not to mention a potato flour bun to make it feel more “gourmet.” People didn’t appreciate having their cheeseburgers glorified.
17. Jell-O Salad Gelatin
Back in the day, Americans loved fitting vegetables inside gelatin. Fun flavors like celery, seasoned tomato, and mixed vegetables helped them create savory Jell-O salads. That’s a thing of the past now, as people have moved past the era of putting broccoli in lime gelatin.
18. Watermelon Oreos
In 2013, Oreo went pretty far away from chocolate-and-cream with neon-green and reddish-pink filling with the taste of artificially flavored watermelon candy. Sure, it was a treat for those who love "Jolly Rancher" flavors. However, most cookie-lovers couldn’t get behind the strangeness.
19. Cheetos Lip Balm
Frito-Lay wanted people to smell like cheese 24/7 and released this lip balm to make that dream come true. When you applied it to your lips, you were basically force-feeding yourself artificial cheese smell under your nose. This ended up reminding folks that some flavors should be left alone.
20. Breakfast Mates
Kellogg’s tried selling ready-to-eat cereal by including a bowl, spoon, and mini milk carton all in one pack. The downside was that you didn’t have to refrigerate the milk, which made people question its validity. Children also found it nearly impossible to open the package without showering themselves in cereal.
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