10 Wacky Vintage Snacks That We Never Want To See Again

We sure ate some interesting snacks as kids — and by "we," I do mean every single one of us from every generation. No matter what era of time you grew up in, chances are there was a wacky snack on the grocery store shelves that you enjoyed regularly (or at least witnessed others do so). And while many kinds of forgotten old-school vintage candy are a nostalgic delight to remember once again, the snacks on this list ... are not quite that.

These snacks left the shelves — and it will be easy to understand why after you hear a mere few sentences describing them. Not one of these vintage treats would you look at and think, "Hm, I wonder why that was discontinued?" From vaguely plastic-tasting milk chocolate to actual wax, these snacks, as they were back then, are no longer with us — and thank goodness. Here are 10 wacky vintage snacks that we never want to see again.

Nestlé Magic Balls originated in the '90s as hollow chocolate balls that came with a little plastic toy inside, sort of like a Kinder Egg. The toys were usually of Disney or Pokémon characters, and, frankly, they were pretty quality toys. The downfall of this situation, however, was that they sort of made the chocolate taste like plastic (a taste I still remember and shudder about). The toys were eventually the downfall of Magic Ball, as it was discontinued after only a few months on the shelves in 1997 due to the toy being a possible choking hazard. Yikes all around!

The snack reappeared a few years later, though, under a new name, Wonder Ball, in 2000. And, friends, I can still hear the earworm of a jingle as it long ago built a house in my brain when I was a child and never left: Oh I wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder ... What's in my Wonderball? The Wonder Ball was also a hollow milk chocolate ball, but instead of a toy, it had some chalk-like candy inside and a sticker. And frankly? Yawn. A sticker? You're giving me a sticker? No thanks. This treat, as it was, can stay in the past. Keep your sticker and your plastic-tasting chocolate, Nestlé.

Peel 'N Build was a variation of Fruit Roll-Ups in the '90s that were meant to be fun: you could peel out little shapes from it and build, say, a pizza with toppings. However, this is not actually what happened when you ate it. It was not fun — it was frustrating. First of all, they were impossible to get out of the wrapper. And by the time you did get the sticky mess of an edible wax sheet out of the package and off the paper inside, it was completely ruined. The pieces that were meant to peel off and build into anything were stretched out and no longer shaped at all.

Seriously, these things were so annoying. They came back around a few years ago, and it seems like zero problems were fixed. They were still impossible to peel and easily ruined when you tried to do so (despite tasting good — they're Fruit Roll-Ups, after all). They disappeared again, thankfully. If you miss this snack, may I suggest trying a regular Fruit Roll-Up? They are not stressful.

Pudding? Great. No notes. Pudding Roll-Ups? Um ... what? Sorry, how does that even work? Well, the answer is, it sort of just didn't. Advertised as "pudding in disguise," Betty Crocker's rolled up tubes of dehydrated instant pudding attached to wax paper hit the shelves in 1987. They came in three different flavors: chocolate fudge, milk chocolate, and butterscotch. And while some people loved them, others despised them, comparing the dried sheets of pudding to eating soft rubber. These things were, apparently, as gross as they look.

Pudding-Roll Ups only lasted a few years, understandably, and vanished from shelves around 1993. But, hey, at least they did one thing right that no one can disagree with (gave child Seth Green a job as one of the three singing kids in the original commercial). I'll go ahead and eat my pudding with a spoon, thank you. May Pudding Roll-Ups never return.

To say eating a Hubba Bubba Squeeze Pop was the exact same thing as drinking straight corn syrup and citric acid ... would be absolutely correct. And yet, as kids in the '90s, we did just this. Seriously, these things were just tubes of liquid candy goo. They were disconcerting then and remain so to this day. I can still remember the sickeningly sweet taste of this liquid candy, specifically the blue raspberry flavor (they also came in cherry and watermelon).

The company Iconic Candy recently brought the tubes of thick sugar paste back, but they're not the same. They, naturally, dropped the Hubba Bubba part and now just go by Squeeze Pops. They also simply don't taste the same. Iconic Candy just bought the recipe, after all, so it's more of a recreation of the treat than a revival. And this is just fine — we don't need tubed liquid candy paste, I think. There are plenty of wonderful sweets that aren't slime gushing out of a little hole in a tube, but as far as popular snacks from the '90s go, Hubba Bubba Squeeze Pops should stay in the past.

Kudos Bars were like tiny wrapped-up pieces of pure gold to me when I was a kid. They called to me like a siren. They made my mom think she was giving me a type of granola bar inside of my school lunch when, really, it was a candy bar in disguise. I ate it and thought to myself, "I am being very healthy right now." This was not true. And while Kudos Bars certainly did taste good, they were also lying straight to our faces — and lying is not cool.

It's true, if you're going to eat a Kudos Bar, you might as well have just eaten a regular candy bar — one of them had M&M's all over it, for goodness sake! And while there's nothing wrong with that (obviously), it's just such a silly thing to market a product as something it is clearly not. All of us just went along with it, I think, because we wanted to believe it. We all chose, willingly, to believe that this little rectangle made up of almost pure candy was a granola bar from the grocery store. I do not ever want to see Kudos Bars on the shelves again unless they decide to come clean and be honest with us (or reinvent the nostalgic snack into something else entirely). Just say it's a candy bar, guys. We're still going to buy it.

Pillsbury Food Sticks (first named "Space Food Sticks" in 1967) were created as a "between-meal snack" to capitalize on the Apollo space missions, as Pillsbury was working with NASA at the time. They even had a commercial that sort of insinuated that all of the astronauts were chomping on Food Sticks up there on the moon, which kids loved because everybody wanted to be like the astronauts.

This makes sense, as "Food Sticks" truly sounds like something that would only be appetizing in space, should you have absolutely nothing else to eat. Other than that exact situation, I'm not sure there's anything that sounds less appetizing than a stick of food. After you got over the whole space connection, it doesn't sound like there was much to love about them — people generally remember them tasting horrible. They were sort of like Tootsie Rolls, but a little easier to chew and dry, rather than sticky. I'm no astronaut, but I'm pretty sure the world is most likely better off without this product on the shelves.

If you forgot about Motor Mouth Wax Lips (often just called Wack-O-Wax Lips), I'm sorry to tell you that I'm here to remind you about them and ruin both of our days. Wax Lips were exactly that — food-grade paraffin wax shaped to look like a pair of lips that kids would hold in their mouths via a bite plate. This bite plate was then usually chewed on and even eaten. And although technically it was edible, it was still actual wax, which is concerning to say the least.

The mere sight of these things viscerally brings the taste back into my mouth and makes me shudder. The waxy, non-flavored taste is nightmare-inducing, and I am still disgusted by it to this day. I do remember chewing (and even swallowing) parts of these, but only because I thought that's what you were supposed to do. But I never, ever enjoyed them. It's confusing to this day why I chose to do this. As far as classic candies from the '70s go, this is one that we should be done with forever. Also, big chunky wax lips are simply not funny enough to warrant eating wax. There, I said it.

Hostess tried to switch up their fruit filling-stuffed pies in the '80s by creating Pudding Pies, which were handheld pies with (you guessed it) chocolate, vanilla, and banana flavored puddings inside of them. These proved to be extremely messy, as you'd probably guess — unlike fruit filling, pudding was softer and tended to leak through the crust. Also, it just sort of plopped out when you bit into it, and were less than pleasant to eat.

As for the taste, some liked them, but there are plenty who didn't. Someone on Reddit described them as tasting like "industrial chemicals and love." The pudding itself was very rich, which was off-putting and a little too much for some people. So, let me check my notes here: It seems as though Hostess Pudding Pies were pie crusts stuffed with messy, goopy, rich (but oftentimes fondly remembered) chemicals. I'm no judge, but if I were, I'd bang my gavel and declare that pudding pies remain in the past — forever.

Nabisco Giggles Cookies were sandwich cookies with faces that debuted in the '80s. They had two types of cream inside of the cookie rather than one (fudge and vanilla), which was a treat for many kids, and you could choose from either a chocolate wafer base or a vanilla one. And although they apparently tasted great, they didn't make a lasting impact and were most likely only discontinued due to there being so many other cookies on the market.

Sure, that could be why they didn't last: too much cookie competition. Or, perhaps, there's another reason, such as that they are the most disturbing cookies I have ever seen in my life. The faces are not happy — they are sinister and unsettling. Those are not kind smiles but creepy ones full of trickery. Even if they were good, we have enough snack cookies to choose from. We don't ever need to bring back the ones with the demonic faces.

Del Monte Pudding Cups is yet another pudding product that many loved despite it coming with some ... interesting caveats. Many of the flavors were very loved (chocolate, butterscotch) while others were apparently quite disgusting (vanilla, tapioca), but the biggest issue wasn't even the actual pudding itself. It was the fact that the edges and lids of the cans were so sharp that it was very easy to slice your fingers on them.

Some cut their mouths on the sides of the cans trying to get all the pudding out with their tongue, others hurt their fingers on the jagged lids. Plus, even if the pudding was delicious, it had a tendency to, according to some, taste vaguely like metal (or at least have a sort of metallic edge to it). If these little cans of happiness were ever to reappear on shelves, they'd need some sort of quality control situation to protect the fingers and tongues of pudding enjoyers everywhere. Otherwise, no thanks.