9 Nostalgic Candies From The '80s Gen X Remembers Fondly

The 1980s were nothing if not audacious. Throughout the decade, it seemed like everything pop culture-related was designed to blow your mind, from flashy fashion to over-the-top special effects in films, risqué music videos, and groundbreaking video games you could play at home. The '80s also saw plenty of quirky food trends, especially in candy. At that time, candy makers really began experimenting with oddball flavors, as well as eye-catching ads and other gimmicks to make their products stand out.

As a child of the '80s, I consumed my fair share of wild and wonderful candies. Some were straight-up bizarre, so it's not altogether surprising that they were eventually discontinued. Others stuck around for decades, but now they seem to be slipping off the radar. These are some old-school candies that will remind many of my fellow Gen Xers of a time when you could hit up the candy shop or convenience store and come out with eccentric treats like chocolate-peanut butter cookie bars, sour jawbreakers, and chewing gum that promised to quench your thirst.

If you watched television in the 1980s, there's a good chance you remember the Bonkers commercials. Each one featured giant pieces of fruit crashing through buildings and taking people out, which was a pretty attention-grabbing way to emphasize how fruity the candy was supposed to be. The ads also used catchphrases like "It makes a big hit" and "Bonks you out."

I would be lying if I said those ads didn't persuade me to buy more than a few packs of those fruit chew candies. That, and the fact that they often came with fun incentives like WWF and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles stickers. But beyond the clever advertising, Bonkers were pretty darn tasty. The candies were shaped like pieces of bubble gum, with a chewy exterior and a soft, tangy center. They came in flavors like strawberry, grape, watermelon (my favorite), and chocolate.

Nabisco released Bonkers in the mid-1980s, along with the quirky ad campaign, and both were big hits. The candies were super popular for about a decade, but when interest began to wane in the late 1990s, Nabisco discontinued them. In 2012, Leaf Brands took over the trademark, and there was talk of bringing Bonkers back, but so far, they haven't made an official comeback.

Since Hershey's chocolate bars have been around since 1900, it's safe to say many of us grew up eating them. It all started with the classic Milk Chocolate Bar, and since then, Hershey has added a slew of other flavors (which we taste-tested and ranked). Sadly, some of those flavors have disappeared despite being wildly popular. Take the BarNone, which was a Gen X favorite. Fans loved it so much that they even petitioned The Hershey Company to bring it back.

Hershey's released the BarNone in 1987 to much fanfare. The chocolate bar featured crispy chocolate wafers, chocolate cream, crunchy peanuts, and a milk chocolate coating. And because it was the 1980s, there of course had to be a catchy ad campaign. The BarNone ads touted the treat as the only bar that could "Tame the chocolate beastie" in all of us.

Many have argued that BarNone was pure perfection, with its varied textures and sweet-and-salty chocolate-and-peanut flavors. With that in mind, it's unclear why Hershey's tweaked the formula. In the 1990s, it added caramel and changed the bar to a two-stick format — and customers hated it. By 1997, they discontinued the bar. Iconic Candy revived it in 2019, but many say it's just not the same as the original.

The 1980s were a wild decade for bubble gums. Sure, you could get classics that had been around for decades, like Bazooka and Doublemint, but there were also bubble gums with flavors you wouldn't believe existed. One of the oddest offerings was GatorGum, a chewing gum that tasted like Gatorade and was even marketed as a way to quench your thirst.

GatorGum debuted in 1970 with two flavors: lemon-lime and orange. Each package contained five sticks of gum and bore the phrase "Helps quench thirst." Television commercials in the 1980s further helped drive that point home with somewhat cringey claims like "Its unique formula helps turn on the juice" and "If you want to lick dry mouth, chew up a storm with GatorGum. No drought about it!"

Whether GatorGum truly helped quench thirst is up for debate, but there's no denying the citrusy flavors did make mouths pucker. And dubious claims aside, the gum was well-liked by many up until it was discontinued in 1989. On forums, many Gen Xers remember buying the gum at sports stores and chewing it during baseball and football games. One Reddit user said, "It really was a very good gum. My mouth is all sour remembering it."

These days, plenty of white chocolate bars (which we also tried and ranked) are available, but in the 1980s, one bar reigned supreme: the Nestlé Alpine White. Released in 1986, it featured crunchy almond pieces encased in creamy white chocolate. I can attest that it was a seriously good chocolate bar, but what really made it a cultural phenomenon was the famous "Sweet Dreams" Alpine White commercial.

Based on the whimsical artworks of Maxfield Parrish, Nestlé's "Sweet Dreams" ad featured ethereal scenes of mountains, women swinging on swings, and men staring off into the distance. Interspersed were enticing shots of the Alpine White bar; add to that a rock ballad-style song with the catchy chorus "Sweet dreams you can't resist. N-E-S-T-L-E-S," and it's easy to see why it caught people's attention.

While the artsy ad may have turned people to the Alpine White bar, the dreamy flavor made many instant converts. It had tons of fans, which makes its 1993 disappearance puzzling. Nestlé has never given a clear explanation for why it discontinued the bar, but whatever the reason, fans haven't forgotten about it. There's both a Facebook page and a Change.org petition dedicated to bringing the Alpine White bar back.

Out of all the old-school candy bars that have disappeared since the 1980s, the one that causes the most consternation among Gen Xers is the PB Max. Mars Inc. unleashed it in 1989, and it quickly won fans over with its delightful mix of whole-grain cookie pieces, peanut butter, and milk chocolate. Even better, the peanut butter was the real deal, and Mars didn't skimp on that creamy layer.

In terms of sales, the PB Max went gangbusters right off the bat. According to the Dallas Observer, it generated $50 million in just two years. So why did Mars Inc. decide to pull it from the shelves in 1994? It certainly wasn't because of a lack of fans, flagging sales, or a misguided tweak to the recipe. No, rumor has it that the family running the company simply didn't like peanut butter.

To say that people miss the PB Max would be a wild understatement. Forums are rife with people lamenting the candy bar's disappearance. For example, one Reddit user said, "My life has never been the same since they discontinued them," to which another user responded, "I'm with you on this one. I rue the day these disappeared." There's also a Change.org petition dedicated to it that's titled "Restore PB Max's Honor."

For plenty of Gen X kids, Jujubes were classic movie theater snacks. The brightly colored gummy candies came in an array of flavors, including lime, orange, cherry, lemon, and lilac. They were just hard enough that you needed to give them a good chew, and that meant that a box would typically last a good portion of a movie. They were also notorious for sticking to teeth and pulling out dental fixtures like fillings and crowns.

Although they were very popular in the 1980s, Jujubes had already been around for decades. The Heide Candy Company launched them in 1920 and kept them going strong up until 1995, when The Hershey Company took over. From there, the brand changed hands a few times, and it never really got the attention it needed to stay fresh and relevant.

The Ferrara Candy Company was the last in line to own Jujubes, and it discontinued the candy in 2023. Oddly, though, the company offers a similar product called Jujyfruits. While the new product is basically the same concept (gummy fruits in a variety of flavors), there are some differences; the main one is that they come in the shapes of bananas, pea pods, raspberries, and asparagus. According to one Reddit user, "Jujyfruits are fine but absolutely different vibe."

As mentioned, there was no shortage of gum to choose from in the 1980s, and one that holds a particularly fond place in my heart (and many other Gen Xers') is Fruit Stripe Gum. As a kid, it was hard to resist that rainbow-striped packaging adorned with a cartoon zebra. And when you opened up the package, you got sticks of equally colorful striped gum in a variety of flavors like cherry, orange, lemon, and peach.

The Beech-Nut Company launched Fruit Stripe Gum in 1961, and it was a hit for its fun colors and fruity flavors. And even though those flavors didn't last long (if you know, you know), the gum remained popular for decades thanks to clever marketing. In the 1970s, the gum got its famous zebra mascot, and by the 1980s, Beech-Nut had introduced a bubble gum option. Later decades would see fun novelties like wrappers that could be used as temporary tattoos.

Sadly, Fruit Stripe Gum started to fall off the radar in the 2020s. By then, the brand had passed among several companies, including stints with Nabisco, The Hershey Company, and Farley's & Sather Candy Company (which later became the Ferrara Candy Company). In 2024, Ferrara announced it would discontinue the gum because consumer preferences were shifting.

If you were a candy-loving kid in the 1980s, there was a good chance that Willy Wonka Brands was on your radar. The company produced some of the decade's most iconic candies, including Nerds, Runts, and Laffy Taffy. And if you were a fan of jawbreakers and sour candies, then the Dina-Sour Eggs were an absolute must. They debuted in 1981, and they were unlike anything else on the market.

There were a few major things that set Dina-Sour Eggs apart from your run-of-the-mill jawbreakers. For one, they featured four flavored rings. As you sucked on them, they would melt to reveal mouth-puckering layers of grape, orange, cherry, and lemon. Plus, each egg could last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. As an added bonus, they came in small and giant sizes.

Dina-Sour Eggs remained popular into the 1990s, in part because Willy Wonka kept finding ways to make the packaging more interesting. I remember later versions included trivia questions, and some included collector cards. But apparently that wasn't enough to make the jawbreakers everlasting. It's unclear what caused their decline, but by the late 1990s, the eggs were pretty much gone from the candy aisle.

Fruit snacks were all the rage in the 1980s, and it's easy to see why. Kids loved them because they were sweet treats in fun shapes and colors. Parents were also on board because of the whole fruit aspect. But while many old-school fruit snacks did contain real fruit or fruit concentrates, they were also loaded with sugars, which essentially made them gummy candies. One brand that was huge when I was growing up was Sunkist Fun Fruits.

It's hard to find any definitive details about exactly when Sunkist launched Fun Fruits, but by the mid-1980s, they were everywhere. Television commercials aimed at kids depicted "Fun Fruit trees" raining down fruit candies, while ads aimed at adults claimed the snacks were made with real oranges, cherries, grapes, and strawberries. The individually wrapped packets were perfect for popping into lunchboxes or tearing into for an afternoon snack.

Fun Fruits took many forms over the years, from the pellet-shaped gummies of the early days to the dinosaur-shaped versions of the late '80s. While those old-school versions are no longer around, the product hasn't completely gone away. Sunkist has periodically brought them back in different forms and under different names, like Sunkist Fruit Bites and Sunkist Fruit Snacks.