10 Snacks Georgians Grew Up With That Vanished From Store Shelves

Your hand drifts to the candy rack at the Kroger on Cobb Parkway, reaching for the snack your childhood ran on.

It’s not there.

Georgia kids grew up on a whole shelf of snacks that stopped showing up, and you still miss them by name.

These are the snacks Georgians grew up with that vanished from store shelves.

1. Marathon Bar

The Marathon Bar was eight inches of braided caramel dipped in milk chocolate, and Mars printed a ruler right on the back of the red wrapper.

Yes, a ruler.

It hit shelves in 1973 and practically dared you to make it last, which is exactly what the name promised.

The braid was the whole gimmick, a rope of caramel you could unwind before you ate it.

Georgia kids treated it like a recess-long project, pulling one strand loose at a time on the ride home.

Mars pulled the plug in 1981, barely eight years into the run, blaming soft sales and a bar too long for the racks.

Few bars have braided caramel like that on an American shelf since, and Cadbury’s Curly Wurly only comes close from an ocean away.

2. Planters PB Crisps

Planters PB Crisps looked like a giant peanut and cracked open to a smooth peanut butter filling inside a crunchy shell.

Mr. Peanut’s own snack.

They showed up around 1992 in the chip aisle, top hat, monocle, and all.

The peanut shape came molded right into the snack, not just printed on the bag.

Planters discontinued them by the late 1990s, blaming slow sales, and the fans refused to let go.

There are online petitions, a dedicated website, and decades of pleading.

Planters has said there are no plans to bring them back.

3. Jell-O Pudding Pops

Jell-O Pudding Pops froze chocolate pudding onto a stick, and comedian Bill Cosby sold a generation of Georgia kids on them.

No bowl required.

General Foods rolled them out at the tail end of the 1970s, and within five years they were a runaway hit.

At the peak, the brand was pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Then sales cooled and the brand changed hands more than once.

A Popsicle-label revival limped into the 2000s before fading out around 2011.

The knockoffs never nailed the texture.

4. Keebler Magic Middles

Keebler Magic Middles hid a soft fudge center inside a plain-looking shortbread cookie, and the first bite felt like a magic trick.

Hence the name.

The Keebler Elves started baking them around 1989, in shortbread, chocolate chip, and peanut butter shells.

A smaller Mini Middles version showed up around 1991 and disappeared right alongside the original.

That center stayed gooey even at room temperature, which nobody outside the factory could explain.

By the end of the 1990s, they were gone.

Keebler never did say how they kept the middle so soft.

5. Nestlé Alpine White

Nestlé Alpine White was a white chocolate bar flecked with almonds, wrapped in a jingle nobody could shake.

Sweet dreams you can’t resist.

It arrived in 1986, back when white chocolate still felt fancy at the Winn-Dixie candy rack.

The commercial, all soft light and a whispered N-E-S-T-L-E-S, outlived the candy bar.

Nestlé stopped making it around 1993.

The band Faith No More later covered the jingle, long after the candy left shelves.

6. PB Max

PB Max stacked peanut butter on a whole-grain cookie under a thick chocolate coat, and shoppers loved it.

So why did it come off shelves around 1994?

The Mars family reportedly couldn't stand peanut butter.

That's the whole story.

A candy giant walked away from a peanut butter winner over a family grudge, and in Georgia, peanut country, that call still stings.

7. Oreo Big Stuf

The Oreo Big Stuf was a single sandwich cookie about the size of a hockey puck, sold one to a wrapper.

Bigger than your palm.

Nabisco sold them starting in 1987, in packs of ten, each about three inches across.

A single Big Stuf carried a couple hundred calories, which felt like the whole point.

Georgia kids swapped them, split them, and pretended a single cookie counted as sharing.

Nabisco stopped making them around 1991, and the giant-cookie fad faded fast.

Double Stuf and Mega Stuf are the closest cousins now, and neither needs its own package.

8. Butterfinger BB's

Butterfinger BB's shrank the crispy, peanut-buttery Butterfinger into little poppable balls under a chocolate shell.

Bart Simpson hawked them in the ads starting in 1992, which made them feel like the coolest thing in the checkout line.

The trouble was the chocolate.

It melted off the BB's faster than you could finish the bag, and a warm Georgia afternoon turned the whole thing to mush.

Nestlé discontinued them in 2006.

Butterfinger Bites came along later, but the tiny poppable version never made it back.

9. Keebler Pizzarias

Keebler Pizzarias were pizza-flavored chips folded like tiny slices, in flavors like Cheese Pizza, Zesty Pepperoni, and Pizza Supreme.

Pizza, minus the oven.

The Keebler Elves launched them in 1991, and they rode the after-school snack wave through the early 1990s.

Each chip had ridges stamped in to mimic a folded slice of pizza.

Then a buyer split Keebler apart, and Pizzarias never resurfaced.

The trademark landed with a company that revives old names, but the chips have stayed gone.

The comeback petitions are still floating around online.

10. Fruit Stripe Gum

Fruit Stripe Gum came in bright candy stripes, fronted by a cartoon zebra named Yipes, with a flavor that faded about ninety seconds in.

Sweet at first, then nothing.

It had been around since the 1960s, sold first by Beech-Nut and handed down through a few owners after that.

Georgia kids peeled the wrappers for the temporary zebra tattoos as much as for the gum.