12 California Grocery Staples From the ’70s That Disappeared for Good
In 1970s California, the Marathon bar came with a ruler printed on the wrapper, eight inches of braided caramel you could measure against your arm.
Brands like that packed the grocery shelves, and the big food companies don’t make them anymore.
Rivals outsold some. Critics tore into others. A few were just too strange to survive.
These are the California grocery staples from the ’70s that disappeared for good.
1. Koogle Peanut Butter
A cross-eyed cartoon mascot grinned from the Koogle jar, and California kids couldn’t get enough of it.
Kraft rolled it into test markets in 1971, out to turn peanut butter into dessert.
Banana, chocolate, cinnamon, or vanilla, swirled right into the spread.
It was basically a milkshake you spread on bread.
Kraft pulled it by 1978.
No sandwich has tasted like a banana milkshake since.
2. Marathon Bar
The Marathon bar was built to last, a braided rope of caramel and chocolate that ran a full eight inches.
Mars sold it from 1973, and the red wrapper printed a ruler on the back so you could prove it.
Kids measured it against their forearms.
All that chewy braid took forever to finish.
A bargain for a quarter.
Mars stopped making it in 1981.
The British Curly Wurly is its closest living cousin, but shipping a Curly Wurly to Fresno isn’t the same thing.
3. Freakies Cereal
Freakies turned a sugary breakfast into a saga, built around seven little monsters who lived in the Freakies Tree.
Ralston rolled it out in 1972.
The real prize was inside the box.
Magnets and little figures of BossMoss, Hamhose, and Gargle sent kids digging elbow-deep before the milk ever came out.
The sweet-corn puffs were fine, but the commercials and the toys did the selling.
Ralston pulled it in 1976, after barely four years, and a mid-1980s reboot flopped for good.
4. Jell-O 1-2-3
You whipped one packet of Jell-O 1-2-3 with water, poured it into a glass, and walked away.
Twenty minutes later it had split into three layers, a foamy top, a creamy middle, and firm gelatin on the bottom.
One box, three textures.
It looked like a magic trick at the dinner table.
General Foods sold it from 1969, and it turned up in many California kitchens through the seventies.
Jell-O retired it in 1996, and copycat recipes are the only way to taste those layers now.
5. Funny Face Drink Mix
Goofy Grape, Loud Mouth Lime, and Choo Choo Cherry grinned off the Funny Face packets.
Pillsbury built the drink mix as its answer to Kool-Aid, and leaned on those cartoon faces to sell it.
You stirred the powder into a pitcher of water, added your own sugar, and poured it over ice on a hot Central Valley afternoon.
The mascots sold it.
Kool-Aid outsold it for years, though.
Pillsbury kept it going until 1994, then let the goofy grape fade for good.
6. Tab
The pink Tab can sat in California refrigerators long before diet soda was everywhere.
Coca-Cola launched it in 1963 for anyone watching their weight, and by the seventies shoppers grabbed it at Vons and Alpha Beta without a second thought.
Then Coca-Cola rolled out Diet Coke in 1982, and Tab’s sales slid.
Tab never recovered.
Coca-Cola finally discontinued it in 2020, 57 years after that first pink can.
A stubborn few still hunt down the last cases.
Psst! How much do you know about California’s food history? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
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Answer nine questions on California’s food history and famous firsts. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Rice-A-Roni is nicknamed “the San Francisco treat.” Which city was it invented in?
7. Danish Go-Rounds
Instead of a flat rectangle, a Danish Go-Round came coiled in a spiral you unrolled as you ate.
Kellogg's pitched it as a toaster pastry you could eat one-handed, running it from 1968 against its own Pop-Tarts.
Strawberry, blueberry, and cinnamon fillings popped out of the toaster warm, iced on top.
The spiral was the gimmick.
They vanished by 1976, and a follow-up called Danish Rings didn't stick either.
Pop-Tarts are still on the shelf.
8. Screaming Yellow Zonkers
Screaming Yellow Zonkers came in a jet-black box covered in jokes, which was half the fun.
Inside sat a sweet, glazed popcorn, sold from 1969 to kids and grown-ups alike.
The black box was a rarity on the snack shelf, and the copy on it read like a comedy bit.
You read as you ate.
Lincoln Snacks kept the Zonkers going for decades, through pantries and road-trip coolers up and down the state.
ConAgra shut the line down in 2007.
A brief Walgreens run aside, the black box hasn't come back.
9. Carnation Breakfast Bars
Breakfast on a school morning meant grabbing a Carnation Breakfast Bar and heading for the door.
Nestlé's Carnation brand put them out in 1975 as the chewy cousin of its Instant Breakfast powder.
They tasted more like candy than cereal, which was exactly the point.
Nobody complained.
Kids ate them in the back of the station wagon on the way to school, and the chocolate chip version had a real following.
Nestlé discontinued the original bar in 1997, and fans have been asking for it back ever since.
10. Post Toasties
The blue Post Toasties box sat in California cupboards for generations, corn flakes from before Kellogg's owned that word.
C.W. Post created them in 1904 as his own answer to the cornflake.
For most of the twentieth century, they held their spot on the cereal shelf at Safeway and Ralphs.
Golden flakes, blue box.
Post discontinued the brand in 2016, after 112 years.
A lot of shoppers didn't notice until the box was already gone.
11. Chipos
General Mills bet that a potato chip pressed from dried potato could beat the real thing, and called it Chipos.
Advertised in the early 1970s as "new-fashioned" chips, they came from potato granules, crisp and less greasy, or so the pitch went.
California shoppers gave them a try.
The problem was the taste.
Testers ripped them, and the potato chip industry even went to court over whether General Mills could call them chips at all.
By the end of the seventies they were gone.
Pringles, the stacked chip Chipos chased, still sits on the shelf at every Vons in the state.
12. Kaboom Cereal
Kaboom put a circus in the cereal bowl, with a grinning clown on the box and smiling-face marshmallows in the mix.
General Mills launched it in 1969, and it rode through the seventies on sheer color.
A bowl of grinning faces.
It never sold like the big-name cereals, so it hung on as a fringe favorite instead, tucked on the bottom shelf.
A loyal core bought it for decades anyway.
General Mills discontinued Kaboom in 2010, and diehards still sign petitions to bring it back.
The petitions haven't worked, and no register has rung up a box of Kaboom since.
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