It turns out that we're just far enough away from the 1980s to be hit with some serious
nostalgia. In today's terrifying 21st century world, we're craving a little simplicity:
and that includes some comfort foods from better times. These 80s foods are making a
total comeback.
Viennetta, a beloved mashup of ice-cream cake and ice-box cake, with wavy alternating layers
of vanilla ice cream and chocolate candy, had its debut in the U.K. in 1982 and hit
the U.S. soon after. Although it has remained a beloved dessert in the U.K., it was discontinued
in the U.S. in the 1990s. It took a few decades, but on January 5, 2021, a press release from
the parent company of ice cream brand Good Humor, had some good news for fans.
"Fans have clamored for Viennetta's return for almost 30 years. In 2021, Good Humor grants
their wish."
Although it's unclear why Viennetta ever disappeared from American supermarkets and frozen food
aisles in the first place, it's easy to infer why Good Humor was eager to bring it back
now. In addition to giving shoppers a much-needed pick-me-up, it made financial sense. Over
the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, frozen foods — which had been losing market share
in recent years — had made a huge comeback. And the winner among frozen food categories
has been ice cream, according to the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association, with
sales representing $6.7 billion.
Forbes wrote about the return of the 1980s-style wine cooler back in 2019, and technically,
it's true: the iconic wine-cooler maker Bartles & Jaymes had come out with a pre-packaged
canned cocktail that is both fizzy and made with wine. However, what is in those cans
along with the fizzy wine is not what people who came of wine-drinking age during the wine-cooler-80s
think of as "wine coolers."
The wine coolers of the 1980s were made from wine, carbonated water, and sugar, which made
them as close as you could get to a commercially bottled wine spritzer, which is just wine
diluted with soda. It's not that anyone really needed a pre-bottled wine spritzer when all
you need to make your own wine spritzer at home is a glass of wine and a spritz. But
1980s wine coolers had their fans — so many, in fact, that wine coolers became big business,
with Gallo, Seagrams, and Bartles & Jaymes as a few of the most popular players.
But then Congress got involved, and long story short, made "wine blending bad business" and
became a not-so-lucrative one at that. In response, cooler-manufacturers started replacing
wine with cheap malt liquor, which is how Zima came to exist. On the plus side, taking
wine out of the equation enabled beverage manufacturers to get super-creative with their
flavors. On the negative side, is a wine cooler that waters down its wine with malt liquor
really a wine cooler?
When bread bowls started turning up as dinnerware and partyware in the 1980s, they weren't exactly
new. Fact was, bread bowls have been around since at least as far back as the Middle Ages,
when repurposing a stale loaf of bread by hollowing it out and filling it up with hot
stew, soup, or porridge became a way to cope amid famine conditions.
Accordingly, the advent of bread bowls in the 1980s represented a renaissance of sorts,
though it was an ironic one, given that bread bowls made their 1980s-return as a way of
giving soup merchants an excuse to charge more for their wares.
Today, bread bowls appear to be riding the wave of a comeback once again. And once again,
the comeback may represent the very antithesis of the purpose that bread bowls were originally
meant to serve, because this comeback appears to have been engineered single-handedly by
bakery-café fast casual restaurant giant, Panera Bread.
And, well, if Panera Bread says it's a hot new trend, then who is to argue?
"Welcome to Medieval Times, I'll be your serving wench, Melinda, might I fetch you something
from the barkeep?"
Nissin kicked off America's love of ramen in 1970, when it first started appearing on
grocery store shelves everywhere in the states. Ramen rose to become super trendy in the 1980s
because it was the perfect way to put an affordable but still tasty meal on the table, and it
was also just right for the Cold War. That was then in full swing at the time, and people
had every right to be concerned. Ramen helped — everyone knew these packets of noodles
would survive a nuclear winter. Not exactly cheerful, is it?
As far as college kids go, ramen noodles never really fell from favor. Instant ramen remains
their go-to meal and late-night snack it has always been. However, in recent years, ramen
has also taken on a more sophisticated, worldly vibe that has nothing to do with instant noodles,
Styrofoam cups, or college kids, for that matter. And that is its own kind of comeback.
As of 2021, you can find restaurants dedicated to ramen in major cities everywhere. In 2019
alone, the World Instant Noodle Foundation says:
"106.4 billion servings of ramen were eaten worldwide — working out to 290 million per
day,"
Today, the U.S. is the sixth-biggest consumer of ramen, and the biggest outside of Asia.
And yes, in case you were wondering, tradition dictates that you are duty-bound to slurp
your ramen loudly.
[slurping]
Steve Henson may have already had his mayonnaise-and-buttermilk-based salad dressing in mind, but things really
kicked off when, in 1954, he and his wife moved to California and opened a guest ranch,
the Hidden Valley. They served the dressing, of course, and it became so popular that guests
started requesting souvenir jars. In 1983, Hidden Valley Ranch Salad Dressing was introduced
in supermarkets, and an obsession spread across America — peaking in 1986 with the introduction
of Cool Ranch Doritos.
For a good, long time after that, ranch dressing remained a part of Americana, but it was widely
reviled by foodies who maintained that it was, for some reason, unworthy of a place
in a real kitchen. Fortunately, that attitude seems to have gone the way of the dodo.
At first, that comeback might have been characterized as mildly transgressive, with people buying
into ranch dressing primarily because it represented a "guilty pleasure."
"I could eat a whole bottle."
"I could eat a whole bottle, too!"
Before too long, however, ranch dressing and ranch seasoning started appearing in places
that would never have tolerated it in the past — in upscale kitchens, drizzled on
pizza, marinating lamb, and acting as the "new" dipping sauce for chicken wings.
With the 21st century bringing with it a whole new national wing obsession, ranch dressing
is now truly having a moment.
Speaking of ranch dressing, let's talk about the food that's helping boost the one-time
guilty pleasure's popularity — the Buffalo wing. Buffalo chicken wings rose to prominence
in the 1980s, when health-conscious consumers started favoring boneless-skinless breast
meat. This left chicken suppliers with a chicken wing surplus. Hoping to rid themselves of
that surplus, chicken suppliers took to selling wings on the cheap. Restaurants and bars saw
this as an opportunity to purchase inexpensive protein, spice it, fry it, and sell it for
cheap — or, even with a reasonable markup.
As an extra-added bonus, spicy chicken wings tend to make people thirsty, which translates
loosely into "more beer gets sold." On top of that, all of this was happening as sports
bars started popping up across America. It was the perfect storm of circumstances, and
while chicken wings were already well-entrenched in American culture, people started to truly
begin rediscovering both chicken and chicken wings.
"I'll have chicken wings."
"Kitchen's closed until dinner. We've just got cold stuff and desserts."
"Boy, some chicken wings would really hit the spot."
In part, that may be due to the fact that chicken wings are one of the easiest foods
to order and enjoy via takeout at a time when takeout was one of the only options for accessing
fast food . And this is despite the fact that at one point during the pandemic, chicken
wings were associated with a nasty rumor that one could catch COVID-19 from frozen food
packaging. That rumor has been thankfully disproven, and chicken wings are here to stay.
Sugary breakfast cereals have been around since 1939 and ironically, Jim Rex, the inventor
of the first sugary cereal — appropriately named Ranger Joe Wheat Honnies — came up
with the idea because he was horrified by how much sugar he saw his kids dumping into
their bowls of non-sugar-cereal.
Post's Sugar Crisp came next, according to Women's Health:
"Released in 1948...it was first in a long line of sugar-laden cereals that would soon
become the norm."
By the 1980s, sugar was the name of the game, and once sugar cereals started partnering
with all the kids' favorite television shows, they locked down the interest of American
children.
By the 1990s, however, consumers were becoming increasingly health-conscious, and sugar cereals
came to shoulder at least some of the blame for the increase in obesity among American
children. Defensively, many sugar cereals began dropping the word "sugar" from their
names.
Now it appears that cereal manufacturers have once again been circling around to the sugary
cereals they know work really well. The reason? Dwindling sales. As much as American consumers
don't "want" sugary breakfast cereal, they also don't seem to have any interest in buying
breakfast cereal that doesn't come pre-sweetened.
Accordingly, cereal manufacturers have been steadily increasing the sugar in their cereals
in an attempt to lure back customers that have started looking elsewhere for their breakfasts.
Given the resurgence in popularity of sugar-laden cereals, it shouldn't be all that surprising
to learn that sugar-sweetened fruit "drinks" are coming back into style. Did you notice
we didn't say "juice"? That's because the beloved fruit "drinks" that had their heyday
in the 1980s tended to contain very little actual juice.
Hi-C, for one, contained a mere 10 percent juice — and this remained the case in the
2010s, USA Today reported. What these fruit drinks did contain was a lot of sugar, often
in the form of high fructose corn syrup.
Hi-C, which had been around since 1946, enjoyed a huge surge of popularity in the 1980s thanks,
in part, to the introduction of their Ecto Cooler juice boxes. Hi-C became a mainstay
at McDonald's, with the Orange Lava Burst flavor becoming a cult favorite. So then why
did McDonald's discontinue it in 2017?
Strangely enough, the decision had less to do with sugar and more to do with licensing
obligations. In 2017, McDonald's had recently entered into a partnership with Coca-Cola,
makers of Sprite TropicBerry — and that would have been a direct conflict.
Now, fans of Hi-C Orange Lava Burst can breathe a sigh of relief. On February 21, 2021, McDonald's
announced it was bringing the popular drink back, and that it would be available nationwide
by summer.
You know those tins of flavored popcorn that people send as gifts around the holidays?
Well, you can thank the 1980s for that. In 1983, The New York Times wrote:
"A scant two years ago, there was plain popcorn and buttered popcorn and caramel popcorn,
and a few slightly more exotic flavors such as cinnamon for those who would dare, [but
now, there is] pizza-flavored popcorn, watermelon-flavored popcorn and taco-flavored popcorn, and the
stores that sell them are called gourmet shops in the industry."
The New York Times also pointed out at the time that
"About 70 percent of the country's popcorn is eaten at home, generating about $200 million
in sales during 1982, [with] popcorn confections and other specialty items accounting for another
$100 million."
Again, that was in 1983, but looking back, it could seem as if The New York Times was
penning a future-letter to Pandemic America, one which predicted the resurgence of home-popped
popcorn and popcorn confections at the time when much of America found themselves stuck
at home.
The latest varieties of flavored popcorn are wilder than ever, and it's absolutely possible
to get popcorn that includes such flavors as fried-chicken, marmite, pumpkin spice,
lemon sherbet, gin and tonic, dark chocolate pretzel, cookies 'n cream, and bacon and cheddar.
Americans started taking a keen interest in French cuisine starting in the 1970s. Some
of the fancier French restaurants were serving nouvelle cuisine, with all its detailed precision,
high-class atmosphere, and a price tag that was just as high-class.
"Well, our first special tonight is… [speaking French]
On the more casual side of things were restaurants specializing in crepes and fondue. But by
the mid-1980s, all these restaurants tended to have one item in common: French onion soup.
So ubiquitous was onion soup in those days that it came to be synonymous with steakhouses
as well as French restaurants. Although French cuisine in America, with its heavy sauces
and hefty price tag, had to move aside and make room for the introduction and rise of
other ethnic cuisines such as Japanese, Thai, pan-Asian, Northern Italian, and Indian, it
appears that French onion soup is on the rise once again, at least at Panera Bread — especially
at Panera Bread.
It took Panera Bread's removal of French onion soup from its menu for its diehard fans to
realize the heartbreak. According to Ad Age, the disappearance of this longtime favorite
was met with such outrage and so many complaints that Panera made a wise decision and put it
right back on the menu.
Although yogurt has been in the U.S. since the early 1900s, frozen yogurt wasn't even
invented until the 1970s. Even then, that first frozen yogurt was designed to be scooped
the way you scoop hard ice cream –but it didn't really catch on. Then, in the 1980s,
soft-serve frozen yogurt was invented.
Marketed as a soft serve dessert that tasted similar to ice cream, it took off in popularity
as consumers began to pay attention to "healthy eating" and "healthy ingredients," and by
1990, frozen yogurt represented 10 percent of frozen dessert sales.
And therein lies the rub. Frozen yogurt was, ultimately, just another frozen dessert. As
it turned out, no matter how healthy frozen yogurt might try to be, it's also pretty darn
caloric, and we all learned that it wasn't a drastically better choice than ice cream.
The disappointment was so palpable that Seinfeld mined it for the tragi-comedy of it all.
"Maybe your yogurt isn't so non-fat!"
"Oh, guess again, tubby."
But guess what eventually has made a comeback? Frozen yogurt, only now it's not meant to
taste like ice cream so much as like tangy yogurt, and now its marketing didn't necessarily
promise low calories, low fat, or low anything, according to The Seattle Times.
Lean Cuisine's pre-prepared and calorie-conscious frozen meals debuted in the U.S. in 1981.
Since then, the frozen food brand has been available in supermarkets across the country.
However, it lost some considerable footing over the years, according to The Atlantic,
which reported in 2014 that America's then-60-year-long love affair with frozen prepared meals was
going through a bit of a rough patch. In fact, there was talk at the time of Nestlé unloading
the brand altogether. Good thing they hung in there, because frozen foods have been enjoying
a huge comeback.
In April 2020, the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association reported that even before
the pandemic, the frozen foods department of grocery stores nationwide, had grown $918
million in the preceding 52 weeks, with sales totaling $54.6 billion.
As the months went on and more and more restaurants and fast casual businesses continued to keep
their doors shut and services limited due to the COVID-19 outbreak, demand soared even
further. Apparently seeing a great opportunity, Nestlé grabbed it, relaunching more than
half its existing offerings and introducing brand extension, Life Cuisine.
Quiche became popular in the 1970s and was still enjoying its heyday in the early 1980s,
when
"it was served in countless restaurants on stoneware plates with melon wedges, grapes
and some kind of green shrub."
That's what The New York Times wrote in 1987 — in an apparent attempt to help stage a
comeback for the dairy-rich meal-in-a-pastry.
That comeback had become necessary thanks to the publication of Bruce Fierstein's Real
Men Don't Eat Quiche. Published in 1982, the bestseller poked fun at quiche for being "effeminate."
So influential was Fierstein's book that the Columbus Dispatch reported
"Quiche sales dropped precipitously as men everywhere immediately stopped eating the
tasty pastry."
Now, however, quiche is making a comeback, and it's high time too — not only is it
great for any meal of the day, but perhaps best of all, it's so versatile that you can
make one with almost any filling you want.
By 2020, quiche was in the headlines again when The Dallas Morning News observed that
quiche is "emerging" once again because
"quiche is all things to all meals, the answer to what is for breakfast, lunch, brunch, or
dinner. Add fruit for breakfast or brunch, or salad for lunch or dinner, and meals are
complete."
The late great chef, Paul Prudhomme has been credited with introducing the world to blackened
redfish. Prudhomme's innovation, which introduced the nation to the sheer bliss that resulted
from combining a well-buttered thin redfish fillet with a spice mixture. It single-handedly
brought Cajun food to prominence in the 1980s.
In fact, the Cajun trend became so hot in the 1980s, when Prudhomme opened a pop-up
version of his legendary New Orleans restaurant, K-Paul's, on New York City's Upper West Side
in 1985, it drew a crowd of 250 people — even after the New York City health department
shut the place down temporarily over hygiene concerns. In the years that followed, redfish
became so popular that it became overfished – to the point where it is no longer legal
to fish for it in most of the U.S.
But who needs redfish, when you can enhance just about any animal protein by coating it
with butter and blackening spices and allowing it to char — especially when those blackening
spices are now readily available, pre-mixed, at virtually any supermarket?
Food bloggers everywhere soon announced that with or without redfish, blackening was ready
for its comeback, and it was true. "Blackened" has even lent its name to the 80's band Metallica's
own brand of high-end whiskey, which launched in 2018 and is still earning raves.
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