Foods From The 1980s That Are Weirdly Making A Comeback

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 icebox cake with wavy alternating layers of vanilla ice cream and chocolate candy had its debut in the uk in 1982 and hit the us soon after although it has remained a beloved dessert in the uk it was discontinued in the u.s in the 1990s it took a few decades but on january 5th 2021 a press release from the parent company of ice cream brand good humor had some good news for fans fans have clamored for vionetta's return for almost 30 years in 2021 good humor grants their wish although it's unclear why vionetta 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 19 pandemic frozen foods which have 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 and 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 and james 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 secrums and bartles and james 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 rolls started turning up as dinnerware and party ware in the 1980s they weren't exactly new fact was red bulls 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 cafe 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 lunch melinda might i bet you something from the barkeep nissan 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 us 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 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 yeah i could 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 just got cold stuff and desserts boy some chicken wings had 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 covet 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 honeys 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 cereal 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 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 and 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 high c for one contained a mere 10 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 high c which has 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 high 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 tropic berry and that would have been a direct conflict now fans of high sea orange lava burst can breathe a sigh of relief on february 21st 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 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 and 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 our poisson du jour it's a loop de mer blue or the song served with a plumer vert de cochon diplomat on the more casual side of things were restaurants specializing in craves 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 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 long time 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 tragic comedy of it all but guess what eventually has made a comeback maybe your yogurt isn't so non-fat oh guess again tubby 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 nestle 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 and refrigerated foods association reported that even before the pandemic the frozen foods department of grocery stores nationwide had grown 918 million dollars in the preceding 52 weeks with sales totaling 54.6 billion dollars 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 covet 19 outbreak demand soared even further apparently seeing a great opportunity nestle 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 rode 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 feyerstein's real men donate quiche published in 1982 the best seller poked fun at quiche for being effeminate so influential was firestein'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 feeling you want by 2020 yes 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 had 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 prodom's innovation which introduced the nation to the sheer bliss that resulted from combining a well-buttered thin redfish filet 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 prudom 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 80s band metallica's own brand of high-end whiskey which launched in 2018 and is still earning raise check out one of our newest videos right here plus even more mashed videos about food trends are coming soon subscribe to our youtube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one [Music] you

Channel: Mashed

Views: 950,340

Keywords: mashed, food, 80s, 80s food, comeback food

Id: 13Pu3N4f15M

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 21 2021