There are many things which are no longer available for purchase that I remember fondly. The older I get, the more of them there are...
1. Fizzies: Small discs of concentrated sugar-flavor. Drop one in a glass of water and it behaved like a kid's version of Alca-Seltzer. Within a minute, you had pop. Rootbeer was my favorite. The most fun thing to do was to put one in your mouth. It bubbled over. Way fun.
2. Burger basket from A&W: Used to have these restaurants all over the country. When making those long summer trips with the family in the station wagon, we'd see billboards advertising the nearest A&W "Just 5 miles away!" We'd pull up to the drive inn, and place our order at our own squawk box. A teen ager would bring it out in minutes, hooking the tray to the drivers-side window, which would be 3 quarters of the way rolled down. We'd all get a cheeseburger, rings, and a rootbeer. Rootbeers were "DAD" size, "MOM" size, or "JUNIOR" size. I'd always beg for at least a "MOM" size. All frosty cold and served in a GLASS mug. The modern plastic mugs supplied in the few remaining A&Ws just aren't the same. God those rings were fine!
3. Campbell's Condensed Black Bean Soup: My favorite of the many discontinued soups. I've read where many professional chefs always had a few cans in their kitchens, just adding a little sherry and calling it their own. Veneta hated it, mainly because of one time when I was having some and opened my mouth to show it. Ironically, she now is a huge fan of black beans, just not in soup. Other favorites that are no longer with us include Chicken Gumbo, Pepper Pot, and Scotch Broth.
4. Assort-o-Mint Lifesavers: Always my favorite of the Lifesavers brand, along with Wild Cherry and Butter Rum. Assort-o-Mint included one candy cane flavor, two spearmint, two peppermint, and two wintergreen. Marvelous!
5. Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors: The one in our neighborhood, 50th and Penn, changed into a bagel place about 20 years ago. Just what we needed. You could get an ice cream cake there of any of their non-sherbert flavors as long as you gave them 3 days notice. Each Halloween they would serve Pumpkin and Licorice ice cream. Once Joe, Matt and I were staying with Grandma Frances, who lived within walking distance. We walked on over one sunny day and bought licorice cones. Black ice cream which had melted all over our faces by the time we made it back to her house. Sooooo good. Another time in High School my crew was at a party in another part of town. For some reason we were all pretty hungry and needed an ice cream fix. Dave Duncan demanded that we drive over to 31 Flavors, which was way out of our way. When we got there, he ordered vanilla.
6. Funny Face Drink Mix: Little packets of drink mix powder, competing with Kool-Aid. The commercials were a hoot. Loud Mouth Lime, Goofy Grape, Rootin-Tootin Raspberry, Lefty Lemon, Freckle Faced Strawberry. Chinese Cherry gave way to Choo-Choo Cherry, and Indian Orange to Jolly Ollie Orange. I believe they kept Sambo Blackberry, but only in the South...
7. Bugles, Whistles, and Daisys: Wonderful snack crackers. Bugles were horn-shaped, substantial and corn flavored. Daisys corn flavored but much more delicate, and with a flower shape ideal for scooping. Whistles were hollow, cheesy tubes, and the cheesiest of all snack foods. They were really big back in 1964.
8. RC/Diet-Rite Cola: First of all, ALL pop is better in returnable glass bottles. Yes, kids, if you brought back an empty pop bottle to any store, you would get like three cents. Bring back four bottles, and you could afford a comic book. Anyway, Coke and Pepsi were the kings of cola. Royal Crown (RC) was number three, and from the South. We started getting RC in Minnesota about the time that Dr. Pepper made its appearance as well. RC was great. A little sharper than the other colas. Diet Rite was the first diet pop, even pre-dated TAB, and was what our mothers would get. I thought it tasted pretty good as well. If one couldn't afford RC, then Shasta pop was next rung down on the soda latter. Holiday pop, from Holiday stores and gas stations, was the lowest of the low. Growing up in a house that only allowed soda pop for medicinal purposes (one tablespoon of Bubble Up every hour when you had the flu) Holiday pop would have been fine with me.
9. Quisp and Quake: Big time sugar cereals around 1965 or so, as I recall. Both tasted much the same, like Sugar Smacks, but probably had different shapes. The big deal with those cereals were the ads. Quisp was a cute little alien, while Quake was a loud mouth construction worker. Within months the cereal company sponsored a contest where kids would mail in a ballot to decide which cereal would win, and which would go away. I forget who won (I think it was Quake) but within a year or two both were gone. They were the two best sugar cereals around until the Cap'n made his appearance.
10. Arthur Treacher's: Best fish and chips this side of the pond, and I still bitch about this loss weekly, as my poor wife will attest. For years, once a month I would go downtown to buy the latest Ring Magazine from the Shinder's Book Store on 7th and Hennepin, then go across the street to Treacher's to buy lunch and read my magazine. I would always get the Admiral's Feast, consisting of three large pieces of cod, fried in beef suet, some wonderful thick-cut chips fried in beef suet, two hush puppies fried in beef suet, and some fabulous cole slaw, along with a container of tarter sauce. On the tables were bottles of malt vinegar, and it would take half a bottle to properly soak my fish and chips. It would take me a good hour to savor both my meal and the Ring's monthly ratings of professional fighters. So good I am still mourning the loss thirty years later. The frigging Star Trib took it upon themselves to print, on the front page, the caloric counts of the standard meals from our local fast food restaurants. Treacher's was out of business within six months.
I miss many other things, such as frosty cherry flavored popsicles (they are no longer frosty), Henry's Hamburgers (17 cents, more flavor than that other place), Jim Jams (like Banana Flips but vanilla cake and red jam), Pineapple Crush pop (not sold in Minnesota any longer), Clam Basket at the Pie Shop (fried clams, fries and slaw in a plastic basket), and school lunch pizza. You never know what you've got 'til it's gone, so my advice is eat all you can of what you love, because you just never know. Tomorrow, I'm getting me a diet cream soda and mushroom chow mein from Huie's, with maybe a Hostess Snowball for dessert. Do they still make Snowballs???
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