9 Nostalgic Frozen Foods From The '90s That Deserve A Comeback

The '90s... for many of us, it feels like a much simpler time in history, when the internet was in its fledgling years and we didn't spend all day in front of screens. And if you were a kid in the '90s, it's probably an especially nostalgic time for you, before life got so complicated. One thing we miss about the '90s? The food trends. Sure, a lot of us ate a lot of ultra-processed food that was almost certainly not good for us, but it's still hard to shake that sense of nostalgia you may have for food you grew up with.

Whether you were a kid in the '90s or were already well into your adult meals, there are probably a lot of frozen foods you ate during that time but have since forgotten about. After all, food products enter and leave store shelves all the time. However, the following frozen foods are especially nostalgic for us. Even if they didn't taste great at the time, we still hold a special place in our hearts for these foods that most definitely deserve a comeback. Maybe you'll find some of your beloved favorites on this list, or perhaps your memory will be triggered by foods you haven't eaten in ages. Either way, we hope we might get to try these nostalgic '90s frozen foods again someday.

There was a time in the '90s when some brands were trying to figure out how to make ice cream into a totally different form. Right before the '90s hit, for example, Dippin' Dots first came onto the scene, revolutionizing the ice cream-eating experience. Well, other brands wanted to get in on the action, which is how Butterfinger Ice Cream Nuggets were born in 1992. These Butterfinger-flavored balls of ice cream were coated in a layer of nutty chocolate that provided crisp and crunch in every bite. They were small enough that you could have several of them as a snack, but large enough that it felt like you were getting more ice cream than chocolate.

Although this was a somewhat messy snack, it was still especially fun to eat, which is just part of the reason we miss this sweet treat. That combo of peanut butter-flavored ice cream and milk chocolate was super sugary, which many desserts seemed to be during that time. Although we haven't seen these ice cream nuggets in stores for quite some time, we still hope that they'll eventually make a reappearance.

Frozen meals seemed like a staple of '90s food culture, and Banquet was one of the leading brands on the market. Even today, you can find a variety of the brand's meals in the freezer section of your local grocery store, with relatively plain-looking frozen meals that aren't exactly delicious but that get the job done when you just need a quick meal and don't want to eat a sandwich or a bowl of cereal. But Banquet used to offer a larger line of frozen meals, including frozen meals made specifically for kids.

These meals generally had smaller portions, and the packaging featured cartoons to appeal to little ones. However, a ton of other frozen food brands were doing the same thing, and that competition — paired with the fact that the meals were reportedly not super healthy — eventually led to their demise. Still, though, there's a part of us that misses those chicken nugget and corn-heavy frozen kids' meals.

There's nothing like a fruity, frozen sweet treat, which is why we loved Flintstones Push-Ups when they were still on the market. They came in an array of flavors, including Cherry Blast, Turbo Grape, and Outrageous Orange (although, admittedly, they all tasted pretty similar to one another). Despite the lack of differences between the different varieties' flavors, though, they were all guaranteed to turn your mouth a different color for the remainder of the day, making it impossible to sneak one past your parents without them knowing that you had eaten dessert early.

If you're in the popsicle section of your local grocery store, you might have noticed that Push-Ups are still available. However, they're not quite the same thing as this iconic '90s version of the treat, since they're branded more generically and are missing the Flintstones association that they were once known for. So, although you can still enjoy those same questionable flavors, they're a bit less enjoyable than they once were since they don't have that iconic nostalgic appearance to them.

The unconventionally shaped ice cream strikes again in BonBons, another ice cream favorite of the '90s. This was basically just a simpler version of the Butterfinger Ice Cream Nuggets we covered before, with a chocolate shell enrobing a sphere of ice cream. Sure, the ice cream wasn't bad, but this snack was mostly about texture, with the crunch of the shell and then the creaminess of the ice cream within. And the best place to get these ice cream bites? At the movies, where they represented a pretty significant step up from plain old popcorn.

So, whatever happened to BonBons? Nestle, the snack's parent company, eventually discontinued the snack, replacing it with another, similar product called Dibs. However, these things don't really hit the spot in quite the same way. They're smaller and less creamy, which is a disappointment if your frame of reference starts with BonBons. Hopefully, they will come back someday, and we'll be able to snag some at the movie theater once more.

Some of the most nostalgic snacks started off as a marketing scheme, which is certainly true when it comes to Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers Frozen Fudge Bars. This frozen snack became a staple dessert for many '90s kids who watched the show growing up. Technically, they were just standard frozen fudge bars with a nose made out of candy, but the fact that they featured beloved TV characters likely gave them most of their appeal.

Whether you got them from the store or managed to snag them when an ice cream truck drove by your house, if you were a child of the '90s, you might just remember summers punctuated by these frozen fudge treats. Sure, you can always buy another type of fudgesicle if you're craving a similar flavor, but since these character fudge bars were discontinued in the early '90s, you're out of luck if you're craving this specific product.

Perhaps the most publicized discontinuation of a '90s frozen food product occurred in 2022, when Klondike officially discontinued its legendary Choco Taco, an absolute freezer staple for '90s kids who grew up in the U.S. and had unfettered access to the snack foods in their childhood home. Unlike many of the ice cream treats on this list, the Choco Taco really was uniquely creative. The "shell" was made from a waffle cone, which housed striped vanilla and chocolate ice cream. The top of the "taco" was then dipped in a layer of melted chocolate, which created a hard shell around the treat when frozen. That shell was also dotted with peanuts for a delicious, nutty crunch.

Ultimately, this treat was removed from Klondike's lineup because the company was attempting to streamline its offerings. Sure, maybe it made business sense for the company, but it's also indisputable proof that we as a culture have gone wrong somewhere. At least you can attempt to make your own homemade Choco Taco dupe until the day it hopefully comes back.

Once upon a time, well before the '90s began, Jell-O was an incredibly popular brand, and home cooks combined the jiggly snack with a variety of strange ingredients to make strange "salads" and other fruit-flavored desserts. But by the time the '90s rolled around, Jell-O was struggling. Those colorful Jell-O dishes had somewhat fallen out of style, and the brand was trying to stay relevant. That's why General Foods (the parent company of Jell-O) dreamed up the Pudding Pop. These chocolate and vanilla-flavored pudding pops were basically like any other sweet, chocolatey ice cream pop of their time, perhaps with more name recognition. If you like standard chocolate pudding from the brand, there's a good chance that you enjoyed these treats as well.

But they were not destined to stay in the frozen section of your local grocery store forever, since the profit margin on the product wasn't good. Even after years of trying to make this treat more popular, the brand eventually dropped it altogether since it just wasn't that popular. And for the few people out there who hope that the snack will someday make a return, you're likely to be disappointed, considering the brand said in 2018 that it has no plans to revive Pudding Pops.

Eggo has some of the best frozen breakfast products in the freezer section of your local grocery store, but if you've been following the brand for a while, you might notice that one beloved snack no longer has a place alongside the more traditional waffles. It's Eggo's Waf-Fulls, and they're just what they sound like: frozen waffles that have a filling inside. This genius product ensured that you didn't have to put anything on top of your waffle at all, since the topping was actually inside the treat. For example, you could completely skip the strawberry syrup, since it would ooze out of the center of the waffle instead.

But not all good things can last forever — Waf-Fulls were eventually discontinued because, like so many of the other products on this list, they just weren't popular enough to continue to generate a profit for the brand. Those of us who know how delicious these waffles were, though, will mourn them forever.

There was a lot of bug-themed stuff out there in the '90s, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that bug-shaped popsicles were once a thing. Cleverly, they were called Bug Pops, and they were an absolute summertime staple for so many '90s babies out there. This was another product that was ultimately just a marketing scheme, featuring popular characters from "The Lion King." Part of the appeal was the fact that there were bug-shaped gummies inside the layered popsicles, and finding them within the frozen treat was most of the fun. However, because those gummies had been frozen, it made for a strange textural experience that really seemed like it was more about novelty than actual deliciousness.

That being said, we still crave this nostalgic treat every once in a while simply because it brings us back to a different time. But, unfortunately, Bug Pops are no longer a thing — the product was eventually discontinued, even though Nestle, the parent brand, made a similar product after this one left the market.