12 Forgotten Frozen Foods So Odd They Feel Like A Fever Dream

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While the origins of frozen food go back further than we thought, this popular area of the grocery store has definitely evolved over time. And some of those old frozen grocery store items are, well, absolutely bonkers. Once humans realized they could freeze just about any food to be reheated and eaten later, they went a little overboard. While the strange foods on this list are no longer in the freezer section of your grocery store, this photographic evidence of their existence keeps them frozen in time for eternity.

And thank goodness, because that means we were able to compile them here for your scrolling pleasure. Every meal is represented here, from breakfast to dessert. Some of them are kooky but harmless; others have truly haunting mascots that you may be seeing on the backs of your eyelids from now on. (Note: Tasting Table is not responsible for any damages incurred due to sleep loss after seeing those 'Cicle-Sucker kids.)

Some of these frozen foods hail from the 1950s or '60s, when the frozen pre-cooked meal was one of the cooking trends that ruled the decade. Others join us from the 1990s, when experimentation was welcome, and so, occasionally, innovation went too far. Without further ado, here are some of the strangest discontinued frozen foods that were actually sold on grocery store shelves at one point.

Eggo has attempted to branch out from frozen waffles several times, and this Frozen Fruit Pizza was certainly a long and gnarled branch. The crusty base is topped with a creamy sauce made with Neufchatel cheese. Sprinkled on top, you've got blueberries, raspberries, and granola. (There was also a strictly strawberry version.) Before the product was discontinued in 2011, food blogger Linsey Knerl, behind the blog Lille Punkin', reviewed the fruit pizza, writing, "The flavor was naturally sweet ... and the cream cheese was fabulous!" 

Kraft didn't think bagels were portable enough, so they tried selling Bagel-fuls, a bagel tube filled with cream cheese. Let's just say Bagel-fuls walked so bagel bombs could run. And they had some real fans. One nostalgic Bagel-ful eater wrote on Reddit, "They were god himself in culinary form. The absolute perfect thing to eat on my way to school and bring for day trips." Unfortunately, Bagel-fuls were an early 2000s fever dream and were ripped from shelves by 2008. 

Vitamin C-enriched 'Cicle Suckers mostly looked similar to something like Otter Pops — they were popsicles that came in long, plastic pouches — available in grape and root beer flavors. But while there's not much about the popsicles themselves that turn heads, the children depicted on the box made it look like they would possess your kids and turn them into popsicle-loving zombies.

Before Kid Cuisine, Libbyland Frozen Dinners turned TV dinners into a form of entertainment. While they were only available for the first half of the 1970s, Libbyland dinners earned their place in frozen food history. They were pirate, safari, western, or deep sea diver themed, and they came with un, pop-up packaging to keep you entertained. Embossed images on the bottom of the tin foil pans encouraged kids to finish each part of their frozen meal. Libbyland Frozen Dinners understood that kids' meals are really as much — if not more — about the packaging than the food itself. 

Nothing says dessert like vegetable fat, am I right? All kidding aside, we're sure that vegetable fat (probably branded today as seed oils) makes it into a lot of our frozen desserts, but it's not advertised as boldly as the vintage Fre-Zert opted to do. It was a fruity, sherbert-like dessert, but the box vehemently clarifies that it is "not an ice cream." Fre-Zert gained popularity throughout the 1950s, but infighting among the company's owners and operators contributed to issues that eventually led to a lawsuit by the end of the decade and the end of the product.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that frozen yogurt can be just that — yogurt that has been frozen. When Trix yogurt had its heyday in the early 2000s, before it was discontinued in 2016 (and then brought back in 2021 because nostalgia is a powerful thing), the good people at Yoplait had the brilliant idea to advocate for freezing your Trix yogurt cups. They even provided sticks for you to stand up in the container before sticking in the freezer. What a time to be alive and eating colorful yogurt. 

If you thought food technology hadn't yet attempted the microwaveable milkshake, think again. The 1980s were a magical time when microwaves were still novel, their powers mysterious. The MicroMagic claimed to provide thick, delicious milkshakes in just 45 seconds to a minute and 15 seconds, depending on the texture you preferred. But have you ever tried to microwave ice cream, even just to soften it enough for scooping? It's an invisible and very precarious line — too little time and you've done nothing, but only a second too much and your ice cream becomes soup, just like that.

Long before "Dilbert" cartoonist Scott Adams made the racist and otherwise controversial comments that tarnished his reputation forever, he tried to parlay the success of his comic strip into none other than a frozen burrito based on the bespectacled office worker. No, we're not joking. Released in 1999, it was called the Dilberito, and it boasted about having 23 vitamins and minerals. There were several varieties: Mexican, Indian, barbecue, and garlic and herb. The New York Times called it "a vitamin pill wrapped in a tortilla." The unappetizing vitamin-filled mess was discontinued by 2003.

Yum! Ice pops with bugs in them! Okay, they weren't real bugs; the creepy crawlies in Nestle's Bugz were gummy candy. But while the idea was perfect for '90s kids, whose childhoods were filled with gross things like Nickelodeon slime and booger-based board game "Gooey Louie," the execution was lacking. Have you ever eaten a frozen gummy bear? You could chip a tooth! Or choke! This was one of those products that wasn't exactly fully thought through, and they didn't last too far into the 2000s.

Hungry-Man Dinners are one thing, but Man-Pleasers? Well, that's quite another. Banquet frozen dinners have been around for a long time, and we can say with some confidence that they're the only ones that have explicitly claimed to please men. They hit shelves in the early 1970s and came in four varieties: fried chicken, salisbury steak, meatloaf, and turkey. The meals themselves were about as classic as it gets, but the man-pleasing of it all is what earned it a spot on this list. Man-pleasing was so over by the late '80s, though. (Well, at least the Banquet frozen meal was.)

Our parents always told us to stop playing with our food, and then Kid Cuisine went and put Pizza Painter frozen meals on the shelves. They came with a sauce packet and encouraged you to make masterpieces. On a Reddit thread about the meal, memories of this meal have way more to do with the brownie included as the dessert. "I could never get the brownie all the way cooked," one person wrote. And another lamented, "The brownie was always raw and runny no matter how long I cooked it." Other Kid Cuisine meals are still around today, but sadly, the Pizza Painter was a casualty of the 2000s.

The box for Downyflake Toaster Eggs says it holds "four pre-cooked egg products." It's never a good sign when something is labeled "food product." Downyflake tried to hop on the trend of making breakfast items that could easily be popped in a toaster, heated, and eaten on the go. But the frozen egg round wasn't exactly the smash hit Downyflake had hoped, and they only lasted in stores from 1972 to 1975.

This one isn't a frozen food, but it was apparently meant to be used to saw your frozen food before cooking — something that we all do, is definitely necessary, and probably didn't result in any fingers getting chopped completely off. The 1950s were a wild time. Fun fact: these got discontinued when they became the favorite tool of serial killers everywhere. (That's not true, but you kind of believed it, didn't you?)