Food – Retro

Earlier this week, I kicked off a new series on Dino Drac: Old Junk Food in Old Movies. Now even the worst movies are worth watching, because who knows, maybe I’ll spot a can of discontinued Pringles hiding in the background. You can read the first volume over here, but if you ask me, th

Whenever I watch old movies, I keep an eye out for old junk food. Sometimes I spot it during a kitchen scene. Other times it’s while characters zip around supermarkets. Whatever the case, spotting old junk food makes me lose track of the movies’ actual plots as I bittersweetly contempl

Wellp, it’s time for my favorite Dino Drac feature. Get set for more weird holiday appetizers! As is now an annual tradition, I dug into my vast collection of ancient recipe books, searching for snacks that’ve fallen out of fashion. I’ve been doing that for longer than I’ve even ha

I’ll be honest: I wrote the rest of this article first, and saved the intro for last. Then I forgot to write it. Now I’m five minutes away from my arbitrary publishing deadline, and I have no intro. Words. Aalsalslals. Aososdoso. There, now this looks like a paragraph. Below: Three cer

When people like me bring up the old McDonald’s Halloween pails, we’re usually talking about the first few sets of them, which still stand as some of the most famous (and objectively best) Happy Meal toys ever. Less-celebrated are the many “sequel” sets dotted across the 1990s. Ble

It’s October of 1993. Mom drives you to Toys “R” Us to find a Halloween costume. Too old for Lamb Chop and too bashful for Aladdin, you settle on a cheap hockey mask and a pair of gnarly werewolf gloves. But here’s the best part: After Mom pays the bill, the cashier hands you a

I’m here to tell you about the sexiest Pepsi can ever. That’s it, right there. It was one of the four Pepsi “Cool Cans” released in the summer of 1990. The soda was the same, but the cans were given various pop art makeovers to make them more attractive to younger demos. Special ed

I’ve owned more Happy Meal sets than I can remember, but only a few transcended the novelty of “free toys.” Getting plastic baubles with my McNuggets was always welcome, but on certain occasions, those plastic baubles were my total reasons for being. The Super Mario Bros. 3 Happy Mea

Hi, I’m Matt, and I collect old Kool-Aid. Below are five of the most valuable packets in my collection. A few are so rare that even many hardcore Kool-Aid collectors probably have no idea that they exist. These are my babies, and I cradle them at night. Hallowe’en Cool Eerie Orange

Today we celebrate Shark Bites fruit snacks. We should be doing that every day, TBH. They’ve gotta be the most famous fruit snacks in history, right? For people in a certain age group, just hearing “Shark Bites” summons all sorts of warm fuzzies. Shark Bites made good days great, and

If you’re into ‘80s slasher flicks and you’ve never seen Intruder, stop it! It’s so good. Set in a supermarket for what ends up being a literal graveyard shift, it’s gory and tense, but more surprisingly smart and funny. It’s also a chance to see oodles of legit 1980s groce

Well, it’s that time again. Time to make the weird old appetizers. I grew up surrounded by recipe books that were published many years before I was born. They fascinated me as a kid, and they still do now. Not every dish is appetizing, but there was such a colorfully crude artistry to it

Y’all remember the time McDonald’s pitched Chicken McNuggets as actual literal Christmas presents, right? In 1987, McDonald’s unveiled Holiday Chicken McNuggets, which came in awesomely complicated packages that looked (and even opened like) gift boxes. It wasn’t McD’s only push

If you’ve never seen Killer Klowns from Outer Space, fix that! The 1988 film is exactly as weird as the title suggests, but it’s also just a good little movie. Those who have seen it may remember a minor scene wherein the Killer Klowns invaded a pharmacy. That’s why I’m here tonigh

I try to work one “retro cereal box” article into every Halloween Countdown, mainly for the excuse to spend more money on old cereal boxes. Help. Ghostbusters II Cereal! (1989) In one form or another, Ghostbusters Cereal remained on shelves from 1985 through 1991. It was a wildly impre

If you don’t remember Slimer Fruit Snacks, don’t feel bad. Few people do! They arrived in 1991, a figurative minute before the original Real Ghostbusters cartoon went kaput. Slimer didn’t have much momentum in his attempt to take over the fruit snack market, but he sure put the effor

Exactly two years ago today, I tried one of Burger King’s Halloween Whoppers. You remember them, right? The Halloween Whopper was the shining star of the 2015 Halloween season. Even a thousand articles about green excrement couldn’t ruin the moment. I’ve been running the Halloween Co

Y’all remember Grimace, right? The purple dude, I mean. Ronald McDonald’s de facto best friend. Throughout my childhood, Grimace was constantly on television, making commercial breaks tolerable with his adorably dopey demeanor and never-say-never attitude. (I’ll remind you that he on

I know I’ve written about Gremlins Cereal several times before, but I swear, I have a really good reason to do it again. See, that isn’t any ordinary Gremlins Cereal box. No, that one is STILL SEALED. …or at least, it was until a few hours ago. As soon as I cracked that sucker op

Hey, how ‘bout a nice Hawaiian Punch? I love Hawaiian Punch. Everyone does. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying. As a kid, I adored those huge canisters of the powdered mix. As I recall, Hawaiian Punch’s mixes came sugared, so while trying to eat “raw” Kool-Aid would leave you puc

Zima is back, baby. From now through the end of summer, you can find six-packs of Zima — yes, honest-to-goodness original Zima — wherever bottles of happy juice are sold. The “clearmalt” beverage debuted in 1993 and was immediately popular, thanks to a look and taste that w

Today is Dino Drac’s 5th birthday. I wrote a bit about that on the site’s Facebook page, but here’s the tl;dr version: Thanks for reading! Below: Six mostly-forgotten junk foods from the ‘80s and ‘90s, as seen in old supermarket circulars. It’s exactly this sort of provocative

My newest acquisition: A genuine Good Humor ice cream truck menu from 1993! It doesn’t photograph so well, but it’s beautiful in person. 1993 would’ve been my last year to chase down ice cream trucks without secretly wondering if I was too old to do that, so I’m super familiar with

By the late ‘80s, Freddy Krueger had become so popular and so accepted that it was hard to continue looking at him through a “horror” lens. As I mentioned on the Elm Street edition of the Purple Stuff Podcast, Freddy started to seem like an edgier version of Pee-wee Herman — no

I’m back with another review of old Kool-Aid. Just smile and nod and pretend that this is something you care about. I said nod. For the longest time, Surfin’ Berry Punch was my white whale. My bright red white whale. It’s one of the hardest Kool-Aid flavors to find on the collectors