Devil Dogs, Hostess cup cakes (with the white icing squiggle on top) Sweet overload,
Something that my mother called “potted meat” but was really labeled Deviled Ham. I bought a can a few years ago when I saw it in a supermarket. It tasted as though I poured the box of sea salt in my mouth. One bite of the bread I put it on, and it all went to the trash.
Spaghettios - Ugh…Just the thought.
All types of “penny candy.” All candy is just too sweet today.
Canned Vienna sausages. Loved them as a kid. After a maybe ten year gap I briefly revived my interest around age 22 when I got hired at a job where someone had a “store” in their locker selling canned chili, fruit pies, Vienna sausages and the like for folks hard up for a quick lunch. About six months later I popped a top on a can, ate two, said “these are disgusting” and gave them up for good.
Baloney and mayo on white bread. Loved it at 12, don’t imagine I could stomach it now.
Now Chef Boyardee ravioli? Overly sweet, but edible. I had a can on a camping trip a couple years back and it was…edible. I don’t enjoy it as much as when I was a kid, but I can eat it in extremis.
Franco-American Spaghettio’s? You’d think they’d be the same thing as Chef Boyardee, but they’re not - they’re approximately 97x sweeter. Like pure corn syrup with an unearthly neon orange glow. Tried the nostalgia trip with them in my thirties and tossed the bowl after about three bites. Completely inedible.
However just to maintain my crap cuisine bonafides, I still get the occasional craving for Kraft Mac&Cheese in a box . The orange unhealthily orange version mind you. It has about as much relation to decent Mac&Cheese as Taco Bell has to decent Mexican food, but I’ll still eat it (shamefaced and alone) about once a year.
My favorite food as a kid was rice and cheese, but I haven’t been able to stomach it since about the age of ten, when I got violently sick after eating it.
I’m intrigued by bakeries that are making better versions of childhood favorites. We have a wonderful gourmet baker (Bloom) who makes upscale Pop-Tarts.
And we just had pizza from Mod Pizza in West Seattle (looks like a chain, though… you might be near one). And they had a featured dessert we kept looking at and reading the description of and asking each other “Isn’t that just a Hostess Ding Dong?” We tried it, it was, but made with quality ingredients, it was great.
You are quite right - I got a box of Hohos for my goddaughters about 10 years ago. The chocolate coating was waxy, the cake part was a pale tan, not the deep cocoa looking cake of my youth. The filling was just odd - over sweet and left a sort of oily residue lining my mouth.
Last year or so Chef Boyardi came out with their ‘legacy’ like, select stuff went back to the sauce formulary from like 50 years ago - it was different, the new sauce was almost candy sweet. I think it was the lasagne and spaghetti?
And lots of snack foods have changed formulary - to reflect cheaper ingredients like that nasty allergen Palm Oil/Coconut Oil/Tropical Flavorings … lots of people are actually sensitive to palm oil [and yes I know there is a difference between oil palm and coconut palm and hearts of palm palm, but one can be sensitive to one but not the others, and some like me can eat salad palm but not coconut or oil palm]