ISTM that this has nothing to do with cookery and everything to do with rose-colored memories. And the novelty of kidliness. Everything is super tasty (or super awful) and super exciting when you’re age e.g. 7.
I can conjur up memories of party food from my childhood that was pure ambrosia. I bet Duncan Hines isn’t really much different now than then. It was my perceptions, and 60 years of savoring and renewing the memory, that make its then so exquisite now.
You absolutely can get decent canned clam chowder. But buying it from Campbell’s was a doomed effort. After all:
