Remember walking down the canned food aisle and grabbing your favorite product, only to find it missing the next time you shopped? That sinking feeling hits hard when you realize some companies stop making the foods we grew up with. Whether it’s because not enough people bought them or tastes changed over time, plenty of canned foods have disappeared for good. Some of these products were childhood favorites, while others were weird experiments that didn’t last long. Either way, once they’re gone, they rarely come back, no matter how much people complain online about wanting them again.
Campbell’s RavioliOs disappeared despite SpaghettiOs staying popular
If you loved SpaghettiOs as a kid, you might remember Campbell’s also made a ravioli version with round pasta and tomato sauce. These RavioliOs featured meat-stuffed ravioli with scalloped edges, similar to their more famous cousin but with actual filled pasta instead of hollow rings. The product seemed like a solid idea since ravioli is generally more filling than plain pasta shapes, but somehow it never caught on the same way.
The really strange part is that RavioliOs only stopped being made recently. Some online stores still list them but mark them as out of stock with no plans to bring them back. If you’re craving something similar, Chef Boyardee still makes beef ravioli in cans, though people say it doesn’t taste quite the same. Maybe Campbell’s decided one pasta shape was enough, or perhaps RavioliOs just couldn’t compete with all the other canned pasta options filling store shelves these days.
Franco-American macaroni and cheese had a 65-year run
Before boxed mac and cheese dominated kitchens everywhere, Franco-American sold a canned version that looked more like spaghetti noodles swimming in cheese sauce. This product first showed up in stores back in 1939 and somehow managed to stick around until 2004. That’s an impressive lifespan for any food product, especially one that people have mixed feelings about. The company had to pause production during World War Two, but they brought it back afterward and kept selling it for decades.
People who remember eating this canned mac and cheese can’t agree on whether it was good or terrible. Some folks online say the sauce tasted more like butter and milk than actual cheese, which makes sense given it came from a can. Others have such bad memories they mention getting sick after eating it. There’s even a Facebook group where people share recipes trying to recreate the taste, so apparently some customers really miss it. Campbell’s eventually absorbed the Franco-American brand and then stopped making the product altogether.
Pringles made Top Ramen chicken chips for a limited time
Back in 2017, Pringles teamed up with Top Ramen to create something truly weird but surprisingly tasty. These chips were only sold at Dollar General stores and were never meant to stick around permanently. The chips came dusted with bright orange seasoning that tasted exactly like those little flavor packets you get with instant noodles. People who tried them were shocked at how accurately Pringles captured that distinctive chicken ramen taste on a thin potato chip.
The company actually brought these chips back once in 2018 after people went crazy for them the first time around. Pringles has a history of reviving discontinued products when customers demand them loudly enough, so there’s always a chance these could return again someday. If you never liked instant ramen noodles though, these chips definitely wouldn’t have changed your mind since they tasted identical to the seasoning packets.
Campbell’s pepper pot soup lasted over a century
Pepper pot soup is a Philadelphia tradition that includes tripe, vegetables, spicy peppers, and cheap cuts of meat all simmered together. Campbell’s started selling a canned version way back at the beginning of the 1900s, making it one of their oldest products. The soup stayed on shelves for more than 100 years before finally getting cut in the 2010s. That’s pretty remarkable considering how many food products come and go within just a few years.
This particular soup even appeared in one of Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup Can paintings from 1962, which means it’s now part of art history forever. Campbell’s said they stopped making it because customers wanted other soup types instead, basically admitting that pepper pot soup had fallen out of fashion. Plenty of angry customers complained online when it disappeared, but the company never brought it back. You can still make pepper pot soup from scratch if you want, but finding the canned version is impossible now.
Chef Boyardee Pac-Man pasta rode the 80s video game craze
When Pac-Man was dominating arcades in the 1980s, Chef Boyardee jumped on the trend by making pasta shaped like the famous yellow character and his ghost enemies. The pasta came in three different versions: golden chicken sauce, tomato sauce with mini meatballs, and tomato sauce with cheese. Each can promised pasta shapes that looked like Pac-Man, the four ghosts named Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde, plus the power pellets he ate in the game.
The main problem was that the pasta shapes didn’t actually look much like the characters they were supposed to represent. People who ate this Pac-Man pasta say you could only really tell what the shapes were supposed to be by looking at the label. The company even made a colorful animated commercial to promote it, but like many trendy tie-in products, it eventually faded away when the video game craze cooled down. We’ll probably never know what “golden chicken flavored sauce” actually tasted like, and that might be for the best.
Pumpkin spice Spam sold out in seven hours
Yes, this really happened. In 2019, Spam released a limited edition pumpkin spice version that mixed the processed meat with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and clove. It sounds absolutely bizarre, and plenty of people made jokes about it online, but the product actually sold out incredibly fast. Whether people bought it as a joke or genuinely wanted to try it, the cans disappeared from stores in just seven hours.
People brave enough to taste it said the smell was weird but the spice combination actually worked better than expected with the salty meat. The pumpkin spice Spam apparently tasted decent when paired with other breakfast foods like eggs or pancakes. Since it was always meant to be a limited fall product, Spam never brought it back after 2019 ended. The company definitely succeeded in creating buzz on social media though, which was probably the whole point of making such an unusual product in the first place.
Bugles Whistles and Daisys came in cans
Most people know Bugles as those cone-shaped corn snacks you can stick on your fingers, but back in the 1960s, General Mills also made two other shapes called Whistles and Daisys. All three products launched at the same time and came packaged in cans instead of bags, which seems really strange for a crispy snack. Whistles looked like tiny train conductor whistles, while Daisys were shaped like flowers, but they all tasted exactly the same as regular Bugles.
The company eventually figured out that making three different shapes of the same product was probably overkill, so they kept Bugles and discontinued the other two. These days Bugles come in bags instead of cans, which makes way more sense for keeping them crispy. If you close your eyes while eating modern Bugles, you can probably imagine what Whistles and Daisys tasted like since they were literally identical except for their shape.
Progresso cut 40 soup varieties during the pandemic
In 2020, Progresso was making an incredible 90 different types of canned soup, which is honestly way too many for most stores to stock. The company decided to streamline and cut their selection down to about 50 varieties, eliminating 40 soups in one fell swoop. They claimed that stores only wanted to carry the best-selling products anyway, so it made sense to stop producing the less popular ones.
Some of the discontinued soups started appearing in stores again by 2021, but many are still gone for good. Two that people specifically mention missing are Creamy Potato Soup and Green Pea Soup. The tough part is that Progresso never released a complete list of which soups got the axe, so you might not realize your favorite is gone forever until you go looking for it and can’t find it anywhere.
Chef Boyardee Spider-Man pasta came in two versions
Chef Boyardee spent the 80s and 90s trying out all kinds of character-themed canned pastas aimed at kids. When the Spider-Man animated series launched in 1994, they created pasta with shapes meant to look like Spider-Man himself along with spider webs. The product came in two types: one with tomato and cheese sauce, and another with meatballs in tomato sauce. Both versions featured the web-slinger on the label to attract young fans.
Like most of these character tie-in products, the main appeal was the branding rather than any special taste. Kids loved seeing their favorite superhero on the can, even if the pasta shapes didn’t look exactly like the characters they were supposed to represent. The Spider-Man pasta stuck around through the late 1990s before Chef Boyardee decided to retire it. These days you can still buy regular Chef Boyardee pasta, just without the superhero theme.
Canned foods have always been about convenience and long shelf life, but that doesn’t mean every product deserves to stick around forever. Some of these discontinued items were genuinely beloved by their fans, while others were obvious marketing gimmicks that ran their course. The next time you find your favorite canned food missing from store shelves, just remember that it’s probably not coming back, no matter how many people complain about it online.
