What Happened To The Discontinued '90s Classic Micro Pops?
Whether it comes down to poor performance or other factors, sometimes food products disappear. Because of this, we're often left trying to answer the question of what happened to these items. Sometimes, we get lucky and a bit of research uncovers the truth about a beloved treat from yesteryear. On the other hand, like with the Popsicle-brand Micro Pops, that fate is harder to determine.
For those who don't remember Micro Pops, this ice pop featured a tube packed with tiny carbonated lemon, strawberry, and blue raspberry-flavored spheres that burst as they were consumed. The product was released in 1999 by Good Humor-Breyers (the company that owns Popsicle and which is itself under the Unilever umbrella). However, it disappeared by the early 2000s. Nobody seems to know exactly when or why Micro Pops were discontinued, just that they were.
Micro Pops aren't the only frozen treats to quietly disappear from grocery aisles. Good Humor-Breyers appears to have a habit of removing items without warning, like with its Toasted Almond Bar, which took a while for the public to realize it had disappeared.
Micro Pops may never return
Despite Micro Pops fans taking to social media to ask the Popsicle brand for its return, there are few details as to why it was discontinued or if it will ever make a comeback. Certainly, Popsicle doesn't seem keen to return any of its discontinued items to stores. The company has left questioning admirers with little oxygenation, like one Twitter user who was told "While we don't have any plans on bringing these items back, we'll let our team know you'd like to see them return. Thanks for being a fan of Popsicle!"
This seems par for the course, since Popsicle's parent company, Good Humor-Breyers, has been comparably noncommittal. When asked about its Toasted Almond Bar a year after the product left frozen aisles, the brand's reply to The Takeout was vague. "At Good Humor, we're always updating our product portfolio to reflect consumer preferences," a company spokesperson wrote. "A necessary but unfortunate part of this is we sometimes must discontinue products in order to ensure we can offer customers the best variety of treats nationwide."
However, there may be one possible answer as to why and when Micro Pops was discontinued, and it could be tied to another of the brand's long-gone but almost identical products: Popsicle Shots.
Popsicle Shots may explain what happened to Micro Pops
While Micro Pops was a compressed treat of popping ice dots in a cylindrical tube, Shots could be poured directly into a person's mouth. Still, both products featured small beads of ice cream or fruity ice. As a result, some testers compared them to Dippin' Dots since they appear to share a similar freezing process, much like Micro Pops. Yet some were not fans of the product due to how inconvenient and disorderly eating it was. Perhaps that's why Popsicle Shots and Micro Pops left the market so soon.
Some reviewers at the time also raised concerns regarding how Shots were sweetened. While it's difficult to confirm whether or not Micro Pops received the same treatment, Shots contained aspartame, which didn't go over well with some consumers and reviewers. Maybe Good Humor-Breyers took note of these complaints and decided to scrap the product line after receiving pushback about sweeteners, as well.