11 Salty Snacks From The '80s You Probably Forgot Existed

For every snack food you know and love, there's a discontinued snack food you'll never eat again. A lot of them are from the '80s, and a lot of them — as you might expect from a decade that went big on processed snacks — are rather salty. Chips, dips, and crackers reigned supreme during the 1980s, and it's little wonder that, in a time of such innovation, some products didn't make it far beyond the end of the decade. With all that said, it's still surprising how many salty snacks disappeared without a trace, and are now only remembered by fans who chronicle their memory on the internet.

Thankfully, our memory serves us well — otherwise, we wouldn't be able to discuss how good some of these snacks were. The likes of Keebler O'Boisies, for instance, in all their crunchy, airy glory, might have been forgotten for good. Pringles Corn Crisps, meanwhile, could have been lost to the sands of time. Or how about Cajun Spice Ruffles, which once merged salt and heat for an ultra-flavorful bite? They might have slipped our minds forever. Well, we're on a mission to make sure that doesn't happen. Here are our favorite old, salty classics from the '80s. Grab a glass of water, and let's get started.

Before Pringles was the curved potato snack to beat all others, there was another kid in town: Keebler Tato Skins. When these salty snacks dropped in 1985, they caused quite the stir, not least because of their slightly contrived, but very fun appearance. Keebler Tato Skins were designed to look like real potato skins, with an oblong shape and a slightly darker shade on one side of each chip. Despite this grab at a more natural appearance, though, they were far from a snack sourced directly from the earth; Keebler Tato Skins were largely made from dehydrated potato flakes and covered with the same seasoning dust as so many other chips.

That didn't make them any less tasty, though, or less a-peeling. Coming in flavors like Cheddar Cheese n' Bacon, Sour Cream n' Chive, and Baked Potato, Keebler Tato Skins capitalized on the then-rampant success of loaded potato skins, one of the most popular foods from the '80s that people are eating again today. The chips actually stuck around for a good few years. However, the downfall of Tato Skins came around 2000, when the brand was bought out by a different company, which subsequently rebranded the snack under the TGI Fridays name. With the rebrand came a recipe change, so even though Tato Skins lives on, in a sense, it's a shadow of its former self.

Goldfish Crackers weren't always the premier animal-shaped cracker out there. Once, there were also Quackers, a late-'80s entrant into the salty snack world — and, as you might expect from their name, they were shaped like ducks. These darling little crackers, made by Nabisco, were as cute as they come; dropping around 1987, they came in three different flavors, and when they were all sat in a bowl, they looked like a group of ducks swimming in a pond. Talk about an eye-catching food.

Quackers were distinguished from Goldfish Crackers by their hollow interior and rougher texture, which gave them, simultaneously, an airiness and a more interesting mouthfeel. They also had a slightly oilier consistency, which might not have been to everyone's taste, but definitely helped amp up the flavor. Strangely, Nabisco didn't try to keep them around for long, despite the affection for this snack. Quackers only lasted for around a year or so before they disappeared, but they left behind quite a vibrant legacy. Not bad for a little cracker, huh?

What do you think of when you think of Idaho? If it's potatoes, you wouldn't be alone. The state has garnered a significant reputation as perhaps the most important location in the U.S. potato industry, and snack company Keebler was all too aware of that. So, when it released O'Boisies in 1988, its whole intention was to capitalize on Idaho's image as a potato-growing state. There's the name, of course, inspired by the state's capital, and one Miles Willard of Idaho, who pioneered a high-tech method of dehydrating potato flakes. There was also the fact that O'Boisies received their grand launch in Boise, Idaho.

What were these snacks actually like, though? Well, they were pretty close to modern-day popped chips, with little air pockets in each bite and a good crunch. They were also exceedingly salty and had a BBQ flavor that sat alongside the Original and Sour Cream & Onion options. O'Boisies managed to remain in the market for only about five or six years before being removed, and other, more modern chips took their place. For a little while there, though, they were a symbol of Idahoan pride.

Sometimes, snacks can be reinvented in fairly subtle ways, but those subtle changes can alter our enjoyment of them for good. This sad story befell Kraft's once-beloved Handi-Snacks. When Kraft Handi-Snacks first appeared around the mid-'80s, they felt like a snack revolution; arriving just before Lunchables, these little snack packs consisted originally of a stack of crackers, a spreadable cheese, and a small, red plastic spreader, which you could use to combine the two foods. It made building your after-school munchies way more fun; you could do it on the go, and you could do it yourself.

Over time, Kraft Handi-Snacks became not just salty, but sweet, with a Honey & Crackers flavor appearing soon after its original release. At its base, though, it was a cheesy, sodium-forward affair. Now, we know what you're thinking: Handi-Snacks are still around, so are they really forgotten about? Well, nowadays, they come without that iconic red spreader — and to be honest, that made all the difference for fans of the snack. With the spreader, it felt like you were able to take control of building your food, and there was a certain novelty attached. Without the spreader, it's just another in a long line of dunkable snacks.

With the sheer number of Doritos flavors that have appeared throughout the years, we won't blame you if you don't remember Salsa Rio. For a time there, though, it was a pretty big deal. Salsa Rio Doritos appeared for the first time in 1987, and they felt a cut above the rest of the flavors in the Doritos line. With darker chips and a flavor profile that promised pico de gallo with onion, tomato, chiles, and, of course, a lot of saltiness, they almost had a dinner party vibe to them. Almost. These were Doritos, after all, not gourmet chips.

That said, Salsa Rio Doritos felt classy enough to be tied to a titan of late-night television. In 1989, they were featured in an ad campaign with none other than Jay Leno, who urged customers to try the snack from a deep armchair, similar to the type you'd find on a talk show. Unfortunately, though, even an endorsement from one of the biggest celebrities of the time wasn't enough to keep this flavor alive. Salsa Rio Doritos were discontinued in the '90s, and while they've popped up here and there overseas since and had a brief U.S. comeback in 2012 as a limited-edition flavor, they never returned as a permanent item.

Call us easy targets, but we really do love it when a food is shaped like another food. So, we wish we'd been around when Nabisco brought out Swiss Cheese crackers. Dropping in the early '80s, the key selling point of these crackers was that they were shaped like little pieces of Swiss cheese, with the small holes included. As expected, these crackers had a cheesy, salty note to them and plenty of Swiss cheese tang. While they may not have been very useful for picking up anything particularly slack (a loose dip would have dripped right through them), we'd imagine they'd have been very good for munching on straight out of the box.

Although Nabisco Swiss Cheese crackers had a spell of popularity in the '80s, they weren't designed to stick around forever and were eventually discontinued. However, they've lived on in a few different ways. These crackers were revived in the 2000s, but didn't make enough of an impact to earn a permanent spot in Nabisco's product selection. In Canada, though, you can still find a version of Swiss Cheese crackers under the Christie's brand name.

We love snacks, and we really love snacks that have other delicious things inside them. So we were pretty much the target audience for Dooley's Filled Snacks, an '80s favorite that sadly didn't make it that far. Dooley's Filled Snacks – a product of the relentless Mars dynasty – answered one burning question everyone (okay, not everyone) was asking: What if chips and dip weren't two separate things? What if they were combined in one creamy, crunchable form?

As such, Dooley's Filled Snacks were born, and they consisted of a circular potato chip with a sour cream and onion dip piped inside. The advertisement that accompanied the release of these snacks featured smiling adults and kids singing the praises of the combination. Now, although we inferred we were the target audience for this kind of thing, we do have to mention that Dooley's Filled Snacks weren't the universal hit one might have hoped for. Some customers stated they didn't quite live up to expectations in terms of flavor, although others have begged for their return. Hey, who knows: One day, maybe they'll have a revival. That day's not today, though.

As a society, we've slightly moved beyond the need to put bacon in absolutely everything we can think of — but that definitely wasn't the case in the '80s. If anything, this decade saw the beginnings of what would eventually be a long, bacon-centric future in the food world, which peaked in the '90s and early 2000s. Before that, though, we had Bacon & Cheddar Cheetos, an early pioneer of bacon flavors in salty snack form. Cheetos promised in its commercial for this flavor that it would contain the taste of real cheese, before promptly letting customers know the bacon flavor was artificial. Hey, we guess you can't win them all.

Despite this artificial flavor, though, people still really loved these Cheetos. Multiple snack lovers have said it was the best flavor Cheetos ever put out, and clamor for its return. We don't know how likely that is, to be honest. Bacon & Cheddar Cheetos debuted in 1983, and they only stuck around for around a year before they were pulled from shelves forever. Maybe it's time for a bacon revival?

Sometimes, all a snack needs is a dynamite ad campaign. This was the case with Cajun Spice Ruffles, a salty snack you might not remember — but you'll probably remember the commercial that accompanied it. Cajun Spice Ruffles first arrived in 1986, and they did so on the wave of popularity Cajun cuisine was experiencing during the decade. Ruffles clearly knew it had to make a splash with this flavor, so it recruited the Cookin' Cajun himself, Justin Wilson, to front the marketing push. With his inimitable Louisiana accent, Wilson sang the praises of Cajun Spice Ruffles, and in doing so, all but ensured the commercial would go down in history.

It's pretty amazing, then, that a lot of people have forgotten about these chips  — but given that they were only around for approximately four years, maybe that isn't such a surprise. So, what caused their downfall? Changing trends. As the '80s drew to a close, Cajun dishes were replaced by the next hot food of the moment, and Cajun Spice Ruffles suffered the consequences. They disappeared in the early '90s, never to be seen again.

It's hard to believe a product as constant as Pringles would have ever tried to do anything new, but at the end of the '80s, it certainly did. This was the moment that Pringles trialled its Corn Crisps, a corn-based version of the snack that was designed to evoke a sense of newness and youth. This is evident in the commercial used to advertise these chips, in which a group of young, very '80s-looking young adults speeds into a corn field in an open-top car, before munching on the corn crisps in a state of sheer corn-y bliss.

These were, for all intents and purposes, tortilla chips that had the signature Pringles curved shape. Sounds like they could have been a winner — so why didn't they last? Well, they did stick around for a good few years; Pringles Corn Crisps weren't discontinued until 1997. Perhaps Pringles was just trying to compete in a market that could do corn chips a little better, and a little more naturally. We don't think tortilla chips are meant to be shaped like that, if we're being honest.

Back in the '80s, O'Grady's was doing things other chip brands could only dream of. O'Grady's chips were a cut above the rest in terms of thickness and crunch; these snacks had a serious weight to them, and were around three times as thick as the average chip. They were also known for being way saltier than a lot of other options out there, which definitely gave them an edge as far as flavor was concerned, although you may have needed a glass of water to get through them.

What O'Grady's really had up its sleeve, though, was one key flavor: Au-Gratin. These chips are almost the stuff of legend, and were known for their nearly unreal cheesiness. They packed such a taste punch that to this day, people still speak about Au-Gratin chips in hushed tones. Others, though, may have forgotten O'Grady's chips existed in the first place. Eventually, this brand disappeared without a trace around 1989, and people were left with the next best thing, Ruffles — which apparently just don't compare. All good things must come to an end, we guess.