They Came Back: Discontinued Foods That Returned
Sooner or later every discontinued snack prompts the same question: is it coming back? Usually the answer is no. But some products do return, and the twelve here show the different ways it happens. Fans can shout an item back onto a fast-food menu. A bankrupt bakery's brands can be bought by investors and restarted. A specialist reviver can license a name that a candy giant stopped using. A ballplayer can help rebuild the bar that carried his name. And once, a Texas court ruling about somebody else's soda set a comeback in motion.
The catch is that 'back' rarely means 'the same.' Of the twelve products below, seven returned on a recipe their makers describe as new or reformulated, and six came back in the hands of someone other than the company that dropped them. The gaps vary just as much: Twinkies were gone for eight months, while the current Reggie Bar arrived more than four decades after the original died. So for each one we note who did the reviving, what changed on the way back, and how close the comeback is to the thing you remember.
French Toast Crunch
Call it the tidy fan victory. General Mills pulled the maple-flavored tiny toast slices from U.S. shelves in 2006 but kept a Canadian version, Croque Pain Doré, going north of the border. When it announced the return in December 2014, the company credited a petition and a Facebook group, and a marketing manager said it had been overwhelmed by requests. Boxes reached some stores that month, with nationwide distribution due by the end of January 2015. The fine print: the returning cereal was reformulated, at 9 grams of sugar and 10 grams of whole grain per serving.
Mexican Pizza
If you want proof that shouting works, Taco Bell supplies it. The chain cut the Mexican Pizza on November 5, 2020, citing pandemic simplicity and the environmental cost of its paperboard packaging. A Change.org petition passed 171,000 signatures, Doja Cat announced the return at Coachella, and on May 19, 2022, it was back, then sold out at many restaurants within two weeks. Taco Bell made it permanent that September 15. The dish was born in 1985 as the Pizzazz Pizza, and in May 2026 Taco Bell added a limited-time chicken version alongside the original.
Snack Wrap
The Snack Wrap shows what nearly a decade of asking can get you, and what it can't. McDonald's phased it out of U.S. kitchens in 2016 because it slowed them down, though some franchisees held on until the 2020 menu cuts. McDonald's USA president Joe Erlinger promised its return on Good Morning America in December 2024, and on July 10, 2025, it arrived at $2.99, against $1.29 in 2006. It is a rebuild, not a reissue: the new wrap uses the McCrispy Strip, comes in Ranch or Spicy, and has no grilled chicken or honey mustard.
Oreo Cakesters
Oreo never said why it dropped Cakesters in 2012, a year when Kraft was splitting its snacks business off as Mondelez, though no company source links the two. Fans kept asking, and on October 1, 2021, Mondelez announced a permanent return, with a Nutter Butter version for company. The relaunch leaned so hard on 2007 that it took over the last Blockbuster, in Bend, Oregon, in January 2022. This comeback stuck, but the cakes changed later: an April 2026 recipe, which Mondelez calls 20 percent more moist, answered complaints that they were dry.
Dunkaroos
Dunkaroos never really left the company that made them, only the country. General Mills ended U.S. sales in May 2012 but kept them going in Canada, and in 2016 it joked about its own shortage with a site called Smugglaroos, inviting Canadians heading south to carry Dunkaroos to American fans. Then Canada lost them too, in 2017. On February 3, 2020, General Mills announced a U.S. return for that summer, led by the most requested flavor: vanilla cookies with vanilla frosting and rainbow sprinkles. The reviver was the original owner, the one that dropped them.
Twinkies
Twinkies came back the way many brands do, through a buyer. Hostess shut its bakeries in November 2012, during bankruptcy and after a failed contract with its second-largest union, and its brands were sold off in pieces. Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co. paid $410 million for the snack cakes, and on July 15, 2013, Twinkies returned with the tagline 'The Sweetest Comeback in the History of Ever.' The cakes stayed familiar but kept longer, 45 days against about 26 under the old company. Ownership has moved again since: J.M. Smucker bought Hostess Brands in 2023.
Clark Bar
Twinkies were rescued once; the Clark Bar has made a habit of it. Its makers gave up on it in 1990, 1995 and 1999, and each time somebody else picked it up. NECCO's 2018 bankruptcy looked final until Boyer Candy of Altoona bought the rights that September. Boyer hoped to restock by Thanksgiving 2019, but delays, including packaging problems, pushed the relaunch to Valentine's Day 2020, with early bars sold in plain cellophane at the factory outlet. Distribution is still patchy, and longtime fans say the new center is less flaky than NECCO's.
Jolt Cola
Jolt is the case for reading the label. The original, sold from 1985 with about 70 milligrams of caffeine in a 12-ounce can, went into Chapter 11 in 2009 after the company failed to buy the 90 million resealable cans it had committed to take from Rexam. A Dollar General exclusive brought it back in 2017, and that faded by 2019. The 2025 Jolt, from supplement maker Redcon1, is sold nationwide, but it is a zero-sugar energy cola with 200 milligrams in 16 ounces. The name came back; the sugar did not.
Creme Savers
Creme Savers came back through a different door: licensing. Wrigley's version left shelves in 2011, and no owner ever said why. A decade later Iconic Candy, a company built around reviving retro candy brands, struck a deal with Mars Wrigley and in September 2021 put Strawberries & Creme and Orange & Creme into all 1,414 Big Lots stores at once. The bags and rolls matched the originals, but only two flavors made it back at first, and Iconic says it reformulated them with Mars Wrigley. Walmart added the candies nationwide in 2025.
Certs
Certs is a licensing revival with a chemistry problem. Its Retsyn contained partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, the FDA ruled in 2015 that such oils were no longer generally recognized as safe, and the mint was gone by 2018, when that ruling took full effect. In 2025 Reboot Brands, founded by Ari and Mark Freedman, relaunched it with licensee Nature's Stance, selling first on Amazon. The comeback is under new ownership and in new formulas, as it had to be, since the old Retsyn oil is now banned, a detail the relaunch announcements leave out.
Reggie! Bar
This one came back twice, the second time with its namesake tasting the samples. Reggie Jackson's boast that New York would name a candy bar after him became a real bar in 1978, and it died when the Fort Wayne plant closed after Standard Brands merged with Nabisco in 1981. Pittsburgh's Clark candy company licensed it for his 1993 Hall of Fame year, briefly. The current version debuted at Jackson's golf tournament in January 2023, developed by Alberta candy reviver Crystal Westergard. Jackson tried her prototypes and asked for more peanuts, so it is a new recipe.
Mr. Pibb
And then there is the comeback a court ruling set in motion. Coca-Cola replaced Mr. Pibb in many U.S. markets with the spicier Pibb Xtra in 2001. In 2025 a Texas judge ruled that Keurig Dr Pepper could end Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling's Dr Pepper distribution in California and Nevada, effective October 27, leaving that bottler's fountains needing a pepper soda of their own. Three days later the Mr. Pibb name returned in select markets, going national in February 2026. The formula is new, with 35% more caffeine than Pibb Xtra, not the pre-2001 recipe.
Line the twelve up and a pattern shows. Fan pressure works best when the company that dropped a product still owns it and can still make it: Taco Bell, McDonald's, General Mills and Oreo all brought their own items back after sustained fan requests, in Taco Bell's case after about a year and a half. When the original owner has gone bankrupt or stopped making the thing, the comeback depends on a buyer or a licensee, and the product tends to change hands and recipe on the way. Jolt returned as a name more than as a drink, and even Mr. Pibb, revived by the company that dropped it, came back on a new formula.
So when you wonder whether something is coming back, the better question is who owns the name now, and whether they still make anything like it. Seven of these twelve returned on a new or reformulated recipe, and six returned under new hands. The comeback is usually real. The old product, more often than not, is not.
Updated Nov 1, 2026