14 Items You'd Only Find in a 1960s Supermarket That Are Now Obsolete

Walking into a 1960s supermarket meant entering a world where convenience was king, processed was progress, and every new product promised to make the American housewife’s life easier. The aisles were stocked with items that felt thrillingly modern at the time, reflecting a postwar confidence in science, technology, and manufactured food. Brands competed aggressively for shelf space and loyalty. Some products survived. Many did not. These 14 items represent the ones that defined a decade of grocery shopping before changing tastes, food science revelations, and shifting lifestyles rendered them completely obsolete.

1. Metrecal: The Original Diet Drink

Metrecal was the SlimFast of its era, a meal replacement liquid sold in grocery stores nationwide throughout the early 1960s. Mead Johnson marketed it as a scientifically formulated weight loss solution, and diet-conscious Americans bought it by the case. It came in vanilla, chocolate, and butterscotch, tasted somewhere between a milkshake and a nutritional supplement, and became a full-blown cultural phenomenon almost overnight. At its peak, Metrecal generated over $350 million in annual sales. Competition flooded the market, perceptions of quality dropped, and the brand collapsed as quickly as it had risen. No revival followed. The name itself became shorthand for a fad that burned out fast.

2. Canned Chicken Fricassee: Comfort From a Can

Several major food brands, including Swanson and a handful of regional labels, produced canned chicken fricassee throughout the 1960s, offering a ready-to-heat version of the classic braised chicken dish that required zero cooking skill. It sat proudly in the canned meat aisle as a legitimate dinner solution for busy households. As frozen meal technology improved dramatically through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, shelf-stable canned entrees like fricassee lost their appeal entirely. The texture of canned chicken in sauce could not compete with what freezing preserved. The product category quietly folded, and canned chicken fricassee became a relic found only in vintage grocery advertisements.

3. Junket Rennet Tablets: The Homemade Dessert Kit

Junket rennet tablets were a staple of 1960s supermarket baking aisles, used to set milk into a soft, custard-like dessert that was served chilled with fruit or syrup. The product required minimal effort and no baking, making it a popular choice for weeknight desserts and family gatherings. Chr. Hansen’s Junket brand had been producing the tablets since the late 19th century, but the dessert’s popularity faded as Jell-O gelatin and pudding cups offered faster, more colorful competition. The tablets are technically still produced in extremely limited quantities, but finding them in a standard supermarket today is effectively impossible without a very cooperative store manager.

4. Whistle Orange Soda: The Regional Cult Drink

Whistle Orange Soda, produced by the Dr. Pepper company’s predecessor brands, was a bright, aggressively orange-flavored soda that maintained a loyal regional following through the 1960s before being discontinued as brand consolidation reshaped the soft drink industry. It predated Fanta’s American dominance and offered a distinctly different flavor profile that dedicated fans still discuss in vintage soda forums. The grocery store soda aisle in the 1960s was far more regionally diverse than today’s version, stocked with local and semi-local brands that the rise of Coca-Cola and Pepsi as total market dominators eventually squeezed out entirely. Whistle was one of the most mourned casualties of that consolidation.

5. Frozen Creamed Chipped Beef: The Convenience Upgrade

Building on the popularity of jarred chipped beef, several frozen food brands in the 1960s introduced pre-made creamed chipped beef in boil-in-bag pouches that could be ready in minutes and poured directly over toast. It was the decade’s answer to a dish that had previously required at least a few minutes on the stovetop. The product sold well through military commissaries and suburban supermarkets alike, capitalizing on nostalgia for a dish many American men associated with military service. As the dish itself fell from cultural favor in the following decades, the frozen version disappeared entirely from grocery freezer sections, leaving only jarred and canned alternatives that are themselves increasingly hard to find.

6. Colorforms Food Molds: When Groceries Met Play

In the creative chaos of 1960s supermarket merchandising, some stores stocked novelty food-preparation kits that blurred the line between kitchen tools and children’s toys. Food molds designed to shape gelatin, cream cheese, and butter into decorative forms were sold alongside grocery staples, capitalizing on the era’s obsession with presentation and entertaining. The aspirational 1960s hostess culture drove demand for anything that made food look more deliberate and impressive. As home entertaining culture shifted and the labor involved in molded food presentations fell out of fashion, these products quietly left grocery shelves. They survive today only in estate sales and vintage kitchen collections.

7. Canned Deviled Ham by Multiple Brands

While Underwood deviled ham technically still exists today, the 1960s supermarket carried a remarkable variety of competing canned deviled ham brands that have since entirely disappeared. Regional producers across the South and Midwest offered their own spiced, spreadable ham products with distinct flavor profiles and loyal local followings. The canned meat aisle was genuinely competitive in ways modern supermarkets no longer reflect. As refrigerated deli meats became more accessible and affordable, and consumer enthusiasm for shelf-stable meat declined, the competing brands folded one by one. Underwood survived through brand recognition alone, while its rivals became forgotten footnotes in mid-century grocery history.

8. Pillsbury Space Food Mix: Astronaut Marketing at Its Peak

The 1960s space race turned NASA into the most powerful marketing tool American food brands had ever encountered. Pillsbury and several competitors introduced grocery products explicitly marketed as connected to astronaut food technology, including dehydrated meal mixes and compressed food bars that families could buy and prepare at home as a novelty experience. The products ranged from genuinely useful to outright gimmicky, but the space branding moved units throughout the decade. Once the cultural novelty of the space program faded from everyday conversation and the Apollo program wound down, the entire category of space-themed grocery novelties collapsed. The products vanished as quickly as the national obsession that had created them.

9. Canned Potato Sticks: The Chip Before Pringles

Before Pringles introduced the uniformly stacked chip in 1968 and before bagged potato chips dominated every snack aisle, canned potato sticks held a respected position in 1960s supermarkets. Thin, crispy, and sold in small cylindrical canisters, they were a cocktail party staple and a lunchbox addition that felt slightly more refined than a grease-stained chip bag. Several brands competed in the category, including O&C and Durkee. As Pringles grew and the bagged chip market expanded aggressively, canned potato sticks lost shelf space and consumer attention. A few specialty brands still produce them, but their grocery-store presence has shrunk to near-nonexistence in most national supermarket chains.

10. Blue Bonnet Margarine Quarters With Wax Wrapping

Blue Bonnet margarine still exists, but the 1960s supermarket version was a fundamentally different product in both composition and packaging. Sold in individually wax-paper-wrapped quarters that mimicked butter sticks in format, the original Blue Bonnet formula contained partially hydrogenated oils that produced a flavor and texture profile quite distinct from today’s reformulated version. The waxy wrapper itself was part of the ritual of unwrapping and placing the stick in a butter dish. Post-2006 trans fat regulations forced reformulations across the entire margarine category, fundamentally altering every major brand. The product that exists today shares a name with the 1960s original but is chemically and experientially a different grocery item entirely.

11. Canned Plum Pudding: The Holiday Shelf Staple

British-influenced holiday food traditions held significantly more sway in American supermarkets during the 1960s than they do today, and canned plum pudding was a seasonal grocery staple that appeared reliably every November in the baking and specialty foods aisle. Brands like Crosse and Blackwell produced versions that were stocked by mainstream American grocers without any particular novelty framing. As the cultural connection to British food traditions weakened over subsequent decades and the holiday dessert aisle expanded in new directions, canned plum pudding lost its mainstream American presence. Today, it exists almost exclusively in British import shops and online specialty retailers, positioned as a niche import rather than a grocery shelf standard.

12. Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer With Papain: The Science Sprinkle

Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer was a 1960s supermarket fixture, a papain-based powder derived from papaya that home cooks sprinkled onto cheaper cuts of meat to break down tough protein fibers before cooking. It sat in the spice aisle as a practical tool for budget-minded households trying to make the most of an affordable roast or steak. The product still technically exists in some stores, but its prominence has dropped dramatically as meat quality has improved, marinade options have multiplied, and modern shoppers have gravitated toward flavor-based solutions over enzymatic ones. Finding it on a standard supermarket shelf today requires checking multiple stores, and many locations have dropped it from inventory entirely.

13. Canned Tamales by Gebhardt: Tex-Mex Before It Was Trendy

Gebhardt’s canned tamales were a mainstream 1960s supermarket product that introduced Tex-Mex flavors to households far outside the American Southwest. Sold in their cooking liquid inside a standard tin can, they were an accessible and affordable weeknight dinner option that required no cultural familiarity with authentic tamale preparation. Gebhardt was eventually acquired by ConAgra, which continued the product for years before discontinuing it as the authentic Mexican food market expanded dramatically and consumer expectations for the category shifted. The canned tamale as a mainstream supermarket product has effectively vanished, replaced by frozen options and fresh prepared foods in the deli section that bear little resemblance to the original shelf-stable version.

14. Fluffo Golden Shortening: The Yellow Fat Nobody Remembers

Fluffo was Procter & Gamble’s yellow-tinted vegetable shortening, introduced as a companion product to Crisco and marketed specifically for frying because of its color and perceived flavor. It occupied prime shelf space in 1960s supermarket baking aisles and was a recognizable product in millions of American kitchens throughout the decade. Procter and Gamble discontinued Fluffo in the late 1960s as Crisco’s dominance made maintaining a secondary shortening brand economically inefficient. Unlike Crisco, which survived through consistent marketing and brand loyalty, Fluffo left no successor and generated no revival. It exists today only in vintage advertising collections and the memories of home cooks who once reached for the yellow tin without a second thought.

• Tags:
• Vintage Supermarket
• Obsolete Foods
• Retro Shopping
• Lost Products
• Sixties Kitchen