Retro Wishlist III: The Search For Spock July 1, 2008

Man, I’m on a roll lately! D’oh ho ho! Get it? Roll? Post about food? Ah, forget I ever said that.

Oh yeah, in a couple of weeks, it will be a year since I started this blog. Doesn’t feel like it’s been that long already. Maybe I’ll do something special to commemorate the occasion.

Today, kids, I have for you the third installment of the Retro Wishlist! (Check out the first two here and here.) And as for the title of this post…well, that was just me being non sequitur. So no, Spock is not on the list. Also, I promise this post will be better than that movie.

This time, all the items on the list are foods I used to eat as a child that I miss and would like to eat again for old times’ sake.

6. Nestle’s Alpine White Bars

Oh man. Alpine White. I’m pretty sure that this candy bar is the one that ensured white chocolate would have a permanent place on American store shelves.

I couldn’t find any pictures or anything, but here’s a strange, somewhat cheesy, very 80s commercial:

I remember eating these things as early as three years old. They may be the reason I love almonds so much. When we went to the grocery store, I would usually come home with one of these things and it was a real treat.

Sadly, Nestle discontinued Alpine White sometime in either the late 80s or early 90s.

These days, I don’t care for white chocolate anymore because it’s too sweet and…fakey for me, but if Nestle brought back the Alpine White, I would definitely buy one once in a while just for the nostalgia value. Symphony bars are a good substitute though. It may not be quite the same thing, but it’s creamy chocolate with almonds in it, and it’s certainly better than that awful Hershey’s Cookies and Cream bar. Ugh.

7. Hardee’s Cinnamon n’ Raisin Biscuits

Yes, Hardee’s still exists, I know. But they don’t exist in Oklahoma anymore, because Carl’s Jr. took them all over about ten years ago. I’m 90% certain the Carl’s Jr. restaurants don’t carry the Cinnamon n’ Raisin Biscuits anymore. (Though I may have to go find out pretty soon.)

I grew up in a small town where if some new establishment came in, it was a really big deal. So I actually have quite a few memories of when they built a Hardee’s on the corner of Green and Washington. My memories of the event itself are fairly clear, but for some reason I’m not exactly sure what year it was. It’s safe to say that it was either 1986 or 1987.

A few years after it opened, my mom got a job there making biscuits. Therefore, I actually spent a lot of time at Hardee’s when I was a kid. That sound the ovens made when it was time to take things out is permanently etched into my memory– it sounded like the first few notes of Beethoven’s 5th.

One of my favorite things to get from the breakfast menu was the Cinnamon n’ Raisin Biscuit.

I also couldn’t find any pictures for this, or even a commercial about them, so here’s another Hardee’s commercial for some Disney plush toys, of which I had a few. Not sure where I got them from, seeing as how we definitely didn’t have a Hardee’s yet in 1985, but whatever.

Anyway, about the biscuits. I think I might try to make these things at home sometime because I remember them being really, really tasty, though I could do without the icing. This and the chicken biscuit were my favorites, since I didn’t like sausage or ham or cheese or anything like that back then. (I almost added the chicken biscuit to this list, but you can get those at other places now.)

Another fun memory of these biscuits is that they sometimes gave you a toy with the purchase (probably for an extra dollar or something). I had a bunch of those California Raisin figurines they gave out, and my dad actually still has one of them to this day.

8. Pizza Hut’s Pizza

Okay, I know, here’s another one that still exists. However! Pizza Hut is not the same as it was when I was a kid. The last few times I’ve had it, it was vomit-inducingly awful. Even their logo is awful now. Maybe the pizza was always bad and I just didn’t realize it, but I somehow doubt that America would have made it the most popular pizza chain if that was really the truth.

Have a warm and fuzzy commercial.

I had so many good experiences eating with my mom and dad at Pizza Hut. The atmosphere was always comfortable, with moody lighting and the occasional 80s/90s tune coming out of the jukebox. Oh, how I loved putting quarters in the jukebox. And I remember the pizza being tasty. Greasy, but tasty.

Honestly, I guess the thing I actually miss is the experience. At Pizza Hut, fun times were always to be had. They sometimes had cool toys too, like those Land Before Time hand puppets. And don’t forget Book It! Read books, get pizza. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Oh yeah, and that huge Back to the Future II promotion they did. I had those “future” sunglasses, and being a very…imaginative kid, I thought I could see the future with them.

Nowadays, Pizza Hut isn’t the warm, fuzzy family dining establishment it used to be. The marketing and commercials are insipid, the stores are getting shadier all the time, and they never seem to get any business. Maybe there’s just no room in America for a good old-fashioned sit-down pizza joint anymore.

9. Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Chicken Littles

Here’s one I almost forgot to include. How could I do that? I was in love with these things when I was little!

And now, ridiculously cheesy 50s-ish commercial!

In my family, as with many other families, it was something of a tradition to go out to eat after church on Sunday. (Yes, I was raised in church. More about that in a future post.) There are two places I remember going to the most: Dairy Queen and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Before it was officially known as “KFC”, we just called it “the chicken place”.

Anyway, I didn’t really like eating chicken off the bone at the time, so these were my favorite thing to get there. They weren’t really anything spectactular– just a chicken patty with mayo on a bun and sort of looked like those White Castle burgers. They didn’t have cheese or pickles or anything else scary that I hated, so they were wonderful– well, as wonderful as processed, mechanically separated “chicken” can be. Hell, for only 39 cents a piece, what do you want? My parents probably liked that price quite a bit.

Also, if I was good, I got to have a Little Bucket Parfait, which was really just graham cracker crumbs, chocolate pudding, and Cool Whip, but when you’re five years old, you take delight in such simple things. When you’re twenty-five years old, you look at it and say, “Meh, what chemicalicious over-processed junk.” Or at least…I do.

I don’t remember Chicken Littles being around for long. I think they were discontinued in the early 90s. They sorta-kinda brought them back in the form of the “Snacker”, which I haven’t tried yet.

KFC is another fun childhood experience that also got ruined somewhat. I hated the new logo and renovations they did in the 90s, and then I had a job there for about a week when I was a teenager and got fired because I didn’t make it to the staff meeting at 8AM on my day off. I’m still kind of pissed off about that. But the KFC near here is newly remodeled and actually looks nice, so I don’t mind giving them my business every once in a while. Maybe I’ll go there and try the Snacker pretty soon.

Whew! I sure did eat a lot of fast food as a kid. A lot more than I do now, that’s for sure.