After 24 Years Mr. Pibb Returns to Stores, With One Big Change

Coca-Cola is bringing back a classic! After being off shelves for 24 years, the Mr. Pibb soda is now available again, offering a nostalgic treat with your next drink.

According to Food Dive, Coca-Cola is bringing back a classic brand to appeal to both those who remember it fondly and a new generation of drinkers.

In 2021, the soda Mr. Pibb was discontinued across the country and a new version, called Pibb Xtra, took its place. However, Pibb Xtra was only sold in the Southern United States.

Recently, Dane Callis, who leads Coca‑Cola North America’s sparkling flavor development, noticed a growing trend called “new-stalgia.” Recognizing this opportunity, Coca‑Cola decided to act.

Callis says “Consumers have long called for the Mr. Pibb brand to return.”

As a longtime fan, I noticed they’ve made one small change to keep things current. They’ve given the drink a pretty significant boost – a full 30% more caffeine! It seems like they’re aiming to appeal to a new generation with a little extra energy.

The old formula for Mr. Pibb contained around 40 milligrams of caffeine, but the current recipe now has 54 milligrams.

For comparison, a typical cup of coffee has about 100 milligrams of caffeine. Health experts recommend limiting your daily caffeine intake to around 400 milligrams.

As a longtime fan, it’s reassuring to hear from Callis that the core of what makes this brand special hasn’t been lost. They’re essentially refining things, and most importantly, giving the brand back its original name – which, from what I’ve gathered, is what everyone’s been hoping for all along.

Will Pibb Xtra Still Be Sold?

Pibb Xtra will not be sold now, while the revitalized Mr. Pibb is back on shelves.

What Flavor is Mr. Pibb?

Mr. Pibb is very similar to Dr. Pepper in both taste and style. It primarily features cherry and caramel flavors, and some people also detect a hint of vanilla.

’80s Foods We Wish They Still Made

Bonkers

Bonkers was a popular, chewy fruit candy throughout the 1980s, famous for its bizarre commercials. These ads featured a woman with glasses correcting misunderstandings about the candy (it wasn’t gum!), all while large fruits rained down, often on her family. Despite its popularity throughout the decade, Bonkers quickly lost customers and production stopped just a few years later. Common flavors included grape, strawberry, and watermelon – my favorite! The watermelon candy was especially clever, featuring a green outer layer and a chewy red inside.

C-3PO’s

If you grew up with the original Star Wars movies, you probably remember this cereal! C-3POs cereal came out with Return of the Jedi and was really popular in the mid-1980s. The cereal itself wasn’t anything special – it was just a simple oat, wheat, and corn blend – but the boxes were a big deal. Kids loved collecting the character masks on the back, and often played with those instead of eating the cereal, which would sometimes sit in cupboards for months!

Disney Pops

Mickey Mouse Ice Cream bars are a timeless favorite at Disney Parks and in stores everywhere. Back in the 1980s, you could also find Disney-themed fruit-flavored popsicles in grape, cherry, and orange. They were shaped like Mickey, Donald, or Goofy! It’s a mystery why they stopped making them, especially since people still love both Disney characters and popsicles. I’d love to have a grape-flavored Donald Duck popsicle right now.

Ecto Cooler

Ecto Cooler is a standout in the world of movie-themed food and drinks. This bright green, citrus-flavored beverage first appeared in the late 1980s alongside the popular Ghostbusters cartoon. Even after the cartoon and Ghostbusters movies ended, Hi-C continued making Ecto Cooler until the early 2000s. It’s made several comebacks since then, usually around new Ghostbusters releases. Demand is so strong that when Ecto Cooler is re-released, bottles often get resold online for surprisingly high prices—sometimes for dozens, even hundreds, of dollars! That’s a little spooky, isn’t it?

Five Alive

If you liked citrus-flavored drinks but weren’t a fan of Hi-C Ecto Cooler, Five Alive was another option. The name came from the five different juices it contained: orange, grapefruit, tangerine, lemon, and lime. While Five Alive disappeared from stores in the US in the 1990s, it’s still available in Canada. If you happen to be traveling there, I’d really appreciate it if you could bring me back a carton!

Fruit Corners Fruit Bars

I remember when Fruit Roll-Ups came out in the early 80s – it was like a fruit snack explosion! Suddenly, everyone was trying to make the next big thing, all competing to get into the market for what seemed like healthy treats for kids. (Seriously, it had ‘fruit’ in the name, how bad could it be?) As someone who grew up during that time and tried them all, I truly believe Fruit Corners Fruit Bars were the best. They took the idea of a Fruit Roll-Up and made it like a granola bar, which was genius. They originally had strawberry, cherry, grape, and orange-pineapple flavors, and I’ve been searching for something that tastes like those cherry bars ever since! I’m not kidding – for decades! Actually, the That’s It Apple and Cherry bars you can find now are pretty darn close, which is a relief.

Fruit Wrinkles

Fruit Wrinkles were a fruit snack shaped like jelly beans, created as an alternative to flatter options like Roll-Ups or the rigidly shaped Fruit Bars. Ads highlighted that they had more fruit and less sugar than similar snacks. However, as fruit snacks started appearing in more elaborate shapes tied to popular kids’ entertainment, simple snacks like Fruit Wrinkles lost their appeal and were eventually discontinued.

Giggles

Oreos dominate the sandwich cookie market today, taking up a huge amount of shelf space with countless flavors – honestly, the Sour Patch Kids Oreos were too much for me. But things were different in the 1980s, when Giggles cookies were a major competitor. Giggles were similar to Oreos, but they had both chocolate and vanilla creme filling, and each cookie was decorated with a smiley face that came in vanilla or chocolate. Considering Oreos releases around 60 new flavors every week, it’s surprising they haven’t tried a vanilla and chocolate combination – it’s a really good idea!

Hostess Pudding Pies

Hostess is still a major player in the snack world, famous for treats like Twinkies, Ding Dongs, and Ho Hos. While you can still find their fruit pies, their classic pudding pies – a big hit in the 80s and available in vanilla or chocolate – are no longer made. One reason for their disappearance is likely their high fat and unhealthy ingredients. Even today’s apple pies aren’t exactly good for you – a single Hostess cherry pie contains 8 grams of saturated fat and 25 grams of added sugar, which is half the recommended daily amount. But let’s be honest, they tasted amazing, so maybe that’s all that mattered!

Jell-O Pudding Pops

It seems like pudding was incredibly popular in the 1980s – it wasn’t just a dessert, it was everywhere! You could find it as individual cups, in pies, and even as frozen Pudding Pops. Jell-O heavily promoted their Pudding Pops, which came in flavors like vanilla, chocolate, and swirl, and their commercials starred Bill Cosby. (Those ads still hold up, by the way!) Jell-O reportedly sold $100 million worth of Pudding Pops in one year, but eventually, people lost interest and the product was discontinued.

Kudos

Do you remember Kudos bars? They were incredibly popular in the 1980s, originally available in flavors like Chocolate Chip, Nutty Fudge, and Peanut Butter. Made by Mars, they were a unique snack – healthier than a candy bar, but still a sweet treat. They were really delicious, and stayed on shelves until the 2010s, when they were unfortunately discontinued.

Mr. T Cereal

In the mid-1980s, Mr. T was a huge pop culture icon, largely due to his roles in Rocky III and The A-Team, and his distinctive style – a mohawk, denim, and lots of gold chains. His popularity with kids led to a strange animated TV show where he played a gymnastics coach who also solved mysteries. From 1984 to 1993, Mr. T’s face was on boxes of a popular Quaker cereal shaped like the letter ‘T’ and made with corn and oats. The cereal even had a cameo in the opening scene of Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, further boosting its lasting appeal.

O’Grady’s Chips

O’Grady’s was a potato chip brand from the 1980s that didn’t survive the competitive snack food market. They marketed themselves as having thicker-cut chips with a bolder cheese flavor. Fans especially loved their Au Gratin flavor, claiming it was much better and cheesier than anything available now.

Peanut Butter Boppers

One Reddit user perfectly described why people loved Boppers: “They were like the best parts of a granola bar, without the granola! As a peanut butter lover, I still miss them.” Couldn’t agree more! These crunchy, peanut butter-filled bars need to make a comeback. Luckily, Nature Valley, the original maker, does share a recipe on their website if you’re feeling ambitious and want to try making them yourself.

Product 19

Product 19, easily recognized by its red box and mysterious name (said to be because it was the 19th recipe Kellogg’s tested), was a popular cereal throughout the 1980s and 90s. Kellogg’s originally marketed it in the 80s by claiming it was incredibly nutritious, despite not tasting like it. While people once might have chosen cereal for health reasons, that’s largely changed, and Product 19 was discontinued in 2016.

Quackers

For generations, kids have loved the satisfying crunch and cheesy flavor of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. In the 1980s, Nabisco attempted to challenge Goldfish with a similar snack called Quackers, which were duck-shaped and also cheese-flavored (a surprisingly tasty sour cream and onion variety was also available). However, Quackers disappeared by the end of the decade, leaving Goldfish as the dominant snack once again.

Slice

Pepsi frequently launches new lemon-lime sodas to challenge Sprite and other competitors. Currently, they offer Starry, but previously they had Sierra Mist and, before that, Slice (which itself replaced Teem). Slice even experimented with additional flavors like Mandarin Orange and Apple – honestly, we could use more apple-flavored sodas!

When Slice first came out, Pepsi heavily promoted its 10% fruit juice content, positioning it as a more natural option. This worked well initially, but they later changed the recipe and reduced the amount of juice. Slice continued through the 1990s with different packaging and marketing, before being replaced by Sierra Mist in the early 2000s.

Sunkist Fun Fruits

Still reminiscing about old fruit snacks? Here’s another one! Sunkist Fun Fruits were about the same size and shape as Wrinkles, and came in cherry, orange, strawberry, and grape flavors. Interestingly, even though they were called Sunkist, they weren’t made by the Sunkist company. Instead, Leaf Confections licensed the Sunkist name to make them seem more authentically fruity. (Today’s Sunkist Fruit Snacks are made by General Mills.)

Tato Skins

While many potato chip brands exist, Tato Skins, made by Keebler in the 1980s, were unique. They were made with whole potatoes, including the skin, to taste like a baked potato. Popular flavors were Original, Sour Cream & Chives, Cheddar & Bacon, and Bar-B-Que. Today, you can find a similar snack called TGI Fridays Potato Skins Snacks, but fans of the original Tato Skins believe they don’t quite measure up.

WWF Superstars of Wrestling Bars

During the 1980s, when wrestling was incredibly popular thanks to stars like Hulk Hogan, WWF Superstars Ice Cream Bars were created to appeal to young fans. These treats were vanilla ice cream between cookies with a chocolate layer, decorated with the faces of wrestlers like “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Ted DiBiase. Although initially made to capitalize on the wrestling craze of Saturday morning television, the ice cream bars were actually quite delicious and continued to be made even after wrestling’s popularity declined in the early 1990s. Nostalgia for the original bars led to a brief revival in 2020 with “WWE Super Stars” from Good Humor, featuring newer wrestlers like John Cena and Roman Reigns on vanilla ice cream sandwiches. While tasty, these new bars weren’t available in stores for nearly as long as the original WWF ones.

2025-11-13 18:00