14 pizzas (and pizza-flavored snacks) you will never eat again

Did you cook pizzas in your toaster?

Image: dork-larue / Tumblr

Forget apple pie and hot dogs. Pizza is America's favorite food. If there is any doubt, you only have to look back at the plethora of pizzas and pizza-flavored foods sold in supermarkets and fast food joints over the decades. Our nation never tires of reinventing the pizza. 

We love to look back at the bygone food of our youth. So, let's turn back the clock, turn up the oven and get to drooling over some past pizzas.

Fair warning: You will craze some pizza after reading this.

1. Roman's Frozen Pizza

 

A centurion tosses boxes of frozen pizzas from his chariot like a delivery boy. This was the advertising campaign for Roman, "the non-stingy frozen pizza for big American appetites." Perhaps you saw this in 1969 while watching The Brady Bunch. Roman kept reiterating that it was not stingy.

Image: YouTube

2. Pizza Pick-Up Stix

 

Pizza in a stick! Brilliant! Bird's Eye sold these tubes in the 1970s.

Image: Pinterest

3. Totino's Pizza Slices

 

Totino's still survives largely in Pizza Roll form, but we forget that the brand was a pioneer. Rose Totino was Pillsbury’s first female corporate V.P. and worked directly with the company's food scientists to craft the country’s first nationally distributed frozen pizza. Her “Crisp Crust” technology was patented in 1979. Three decades later, Rose Totino was inducted into the Minnesota Inventor’s Hall of Fame. Anyway… we miss her "My Classic Pizza" and rectangular pizza slices.

Image: General Mills

4. Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Frozen Pizza

 

The king of the D.I.Y. boxed pizza kit, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee got into the frozen game. There was not a lot of cheese on these suckers, was there?

Image: saltycotton / Flickr

5. Red Owl Pizza

 

Here's another brand from the 1960s, the decade that saw frozen pizzas explode as a quick-dinner phenomenon.

Image: Jeff Lonto / Flickr

6. Pizza Hut Electronic Baking Oven Pizza

 

Pizza Hut got into the Easy-Bake Oven market in the 1970s with this plastic, plug-in cooker. The little things were more like tomato tarts. Of course, a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine could provide the perfect desert.

Image: History's Dumpster

7. CELENTANO FROZEN PIZZA

 

If you were a fan of food with corners, this rectangular pizza was for you. Even the sausage was shaped into little squares.

Image: YouTube

8. McPizza

 

After a brief run with pizza in the 1980s and 1990s, McDonalds abandoned the cheesy menu item because it took too long to make. However, a McDonald's in Pomeroy, West Virginia, is still serving it, if you are desperate.

Image: BBR

9. ShowBiz Pizza

 

The mechanical bears of ShowBiz once owned the whole animatronic party-pizza parlour scene — until Chuck E. Cheese came along and killed the competition. But we'll never forget Billy Bob the bear and that jingle, "Where a kid can be a kid!"

Image: dork-larue / Tumblr

10. Nabisco Poppins

 

Not to be confused with Mary Poppins, this Nabisco innovation took instant pizza to new levels of laziness. Good luck cleaning the cheese dripping off the heating coils! 

Image: Mental Floss

11. Buitoni Instant Pizza

 

Buitoni had the sense to make their toaster pizza more of a Hot Pocket. The rounds developed quite a devoted following. There is even a Facebook page petitioning to bring these pizza pockets back to market.

Image: Please Bring Back Buitoni's Instant Pizza / Facebook

12. Kellogg's Presto Pizza

 

Have you ever wondered, "Why don't they make pizza Pop Tarts?" Well, they did.

Image: Dan Goodsell / Flickr / Serious Eats

13. Pizza Spins

 

Pizza flavored pizza shapes. Of course, you could pretend they were steering wheels or wagon wheels. Odd that the pizza on the box didn't seem to be covered with any cheese. Here are 11 more 1970s snacks you will never eat again.

Image: Flickriver

14. Pizzarias

 

The Keebler elves are known for their cookies, but at one point in the early 1990s, they made some really tasty pizza-flavored chips. Who remembers these?

Image: Reddit

SEE MORE: 10 DEFUNCT SODAS WE WISH WE COULD STILL DRINK

 

Now we need something to wash this all down. Who wants a can of "I Like Worms" or Quirst? READ MORE

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6 Comments

AngelW1972 35 months ago
I had both the pizza Hut oven and the snoopy snow cone machine when I was a kid. I got them both for Christmas.
idkwut2use 48 months ago
Celentano isn’t still around?? :0
They could always bring most of them back...they look pretty great...especially the Spins. :33
MichaelDWilson 48 months ago
Chef Boy-Ar-Dee pizza... I used to eat these back in what would have been very early 80s, but I seem to remember a version that was small- four small pizzas stuck together, two of those per box for a total of eight pizzas. You would break off however many you wanted to cook. I LOVED them, they were my go-to after school snack, but the only store that carried them was two towns over and I had to beg my mom to make a special trip to get them. Not pizza related, but just after that time period (so maybe mid-80s), my favorite food was Weaver Dutch-Frye chicken wings, 20 or so in a blue box for $5.00.

Does anyone remember either of those products?
DogPatch1149 51 months ago
One GLARING omission - how could you possibly forget Pepperidge Farm Croissant Pastry Pizzas? There have been numerous requests for the company to bring those back.

The Pizzarias chips were actually pretty good. Totino's survives in more than just pizza roll form; they still make rectangular crisp crust Totino's Party Pizzas. Relatively cheap though a bit stingy on the cheese, just add a quick sprinkle of parmesan and a dollop of extra mozzarella, and they're good to go.
RobertM 52 months ago
I remember both Celentano and Buitoni Toaster Pizza, as I ate plenty of them a long time ago!
ekisrabbsharklaserscom 54 months ago
Your information is incorrect on ShowBiz Pizza. ShowBiz and Chuck E. Cheese are the same thing... Kinda. Chuck E. Cheese was a character at ShowBiz Pizza. At some point the company started opening Chuck E. Cheese restaurants as smaller locations in areas they thought would not support a full ShowBiz Pizza. Eventually over time and financial trouble all locations were converted to Chuck E. Cheese restaurants. But they were never really competition.
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