Junk Food, Music & Great Shakes

1960s era Yardbirds

Both music and food can bring back a flood of memories. When you hear an old song, or eat something you loved as a kid, it can take you back to another place and time. Instant comfort!

I’m always nostalgic for the 70s, especially the food (junk food, to be specific) and the music. Of course the music of the 70s has never gone away. But many 70s-era snack foods have sadly bitten the dust.

If you were a kid in the 70s (and depending on where you grew up) you may recall these long lost favorites: Cherry and Grape Milk Duds; Yum Yums (caramel, coconut and chocolate cookies with stripes), Chum Gums (the best bubble gum ever, even better than Bazooka for blowing huge bubbles); Banana Flips (Banana-flavored cakes with a creamy white filling and totally scrumptious); Jaw Breakers (probably deemed too dangerous by today’s health & safety standards); Pixie Stix (colored powdered candy in long paper tubes); Dippy Canoes (corn flavored salty snacks shaped like little boats), and my personal fave Great Shakes (you mixed it up yourself — which was half the fun — with the container that came with the mix).

Even cooler, The Yardbirds’ classic track “Over, Under Sideways Down” was used in the commercials.