[LifeStyle] ‘There are petitions dedicated to their return’: in praise of great lost products, from Cheese Moments to the Skip It

[BirSaNN]

Gros Michel bananas
For some time I have been consumed by the thought that I no longer like bananas because I’m hankering for an extinct variety I tasted only as a small child. This didn’t occur to me until I read – maybe 10 years ago – that the universally grown Gros Michel variety disappeared due to blight, to be replaced by the now universal, and allegedly less good, Cavendish, sometime in the early 1960s. Recent research suggests there are a lot of people out there with a kind of obsession for this lost banana. The good news is I could order some from a specialist grower in Florida; the bad news is it would cost $360.
Tim Dowling

Pret’s frappe coffee light
Discontinued this year in favour of “iced coffee”, which is just boring cold coffee rather than the sweetener-packed ice-cream sundae masquerading as a drink that I loved. Embarrassingly, in soft drinks I have the tastebuds of a six-year-old.
Jess Cartner-Morley

Clarks’ Desert Mali boots
Not to be confused with the Clarks desert boot, I’ve had the same pair of brown (beeswax, to be precise) Desert Mali boots for 11 years. They’ve been resoled three times, I’ve worn them in hurricanes, floods and snow, and when I briefly dabbled in motorcycle riding. I planned to buy a replacement pair but they stopped selling them. I’ve tried other, more expensive boots, but nothing has compared.

My entire wardrobe is based around a single, now extinct, pair of brown boots
For the last four years, I’ve checked eBay, Poshmark and Facebook Marketplace twice a month, but have never found a pair in my size. Sometimes stores will tease me by pretending they have them, but they never actually do. I did manage to buy a used black pair off eBay but they’re just not the same. Beeswax is a classic colour for a leather boot: unfussy, untreated, ready for action and the choice of Indiana Jones, it teams easily with black, blue or grey jeans, or smart trousers, and can be worn in the office, pub or, well, the desert. My entire wardrobe is based around a single, now extinct, pair of brown boots.
Adam Gabbatt

House By Mouse by George Mendoza
The book was about Henrietta, an efficient mouse architect who designed houses for her animal friends: a mid-century bachelor pad for Fox, a bamboo waterside palace on stilts for Frog; a pear-shaped cottage (complete with music room) for Spider. George Mendoza’s 1981 children’s book House By Mouse spawned my adult obsession with houses and interiors. It was also a rare book about a woman (OK, a mouse) being brilliant at her job. My mother has that well-thumbed copy, but the book is out of print and copies can go for more than £200 on eBay. I would love to see this book back in circulation so I can buy a copy for every child I know.
Lucy Pavia

Haribo dolly mixtures

I have a mouth full of sweet teeth, and am continually outraged when limited editions get discontinued (jelly’n’ice-cream Fruit Pastilles, you exist only in my memories). But the biggest treachery came when Haribo stopped including dolly mixtures in their creepily named Kiddies’ SuperMix in the early noughties. For a while I bought industrial-sized bags wholesale, but my supply dried up years ago, and their delicate coconutty flavour has never been replicated. Don’t even talk to me about Barratt’s.
Joe Stone

Smiths’ Cheese Flavoured Moments
There are internet threads and Change.org petitions dedicated to the return of these heavenly morsels. (Yes, I’ve signed.) While refusing to confirm or deny if they will ever return, Smiths taunts Cheese Flavoured Moments lovers by keeping the image of the packet on the backboard that displays Scampi Fries (perhaps the worst crisp ever invented) and Bacon Fries (fine, but can’t hold a torch to CFMs) in pubs. Every so often I spot the backboard in a random pub and a surge of excitement floods my tastebuds. Finally! They’re back! Only to come crashing down seconds later when I realise they’re Scampi Fries. But the deliciousness of those exquisite, synthetic, cheese-filled cereal parcels will live rent-free in my memory for ever.
Helen Seamons

Twinings’ original lapsang souchong teabags
Ever since I moved to the US, my mum has sent me tea from England (Twinings’ Earl Grey and lapsang souchong). You can obviously buy tea in the US, but it’s not the same – you never know what Americans get up to with their foodstuffs. Last year, something odd happened with my shipment. Normally you can smell lapsang a mile away; it’s like a foil-wrapped forest fire. This time, however, I couldn’t smell anything. Uh oh, had I got Covid and lost my sense of smell? No, it just seemed that this batch was botched; no delightful smokiness, just faint notes of musty socks.

I went into a deep and prolonged mourning that I can’t even alleviate with a good cup of tea
My mum, bless her heart, wrote to Twinings to ask if they’d tweaked their lapsang formula, and they wrote back saying they hadn’t. But a few months later they admitted they’d had “challenges with sourcing” the original blend and had replaced it with a new blend called Distinctively Smoky that was “reminiscent” of the original. People were up in arms. Lapsang lover Winston Churchill turned in his grave. And I went into a deep and prolonged mourning that I can’t even alleviate with a good cup of tea.
Arwa Mahdawi

link: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jul/28/there-are-petitions-dedicated-to-their-return-in-praise-of-great-lost-products-from-cheese-moments-to-the-skip-it