The Best—And Weirdest—’90s Food Commercials
For 1990s kids like me, there was nothing like waking up on Saturday morning without a care in the world and running downstairs to watch Scooby-Doo or X-Men. Every commercial break, I’d parrot brands’ memorable taglines and sing along to catchy jingles.
By the end of the ‘90s, almost every kid in America knew there was no wrong way to eat a Reese’s. To jog your memory, here are some of our favorite ads from the era—do you still know the words?
- 1. Bagel Bites
“When pizza’s on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime,” intones this shrill ad for Bagel Bites, and indeed, many of us succeeded in convincing our parents to serve us the salt bombs for breakfast.
- 2. Heinz EZ Squirt Ketchup
Though this ad for crazily colored ketchup aired in the early 2000s, every ‘90s kid will recognize the aesthetic: the suburban house, the flustered dad, the cheeky, innocent kid—the tropes are all here.
- 3. Taco Bell
This adorable, streetwise talking chihuahua—whose real name was Gidget—had us enthralled whenever she showed up on the screen to hawk Taco Bell’s two-for-one soft tacos or the latest variant on the chalupa. Say it with us: ¡Yo quiero Taco Bell!
- 4. Budweiser
The 1995 Super Bowl: a record-breaking San Francisco 49ers win, a swashbuckling halftime show starring Indiana Jones (really), and… whatever this Budweiser commercial was. One almost misses the Clydesdales.
- 5. Wrigley Doublemint
What’s the most logical way to promote a gum called Doublemint? Wrigley took the “double” concept and ran with it rather abstractly, releasing a series of commercials featuring twins—like Tia and Tamera Mowry from the 1994 sitcom Sister, Sister—to drive home the point that there was, in fact, double the mint. (Yawn.)
- Who: Bagel Bites