By now we’ve all heard the lamentations about Hollywood’s drought of ideas: Everything is a sequel , a remake or an adaptation of already popular intellectual property . Where is the originality? Fashion, which has always been cyclical, is now downright redundant. It’s not enough that my Instagram feed is filled with photos of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Kate Moss — it’s also telling me how I can, in the year 2026, dress just like they did in 1996, down to the tortoise shell headband and strappy tank top.
Well, food, it seems, is suffering — or enjoying, depending on your perspective — a similar fate. At the recent Sweets & Snacks Expo, a trade show that’s exactly what it sounds like, the most innovative new “powerhouse” snack award went to Hershey Co.’s Dot’s Snack Mix, a blend of the company’s “original” pretzels, corn cereal and pita chips, with garlic rye chips tossed in. Guys, it’s Chex Mix. Other winners included Everything Bagel Pretzels, which may have sounded innovative 10 years ago, before Trader Joe’s began selling its popular Everything But the Bagel spice mix, and Xochitl’s Cholula Hot Sauce Flavored Tortilla Chips, which took home an award less than a year after Chick-fil-A rolled out a line of waffle chips flavored like its sauces , and both follow in the footsteps of the OG dip-flavored chip, ketchup potato chips.
I will hand it to KickBallz, the new energy gum, which does offer an innovative caffeine delivery mechanism. But gumballs? Blech. We figured out as kids that the machine was fun but the gum sucked. (At least Alert Pop uses lollipops, a superior candy, to dose the user, even if it also sounds like a parent’s worst nightmare.)
One of the latest products from the buzzy food startup David Protein is tinned cod, which plays on the recently renewed interest in tinned fish , a more than century-old format. The first time the brand pulled this kind of publicity stunt, offering frozen cod as a counterpunch to complaints that its health bars were ultraprocessed, it was genius. After that, the joke is stale.
It’s not just packaged food recycling ideas — restaurants are going all in on the so-called newstalgia trend too. Menu appearances of the Creamsicle flavor are up 37% over the past four years, according to research firm Datassential. At Austin’s Arlo Grey and New York’s Quality Meats , the iconic frozen treat has been reincarnated as a posh dessert. Fast-food chains are getting in on the act too: Wendy’s Co. introduced the Orange Dreamsicle Frosty in 2024, and Sonic’s Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float arrived a few months later. Creamsicle cocktails are everywhere, and for those too young to remember such a thing as a vanilla popsicle coated in orange sherbert, there’s Coca-Cola Co.’s “ retro-inspired ” Orange Cream, which made its debut last year.
Of course, reaching back to the past to reinvent the present is itself not new. This particular wave seems to have picked up steam during Covid-19 , when all of us needed something comforting. (I would have gladly downed a creamsicle cocktail or two at the time.) In 2021, Pizza Hut ran an entire newstalgia campaign featuring not just pizza but also Pac-Man. In 2022 we got the Pepsi S’mores collection . The next year, it was Oreo’s Cotton Candy and S’mores cookies . Taco Bell reprised its greatest hits in 2024, bringing back a fan favorite from each decade . This summer, Froyo is having another moment.
But while this trend is driven partly by millennials, demand is also coming from Gen Z. They don’t remember Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, just as I didn’t remember bell bottoms as a middle schooler but insisted my mother buy me some. Perhaps they’re also imagining the ’90s as an idyllic decade just as so many of us who grew up in it are; after all, it was a time when we all assumed we’d be more financially successful than our parents instead of still depending on them, whether for childcare, free housing or, in my case until recently, a phone plan. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)
Dirty martinis, ice cream floats and baked Alaska are all back in vogue, according to Datassential. But a lot of the Gen Z consumers ordering these items don’t even know they’re vintage. In a recent survey, the research firm asked consumers about a limited-time offer of twice-baked potatoes — the 1960s delicacy featuring a hollowed-out spud filled with mashed potatoes and cheese and topped with bacon or whatever else someone wanted to stuff in there — at the chain Twin Peaks. Incredibly, 68% of Gen Z respondents categorized it as “extremely new & different” or “very new & different.”
In Hollywood, the constant remakes are less about a lack of ideas and more about studios wanting sure bets. The same may be happening in food, where many of the major players now prefer to buy up emerging brands rather than risk big money to create their own. Remember New Coke? The 1985 Coca-Cola product flopped spectacularly — and cost the company a reported $4 million in marketing and saddled it with $30 million in “ unwanted concentrate .”
Before Covid, the rage in the food world was about how increasingly global and curious young people want new, different, exotic flavors. Major American companies wanted to capitalize on that too. Today, some of that spirit is certainly still in the mix, and a lot of what’s truly novel is either coming from abroad or inspired by it, possibly teaching us a lesson about the importance of immigrants and open trade in our culture. Bachan’s Japanese barbecue sauce, started in California, is a hit . Chili crisp is everywhere. There’s Dubai chocolate ; and ube, the purple yam Americans have just discovered and are now plundering to the point of leaving Filipinos with a shortage ; and the pillowy, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, always worth trying, actually made-in-Sweden Swedish candies .
Please, keep these imports coming! But let’s avoid the duplicative. BonBon, one of the big Swedish candy companies, just released a line of potato chips with a salt-and-vinegar flavor. Come on! We have enough of those already!
Don’t get me wrong: I have no issue with bringing back the classics. I am so down to wear some simple separates, drink a cockamamie dessert/cocktail and watch The Devil Wears Prada 2 . It’s hard not to want to indulge in nostalgia at a time when so much is changing around us, and so fast. But let’s also be bold and seize control of our gastro-futures. Let’s spit out those caffeine gumballs and make some new cocktails nobody’s ever heard of. And let’s pair them with novel snacks that are just as groundbreaking as Chex Mix was when the recipe was first unveiled more than seven decades ago.