Pizza Hut Is, Apparently, Something We're Nostalgic For Now
Throughout the relatively brief history of mass-produced food, no recipe tweak has ever made it past the diehards unscathed. Skittles changed its lime flavor to green apple in 2013 and the wound is still fresh on the palates of Skittle enthusiasts. McDonald's switched from a fried apple pie to a baked one all the way back in 1992, and fans of the original have been trying to rip a hole in space-time ever since, longing to return to a universe in which fast food didn't sacrifice flavor in the name of "health." And Twitter is now awash in the rosy nostalgia of 1980s/90s Pizza Hut, a place that, it turns out, we all wish to return to for one reason or another—because the tacit agreement is that when it comes to our favorite brands, Change Is Bad.
The latest wave of sentimentality kicked off with this evocative image and scene description, courtesy of Ricky Cobb (of the Super 70s Sports Podcast):
Remember when Pizza Hut pan pizzas were basically a goddamn culinary delicacy? They'd bring them out in a real fucking skillet that was piping at about 700 degrees Fahrenheit right as your third song kicked in on the jukebox after you'd played a game of Galaga. We were kings. pic.twitter.com/G7dQBRd3qQ
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) June 20, 2020
Turns out it wasn't just the (superior) personal pan pizzas of yore that thousands of Twitter users have been daydreaming about since late last century—although that's definitely a huge part of it, since the 2019 recipe revamp wasn't a change for the better. It's the entire vibe of 1990s Pizza Hut that so many of us wish to recapture. Our current era of ultra-bright, nearly antiseptic fast casual settings like Sweetgreen and MOD Pizza stand in stark contrast to the dark (nearly dingy, even!), carpeted dining room and exposed-brick walls of vintage Pizza Hut, which allowed kids to feel like they were eating lunch in a dive bar. Even the light fixtures evoked a tavern setting:
Sitting under these lights with your hot pizza and the cold sodas in those red cups...good times pic.twitter.com/UHYiP6RL0G
— RMJNewton321 (@MJNewton321) June 21, 2020
And of course, who could forget the BOOK IT! program, a nationwide literacy initiative founded in 1984 that lets students turn their reading progress at school into a cheesy reward at Pizza Hut: one personal pan pizza when you present your reading certificate. Many, many grown adults on Twitter highlighted the inextricable relationship in their mind between Pizza Hut and K-6 reading assignments, which the BOOK IT! program savvily used to its promotional advantage:
Parents: If this thread is taking you back to a simpler time, a time when you knew finishing a book meant free Pizza Hut pizza, BOOK IT! is still around! AND we just launched a new summer program this month. Head on over to https://t.co/rdFvRO2FN3 to sign up!
— The BOOK IT! Program (@bookitprogram) June 21, 2020
So there you have it, folks: Pizza Hut is still beloved—if only for the space it occupies in our earliest memories—and the BOOK IT! program is still incentivizing literacy with carbs, as it should.