7 Nostalgic Foods You Can Get On eBay Right Now

There was a time when the internet offered a world of possibility. It still does, I suppose. But it's not as fun! Websites all look the same, everything is run by three corporations, and surfing the web doesn't feel like exploring so much as slogging through the same mud day after day. But eBay is one of those sites that still feels a bit like the Wild West. It will always be cooler than Amazon. And if you have some disposable income, you can purchase some genuinely strange stuff.

Selling and buying food over ecommerce websites is, first and foremost, a funny proposition. Sure, you could easily walk or drive to your local grocer, but why live easily? Besides, eBay really shines as a place to buy very weird and/or very old food.

There are rules for selling food on the platform, however. For example, in 2018 a Canadian man tried to sell a 6-year-old McDonald's burger and fries; the listing was taken down by eBay for violating its rule against selling "unpackaged or expired food."

This leaves the door open for old food that is packaged and unopened, which means a stroll through eBay's current listings can unearth some fascinating foodstuffs—relics of the past that can't be bought anywhere else. Here are some of the more interesting items we found.

Here is one of the oldest edible items I was able to find. This gatorade line from around 1991 has become a collector's item, which is why it's still sitting around unopened in 2022. To a Chicago native, there is perhaps no person living or dead who inspires a more powerful sense of nostalgia than Michael Jordan. Ever since he retired from the NBA, the Bulls have run the gamut from pretty good to really bad. But this set of Michael Jordan–themed Gatorades is the perfect antidote to another season of hardwood mediocrity. The Gatorade is packaged in glass bottles, making it a more aesthetically pleasing product than the contemporary equivalent. And it only costs $11,000! A steal, to be honest.

Canned goods, much like bottled drinks, are allowed on eBay, and the late '90s were something of a renaissance for cartoon-character-adorned meals. This 1997 Heinz canned pasta with Sailor Moon on the front features noodles in eight different character shapes, from Sailor Jupiter to Luna the Cat. I'm too old to eat canned pasta (high cholesterol), so in that sense this is quite nostalgic. Even if you never read or watched Sailor Moon, the art and color scheme on this can is so pleasing to look at. These days, the design of limited-edition products doesn't overwhelm the branding to this degree. Just look at pictures of Heinz canned pasta now—an absolute minimalist snooze! So go ahead, plop down a cool $250, grab a can opener, and see what happens to pasta when it's old enough to rent a car.

If we want to get specific, these are "Vintage Rare Original Betty Crocker Pokemon Fruit Snacks W/ Candy Nintendo 1999." As a child of the 1990s, I'd buy just about anything with original Pokemon branding, even an opened box of fruit snacks from 23 years ago. I can't explain why that purple on the box is so enticing, but it is. This is retailing for $550, which some might call steep; the price breaks down to $55 per pouch of fruit snacks. On the plus side, I'm really not sure if fruit snacks are capable of rotting—and I'm definitely interested in finding out. Does The Takeout have any wealthy benefactors?

Discontinued candy has a surprising shelf life on eBay. And Altoids Sours are one of those candies that people still go to bat for, despite their 12 years of absence from store shelves. According to Bustle, the product was introduced in 2004 and was discontinued in 2010 due to low sales. While Altoids Sours were clearly not beloved enough to stay in production, their small but quite vocal contingent of superfans have kept them a relevant item on eBay. Googling "altoid sours" will present a list of results topped by—you guessed it—ebay.com. The specific tin linked here will run you a clean $99.99. Plop down a Benjy Franklin—it's a fair price for a chance to relive the early aughts!

The Holy Grail of food-based movie promotional items is Hi-C's legendary 1989 Ecto Cooler. While the taste wasn't new—Ecto Cooler is a pivot in name only from Hi-C's Citrus Cooler flavor, a mixture of orange and tangerine—the branding was fun, relevant, and clearly successful. For the Ghostbusters reboots of 2016 and 2021, Ecto Cooler was brought back in limited supply. But for collectors' sake, nothing beats that original 1989 rollout. Like this ½ gallon of the drink (EXTREMELY RARE!), replete with Slimer's wide-open maw. Slimer alone makes it worth $550. That guy is like if the Mucinex Monster was hot... right?

Here is a product from 1978—and I just want to mention again just how awesome that is. While we can have a larger debate about the benefits and drawbacks of modern technology, it is objectively amazing that I can buy a box of Reggie Bars today just because I feel like it. I can just go ahead and buy food that was made 15 years before I was even born (at a price of $4,500). According to the seller, these bars have been kept frozen for the past 44 years. This is archivism!

For anyone who doesn't know about this once and future candy, it is a caramel and milk chocolate confection that isn't a classic rectangle-sized bar but is instead an irregular mound of sugar. According to Snack History, the Reggie Bar was first known as a Bun Bar, and was produced starting in the 1940s before it was rebranded in the '70s to capitalize on the popularity of MLB player Reggie Jackson. The candy bar was given out to Yankees fans during games but was discontinued in 1981. Luckily this enterprising eBay user had their mind trained on the future.

Nostalgia is such a powerful force. It marries color and emotion within our peabrains, making us yearn in ways we might not even realize we're capable of. Take these super old hot sauce packets from Taco Bell. For the reasonable (?) price of $89.99, you can buy 3 packets of Taco Bell mild sauce from the nostalgic time known as the late 1980s. While I railed against the minimalist design of modern packaging earlier in this article, the simple yellow and maroon color scheme with the classic yellow bell here is just so satisfying to look at. Normally I'd be skeptical of that price tag, but Taco Bell is so beloved that I'm certain these packets are going to get bought. If I had a time machine, I wouldn't kill Hitler or invest in Apple—I would simply go to a Taco Bell in 1991, buy up everything on the menu, and pop it in the freezer to accrue some serious eBay value. (Then I'd probably go do that other stuff.)