Friday, February 10, 2012

From the Snack Aisle: Peanut Butter Boppers

Product: Peanut Butter Boppers
Company: General Mills/Nature Valley
Years: Mid-Late 80's

Yep, two Peanut Butter related posts in a row. Oh, yes I did. I guess for me, Peanut butter is the ultimate snack ingredient - goes with so many different things, salty or sweet. It's the alpha ingredient. Maybe that's why so many beloved snacks of today and days gone buy contained the wonderful gooeyness of Peanut Butter. Today, I want to highlight one of them. Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you Peanut Butter Boppers.

1986 Nature Valley - Peanut Butter
Boppers - Peanut Crunch flavor box
Box image by daniel85r on Flickr

Nature Valley (General Mills is their parent company) came up with the idea to take Peanut Butter logs (from Peanut Butter trees in the Peanut Butter Forest, I'm assuming..................) and roll it up in other delicious things, like oats, rice crispies, chocolate chips, and whathaveyou.
They even had Peanut Butter rolled up and covered with chopped peanuts.
Holy crap. They may as well have included an EpiPen in the box, because if you had even the slightest hint of a peanut allergy, Peanut Butter logs rolled in peanuts would have been like putting a shotgun in your mouth. A delicious Peanuty shotgun. But I digress....

But there were more varieties then just "Death by Peanuts" - there was also Fudge Chip, Honey Crisp, Cookie Crunch and Fudge Graham, so you had plenty to choose from.

And who could forget about the cool 50's looking graphics that dressed up the box? It certainly stood out on the shelves, that's for sure. Unfortunately, it didn't stand out well enough, as their popularity left just as quickly as it came.

I'm not sure if these will ever return, but there are petitions online (like with so many childhood favorites) to get Nature Valley to go back into the Peanut Butter forest and start chopping some more Peanut Butter logs. Because we're hungry. Hungry for a snack that's 0% nutritious, but 100% delicious. Bring Back Boppers.

General Mills - Peanut Butter Boppers - trade ad - July 1986
flickr image by Jason Liebig

16 comments:

  1. I loved these. I was only 8 when they were discontinued. I remember grocery shopping with my mom at Marsh/Osco when a wave of panic washed over me as I frantically looked for my beloved Boppers. My first real heart break - still pains me today. I can only hope that someone from General Mills sees this post and takes pity on me and brings these back into production, or maybe crank up the ole Bopper machine one last time to provide me a lifetime supply. Truly miss you, Boppers!

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  2. Let's not forget that classic 1987 film, The Lost Boys; the grandfather from that film had a special shelf in his refrigerator that was exclusively for him - it was where he kept his "Root Beer and Double-Thick Oreo Cookies - nobody touches the second shelf but ME!"; in that shelf he also had some Peanut Butter Boppers :)

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    1. To Joseph a year and 8 months later... I thought I was the only one who noticed the Boppers in the fridge in the Lost Boys movie. I'd love to have Boppers again, along with Go Ahead bars and Marathons.

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    2. Thats funny you posted that! I was just sitting here watching Lost Boys and decided to look up the Boppers because i saw them on the movie in his fridge! Lol

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    3. Thats funny you posted that! I was just sitting here watching Lost Boys and decided to look up the Boppers because i saw them on the movie in his fridge! Lol

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  3. I thought these were pretty horrible, personally. You really have to like peanut butter to like these things. I mean, you REALLY have to like peanut butter because there was like half a cup of the stuff in each stick. Far too much for the casual peanut butter eater.

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  4. I googled. I found. These were the best snack EVER, when I was in elementary school, no doubt. Oh, what I would do to have another!!

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  5. I googled. I found. These were the best snack EVER, when I was in elementary school, no doubt. Oh, what I would do to have another!!

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  6. Have mercy on my soul and start making these again.

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  7. Cookie Crunch was the best kind. Like peanut butter Oreo's delicious old grandfather.

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  8. I have been looking for the name of this snack for 25 yrs! Loved these.
    I got them every week....then they were gone.

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    1. Try having people think you were crazy for saying they even existed. Even my mother who bought them for me. I just found these now and posted a “I told you so” to everyone.

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  9. I've missed these for years so I finally broke down and created a recipe to make my own: http://www.coconutandlime.com/2018/01/homemade-fudge-chip-peanut-butter.html

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  10. These were my favorite as a kid too and nobody remembers when I ask about them either, and I remembered what they were called and made of. Good to know there're other childhood gluttons like myself out there who could've eaten boppers every day, all day, forever. Long live boppers!

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  11. If they were so good I don't understand why they were discontinued. Makes no sense

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  12. They were discontinued, because like always with something great, an idiot executive makes a brainless decision to discontinue the product.

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