Household staples in the 1970s reflected what was easy to store, affordable to buy, and consistently available. Refrigerators were often stocked with sugary drinks, pre-packaged desserts, and frozen dinners made for convenience. Certain brands became familiar go-tos—items people reached for without thinking when it was time to restock.
Here are some of the staples that likely turned up in your kitchen during the decade, just as they did in households across the country.
Tab Diet Soda
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The pink can stood out, and so did the sharp, metallic, and unmistakably artificial taste. Tab was one of the few diet sodas on shelves, and its marketing zeroed in on women watching calories. Saccharin gave it a strange flavor, but for a long time, there wasn’t a better soda option.
Watergate Salad
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A salad would generally mean leafy greens, but while this dish was green, it was sweet and packed with texture. The ingredients for Watergate salad included pistachio pudding, Cool Whip, canned pineapple, and marshmallows. It was quick to prepare, budget-friendly, and usually gone before the end of the night.
RC Cola
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At family parties or school functions, RC was often the drink of choice. It was sweeter than Coke and less fizzy than Pepsi. In households watching grocery costs, RC was the soda that quietly filled the gap without needing a brand-name badge.
Hi-C Fruit Punch
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That thick, bright-red punch came in heavy metal cans with triangle-punched lids and sugar levels that bordered on syrup. One could stretch Hi-C Fruit Punch across an entire weekend of playdates, paper cups, and snack breaks.
Kool-Aid
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Packets sat in a kitchen drawer, and once the pitcher was empty, someone usually mixed a new batch without thinking twice. Parents bought Kool-Aid for the price, while the kids loved the color and sugar. Grape and cherry sold off the shelves quite quickly when the weather turned warm, while lemon-lime got ignored.
Chocolate Soldier
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Chocolate Soldier looked like a soda but tasted like carbonated chocolate milk—unusual enough that most kids tried it once. It may not have been refreshing, but it was strange enough to be remembered.
TV Dinners
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You’d pull the tray from the freezer, pop it in the oven, and eat it right out of the foil. That was the whole point of TV dinners. Salisbury steak was the most common, usually served with mashed potatoes, peas, and a brownie in separate compartments. They stuck around because they made dinner easier and didn’t leave a mess behind.
Spam
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Opening a can of Spam meant peeling back the lid with a metal key and sliding out a dense, jelly-coated block of meat. It didn’t need refrigeration until opened and could sit in the pantry for months, which made it useful in homes that stretched groceries between trips. It had a strong salty flavor, cooked quickly, and was filling enough to take the place of a full meal.
Black Forest Cake
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Layers of chocolate sponge, sweet cherries, whipped cream, and sometimes a splash of kirsch made this one of the more dramatic desserts of the decade. They were usually store-bought, covered in plastic domes, and served cold. Maraschino cherries were standard, and one slice was usually enough to fill you up.
Chocodiles
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Chocolate-covered Twinkies weren’t available in every part of the country, which gave Chocodiles an edge. If someone brought them back from a trip, they vanished as soon as someone grabbed a pack. The shell barely changed the taste, but it gave them a firmer texture and made them less sticky to handle.
Jell-O 1-2-3
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One box, one mix, and after a few hours in the fridge, Jell-O 1-2-3 separated into three layers: a gelatin base, a creamy middle, and a light, foamy top. It was served in clear glasses so the layers could be seen, which made it look impressive without much effort.
Banana Flips
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They didn’t taste much like real bananas, but Banana Flips still had a loyal following. It was a soft sponge cake folded over thick banana-flavored crème, sweet, sticky, and unmistakably artificial. You could grab them at gas stations or corner stores, and they were easy to pack into school lunches.
Marathon Bar
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The Marathon Bar was eight inches of braided caramel coated in milk chocolate, with a ruler printed on the wrapper to show its length. It was difficult to bite into and took time to chew. The caramel stuck to your teeth, and the chocolate melted fast.
Funny Face Drink Mix
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Each type of the Funny Face Drink Mix came with its own cartoon mascot to grab kids’ attention. Some versions were labeled sugar-free, though they used artificial sweeteners. A few mascots were eventually pulled after complaints about the designs.
Space Food Sticks
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These chewy bars were developed with input from NASA and marketed as the same kind of food astronauts ate in space. Flavors like chocolate and peanut butter were standard, packed in foil and sold as a glimpse of the future. Children wanted them because they were linked to space missions, not because they were good.
