News: Frito-Lay Introduces Limited Edition Retro Throwback Product Bags; Apparently Wants to Keep It a National Secret

Limited edition retro…throwback Ruffles and Cheetos! Have your nostalgia sensors gone wild yet? Are you ready to go out there and find these chips RIGHT NOW so you can pretend it’s…uh, whatever year these bags are meant to imitate?

I would love to tell you that year. Or anything else about these chips. The Internet seems completely devoid of information about their existence, minus this Flickr picture I found that showcases all the other retro brands I didn’t find; namely, Cheetos Puffs, Rold Gold Pretzel Rods and King Size Fritos. The photo also includes Taco Doritos, but I already reviewed those.

So this news post is sadly deprived of news, beyond the fact that I can tell you they exist. I can also tell you that I expected the chips to contain identical ingredients to a regular bag of Ruffles or Cheetos. The chips looked exactly the same as modern Ruffles and Cheetos. Going off of Frito-Lay’s website, the Ruffles contained the exact same and amount of ingredients as regular Ruffles.

The Cheetos are a little more interesting, however. I could taste no difference between retro and regular Cheetos, but the ingredients do appear different. Retro Cheetos use vegetable oil, while “contemporary” Cheetos use corn and/or sunflower oil. Retro Cheetos include cheddar cheese seasoning and cheddar cheese, while the regular Cheetos just have the latter. And finally, retro Cheetos list salt as the last ingredient, where salt falls in the middle of the list on regular Cheetos. So there do seem to be some differences, even if my palate is apparently not refined enough to taste them.

The back of the Cheetos bag also has Chester Cheetah goin’ all Uncle Sam, and also says, “Here’s to over 60 years of great flavor”. So Cheetos is having an anniversary. What about the rest of the brands? Who knows, the Internet won’t tell me. It is all mystery. But I figured they should be thrown up on the Internet, if only to catalog their existence.

7 thoughts on “News: Frito-Lay Introduces Limited Edition Retro Throwback Product Bags; Apparently Wants to Keep It a National Secret”

  1. I just discovered the retro crunchy Cheetos yesterday, and I can say they definitely taste different, like how I remember them when I was a kid. Sometime in the 1990s, they changed their formula, the new flavor being a sharper cheese flavor with some unpleasant chemical-like aftertaste. The retro Cheetos are much better.

  2. I never found those either – just the puffs – I start collecting something weird and all the chip makers torment me by making vintage versions of things and scattering them all over the country…..heh

  3. Yummy in my tummy!!!Id forgotten how good they use to be.I plan on keeping the package for ole time sake..Of course I ate the chips first!!!

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