We can thank the ’90s for a lot of things — like grunge bands, frosted tips, and Shark Bites fruit snacks — but there are plenty of trends that ’90s kids look back on and cringe. When the ’90s morphed into the 2000s, many of these things didn’t make it past the turn of the century, though we’d wager that half of them would still be moderately popular today. Just look at the success of popular ’90s brand Little Debbie, which teamed up with Kellogg for a unique cereal.
When evaluating nine nostalgic frozen foods from the ’90s that deserve a comeback, we remembered the simple, addictive pleasure of Butterfinger Ice Cream Nuggets. These frozen treats were released in 1992 but didn’t last long, supposedly disappearing from shelves less than five years after their debut. The nuggets were bite-sized chunks of vanilla ice cream coated in a layer of crunchy, Butterfinger-filled chocolate. They came in resealable tubs with lids that were suspiciously easy for kiddos to open, typically in a pack of 20 pieces. Those who remember the treat compare it to the experience of eating Bon-Bons, another popular treat of the time that offered the convenience and charm of on-the-go snacking.
Butterfinger Ice Cream Nuggets are well missed by former fans
The history of Butterfinger Ice Cream Nuggets has all but faded from the internet, with barely a Google hit or information page. Remnants of the Butterfinger legacy linger in dark corners of social media, though, like this Reddit thread where fans reminisced about the thrill of taking home a tub and digging in. “I can remember exactly how these tasted,” said one Redditor, while another chimed in that “you can’t find anything like them in stores” anymore. Some ’90s kids felt “outraged” that they were discontinued and one Redditor went so far as to say that “at some point they made life worth living.”
These icy treats were so popular at the time that they had a campaign with “The Simpsons,” most notably a commercial where Bart Simpson admitted to eating the entire tub of Butterfinger Ice Cream Nuggets, ending with the iconic, “nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger” line. Although you won’t find these ice cream nuggets on supermarket shelves today, you can still satisfy your fix with a tub of Nestlé Dibs, a similar nugget-shaped ice cream treat with a different chocolatey flavor. Butterfinger still makes ice cream, but it’s in the form of an ice cream bar, not the fun-sized nuggets. As we look back on better days, you’ll find us fantasizing about the land of ’90s treats and wondering what happened to Butterfinger’s classic recipe in the first place.
