Food ideas that just didn’t cut the mustard

          Funky Fries and other foods that flopped

1. Flower-Flavored PEZ®

There are some foods that people would eat only if they were stranded on a deserted island.

No, that’s not a typo. Although it would be equally disgusting, we’re talking about flower, not flour.

Introduced in the late 1960’s, flower-flavored PEZ was designed to appeal to the hippie generation — complete with a groovy, psychedelic dispenser. But even in the decade of free love, no love could be found for the flavor power of flower.

Floral scents make for great perfume, but nobody eats perfume, and apparently, there’s a reason why. The flower version flopped, and became the next addition to PEZ’s long and disturbing list of flavor failures.

Since its introduction in 1927, the company has also sold (however briefly) coffee, licorice, eucalyptus, menthol, and cinnamon flavors.

2. ‘I Hate Peas!’

For as long as children have been shoving Brussels sprouts under mashed potatoes and slipping green beans to the dog, parents have been hunting desperately for a way to end the vegetable discrimination.

Finally, in the 1970’s, American Kitchen Foods, Inc. came to the rescue (or at least tried) with the release of “I Hate Peas!” Since kids love French fries so much, the company decided that disguising peas in a fry-shaped form was a sure-fire way to trick tots into getting their vitamins.

Not a chance. Children all over America saw through the ruse. After all, a pea is a pea is a pea, and the name of the product was more than apropos, no matter what it looked like. There were other thinly disguised vegetables in the company’s “I Hate” line, but kids hated those, too.

3. Reddi-Bacon

Any company smart enough to bless mankind with sprayable whipped cream — the sort that promotes direct-to-mouth feeding — has got to know a thing or two about immediate gratification. But sadly, the makers of Reddi-wip® were unable to meld their keen understanding of human laziness with one of processed meat.

They figured, if you’re cooking breakfast in the morning and you’ve got a hankering for bacon, why dirty up a pan you’ll only have to clean later?

The solution: foil-wrapped Reddi-Bacon you could pop into your toaster for piping-hot pork in minutes. It seemed perfect for the busy 1970’s household, and what’s more, the stuff actually tasted pretty good.

Too bad the absorbent pad intended to soak up the dripping grease tended to leak, creating not only a fire hazard, but also a messy (if not totally ruined) toaster.

Ultimately, the product lasted about as long as it took to cook; the company scrapped it before it went to market nationwide.