Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Those foods are pretty 80s, but they're also by and large kiddie food. As a child of the 80s, I'd be curious to hear what grown-up foods were fads. I think of yuppie food, like the tiny nouvelle cuisine, fruit-based sauces (raspberry vinaigrette and its ilk), and just about anything from the Silver Spoon. Tuna tataki. Mousse.

Tricolor pasta always comes to mind (especially in a pasta salad- pasta salads were huge!)
Sushi.
Sundried tomatoes started being used all the time.
Anything from Abby Mandel's Cuisinart Cookbook or the Silver Spoon (so right!).
California cuisine.
Quiche.
Big League Chew (I know it's gum but it is in all of my memories as a child).
Lean cuisines.
Frozen french bread pizza.

What about those clear sodas and "seltzers." Were those the late 80's or the early 90's?

I think that coke and pepsi both had a clear version, and there was New York Seltzer that was all clear too.

Another child of the 80s here (I was 7-17, growing up in London). These are my random memories (not necessarily the stuff we had at home though:-)):

Angel Delight
Vesta boil in the bag chicken curry...my father used to love it
Heinz Salads in a tin (potato salad, vegetable salad, etc.)
Boil in the bag fish
Tinned chocolate pudding
Mousse in individual tubs.
Tinned spaghetti bolognaise
Carnation milk
Vice Versa's
findus crispy pancakes
alphabet spaghetti

My husband was growing up in the 80's in NJ and he remembers: Yogolas,
Beefsteak Charlies (a restaurant), and McRib.

chicken marbella.

Ho about - frozen yogurt, wine coolers, Lean Cuisine. Oh! Remember the "new" Coke?

When I think 80's food trends/popularity:

Frusen Glace, Gelati-da, etc.... a wave of gourmet ice cream products
Sushi (I'm thinking Molly Ringwald in the breakfast club)
steak-ums
Long Island Ice Tea
Old Country Buffet
Orange Julius
Dairy Queen Blizzard
slurpee/Icee/mr. Misty/mr. Freezy/etc...
Diet/Lite anything
Flavored Waters (H2O, clearly Canadian, etc...)
Chain Mexican Restaurants: Chi-Chi's, el torito, esteban's, etc...
General Foods International Coffees

OMG!!! Bartles & James wine coolers - I had them for the first time when I was 15 in a trip we took to SF. And in Puerto Rico we had something called Pink Champale... sort of like a rose wine cooler...

And reading your entries made me remember a few...

Orange Julius' Tropical Cream Supreme Shakes
Fish Sticks
Ranch Flavored Potato Chips
Campbell's Chicken Noodle or Alphabet Soup
Orange Slice Soda
Diet Coke was introduced in the 80's...
Funyuns - we called them in Puerto Rico, Cebollitas, but maybe this was more 70's than 80's

Ah, the era of shoulder pads and big hair; acid wash jeans and Flashdance style cut-up sweatshirts; Madonna was like a virgin and Michael Jackson was cool; neon colors were considered nuetrals.

I ate fast food burgers and fries everyday and I was skinny as a rail. I kept The Pounder bag of M&M's in my locker and drank Sunkist soda from the vending machines and never had a cavity.

Wasn't the 80's when microwave ovens hit the kitchen scene? I remember begging my mom to buy the Stouffers Family Size Lasanga Dinner so that I could microwave something other than water or leftovers. And then eating it in front of the tv watching a Betamax movie.

Back then sushi was yuppie food and "regular" folk didn't eat it. Remember that scene in The Breakfast Club when Molly Ringwald pulls out her sushi lunch complete with chopsticks and a cruet of soy sauce? I so wanted to be her.

OMIGOD I totally forgot about Clearly Canadians. I loved those in sixth grade! Also they still make cherry 7-up, I bought some yesterday at Safeway.
Fruit snacks!

Are the 80s when they came out with Hubba Bubba flavored soda? That stuff was just awful, even as a kid.

I used to love Marathon bars - remember those? Caramel in the shape of a big long braided twisty, coated with chocolate?

Orange Julius
Sbarro
Toffeefay
Reggie Bars
Choc-o-riffic Bars
Whatchamacallit Bars
Green River Juice

oh, oh oh, everyone was making that Knorr's Spinach Dip with the water chestnuts in the Hawaiian Bread bowls.

Was this just in NYC? Street vendors selling Chipwiches, freezer-burned vanilla ice cream between two big mushy chocolate-chip cookies.

A lot of these "80s foods" people are mentioning were around well before the 80s, and after them too -- the 80s association seems to be basically these were popular with kids, & the people mentioning them were kids in the 80s.

Some food fads that *did* peak in the 80s:

Croissants - in the early/mid 80s there were specialty shops with hot croissants, croissants stuffed with all sorts of stuff, and croissant sandwiches. All gone now, though croissants have lingered on the fringe of bread-world ever since

Baked potatoes - also really popular in the early/mid 80s, with specialty stores where you could get a baked potato with the (hot or cold) topping of your choice. Long gone in most places (though I think that's when baked potatoes were added to the Wendy's lineup)

Quiche - was really big in the late 70s, still popular into the 80s, never entirely disappeared but it hasn't been a headliner in a long time

New Coke - a huge embarrassment for the company, which had to bring back Classic Coke alongside it. New Coke gradually faded out of sight, was ultimately discontinued. The Classic Coke that returned, however, was NOT identical to the lost original. Corn syrup, folks, does the devil's work.

Oat bran - the late-80s miracle food. Companies added it to everything. You couldn't turn around without bumping into it. When the craze died, all the oat bran left the building.

Microwave everything - microwaves had been around before the 80s, but that's when they hit critical mass as far as food marketing was concerned. It was New! Convenient! Magic! A lot of stuff was thrown onto the shelves in "microwavable" form that was really awful and didn't last long. By the 90s, microwaves were part of the background, not a feature attraction in their own right. Marketing adjusted to a lower pitch.

I meant Ecto Cooler. Ghostbusters!

I remember cooking in the microwave a lot. Mine had a built-in meat thermometer and I used to make great roast beef. I never bought microwave "food", but was enamored with how much more quickly I could cook so many things out of the cookbook that came with it and my other microwave cookbooks. Time was definitely of the essence in those days, but I didn't buy convenience foods - seemed silly, just like it does today. Most of the time, I can make it better, healthier and in about the same amount of time, for way less moolah. I couldn't use it when my MIL was visiting - it somehow affected her pacemaker.

I also remember wine coolers (and later beer coolers) and New Coke (what an abysmal failure!). Dips in bread bowls were huge. Served with hunks of the bread that had been removed..

Many (most, actually) of the foods you have mentioned I never heard of. Others, I never bought. Anybody remember Adele Davis - a nutritionist author? I was a big fan and more likely to buy wheat germ than sugared cereal (to this day, I have never bought any). I don't think my daughters ever tasted most of the things on the lists above, either. My mother and grandmother were fantastic cooks and I had great role models. I was lucky.

When Chili's opened, it was the first time I tasted Mexican food. Probably not anywhere near authentic, but I was a huge fan.

I was 14 in 1980 and going into Grade 9. I was 23 in 1989, graduating from university. I am seriously a child of the 80s!

Chicken nuggets (consumed hundreds of them I am sure), along with McDLTs and McRibs......
New Coke
Wine coolers
Oat Bran
Microwave anything
Chicken wings with blue cheese dip
Nachos - well any Mexican-style food (but I ate it only after I left home and then introduced it to the rest of my family)

Mrs. Fields Cookies.

@PeanutButter.....did you hide lima beans in my houseplants? ;-D

I hid wheat germ everywhere I could hide it - in food. It wasn't too tasty. I also did oat bran. I still love quiche & croissants. Is that when carrot cake became popular? I'm pretty sure I remember my mother baking that, but it might have been later. That's when I first made stromboli, but most people had never heard of it. Mine just had mushrooms, spinach & cheese.

I also did a lot of vegetable gardening in the 80's (and I was never a hippie, I swear!), but didn't know too many other people who grew their own vegetables or herbs in those days - especially in the burbs in a subdivision. I loved having surplus to share. I do remember that Philadelphia had community gardens (started in the 70's) where people could have a strip of land to grow vegetables. They had to bring their own water!

@Perky - you're lucky I wasn't your daughter:-). I recall disposing of the food I didn't fancy in all kinds of odd places - behind the fridge was one of them (we had two; I used the shorter one, of course). Imagine my Mum's horror when she moved the damn thing! Looking back, I'm really glad she found that one fairly soon, who knows what kind of a monster I could have ended up breeding there.

@PeanutButter - My mother grew up on Bell Street (Ottawa). Gorgeous, huge Victorian which was torn down when they built the Queensway (is that one word?). It had front and back wrap-around porches (screened) and I loved being there with my gazillion cousins, aunts & uncles every summer.

OT, but my thyme died last night. RIP. It is in a container in my kitchen with chives, rosemary, basil and parsley - everything else is fine. There were black flies on the thyme (smaller and skinnier than typical flies). I just couldn't believe it. I hope they don't kill anything else. I have to get more thyme - can't cook without it!

Holding my head in shame as the only item that comes to mind are wine coolers, from the horrible Sun Country two liters to Bartles & Jaymes. Hey, I was a teenager for most of the eighties...

Everyone who got married in the 80's received the Silver Palate Cookbook from someone. Also, it was my personal era of aspirational cooking and dining, so I ate a lot of horrible savory courses with Blueberry Vinegar Gastrique and white chocolate on, let's say, salmon. It was a scary time to be alive with a subscription to Gourmet magazine. But I ate my first piece of sushi in 1981 and never looked back.

I just remembered another one, pogs, it was eilther late eighties or early ninties, the cap off a milk bottle had a disc or part of the cap itself that was used in a kids game like marbles or tiddly winks or something.

I think I remember seeing a lot of Ceasar salads in the later 80s. The dreaded wine coolers, white wine spritzers and flavored coffee - everyone loved hazelnut and Irish creme coffee.

Mexican food, baked brie, quiche, siler palate anything. I remember using a lot of avacados. I had sushi for the first time in the 80s -- only the california rolls, the other raw stuff was way too scary for me.

I haven't read the thread yet, so sorry if these are duplicates, but the first things that pop into my head are...

Salad Bars
Oat Bran everything
Chicken everything
Potato Skins (the stuffed appetizers)
Buffalo Wings
Suishi -- that's when I remember it reaching it's frenzied trendiness
Fried Mozarella with Marinara Dipping Sauce

Doubtless, there are a bunch of others I'll think of shortly...

I grew up in the 80s and I do remember all the moms trading quiche recipes and muffin recipes. They had whole cookbooks with nothing but muffins.

I was also quite young in the 80s so don't remember much, but does anyone remember "Five Alive"?! The punch/juice? I used to love that stuff! When I was five, I used to prance around and tell my brothers they named it after me "I'm five and I'm alive!"...pathetic, I know.

Hillary
Chew on That

Thanks Leo1881, I will give it a try.

@JohnFred, count me amongst the oldsters... I grew up on Orange Julius and Johnny Carson... and I remember when Tab was pretty much the ONLY diet soda there was... those were the days...

@Leo, sorry, but by my own firsthand memory, tater tots and TV dinners predate the 80s by at least a decade or three...

Salad bars were huge in the '80s. Even Wendy's had one.

I'd have to agree that a lot of the foods mentioned above predated the '80s by a lot. Even microwave ovens for home use were a '70s thing. My grandmother got an original Radarange when they first came out. She remodeled her kitchen around a built-in model. This was in '73.

I was with her when she saw it demonstrated at an appliance store. It was like magic. The demonstrator put little slices of hot dog on a PAPER plate, covered it with a paper towel and it was sizzling hot in THIRTY SECONDS! Unheard of!

The good news is that the microwave (that is now 35 years old!) still works beautifully. It had to have a broken dial replaced a decade or so ago and the repairman tested it for leaks. It was still leak-free! They sure don't make 'em like they used to.

Ecto coolers!

pudding pops
sugar smacks
bingorillas

To the person missing cherry 7-up they still make it. I get it in Philly all the time.

Having grown up in southern California in the 80's I desperately miss Cactus Cooler. I also loved Monterey Jack Cheese Doritos.

I did a lot of dining at Sizzler in the 80's.