Tasty Toobs, we should have paid you more attention while we could

ANOTHER one bites the dust. Tasty Toobs are the latest retro snack to get the axe, and we are all to blame.

Retro junk food that's come back in. Original Tasty Toobs.

WHEN was the last time you had a packet of Tasty Toobs cheese rings?

Not recently enough, if the Smith’s Snackfood Company’s decision to scrap the cheesy treats is anything to go by.

Just three months after packages of Toobs shrunk from 175g down to 170g, they have vanished entirely from supermarket shelves.

Declining consumer demand was the manufacturer’s explanation for quietly discontinuing the product, a move that was only revealed when a diehard fan contacted the company asking where his favourite snack had gone.

“It is with a heavy heart that we advise Toobs is no longer available,” a Smiths spokeswoman said in a statement.

“Consumer demand for this tangy, tomatoey treat has declined and it is no longer possible to justify ongoing production. To our loyal Toobs fans out there, sincere thanks for your support.”

Toobs are the latest in a long line of old-school snacks to fall victim to Australia’s changing tastes, and manufacturers seem to be clueing on that public nostalgia does not equal sales.

Relaunched in 2007 by popular demand after a six-year hiatus, the jig is now up for the cheesy tubes.

And they’re not the only casualties of our shifting habits.

“When I was a little girl, we had these wonderful lollies called Spearmint Leaves.”

Allens has refused to back down on its decision to axe its Spearmint Leaves and Green Frogs despite a public outcry, saying they simply weren’t selling.

It seems the popularity of Spearmint Leaves as a topping for elaborate cakes and milkshakes is not enough to make them profitable.

A social media campaign to save the retro sweets in time for Christmas has so far been unsuccessful.

A spokeswoman for Allen’s parent company Nestle told the Herald Sun that said she was surprised by the public response, since the classic sweets had only been available in specialty lolly shops.

Times have changed since 2010, when Tasty Toobs led a retro snack resurgence alongside Samboy potato chips and Barney Banana ice-creams.

It seems that our emotional attachment to the treats we enjoyed in childhood does not mean we will actually buy them.