![]() Considering most of the drink’s fans were in their late teens and early 20s during the latter half of the 1990s, chances are that they weren’t scouring the store shelves for neon green, fruity kid’s drinks. For a lot of us, this was a hard and fast truth. So when Ecto Cooler made a triumphant return to store shelves back in 2016 with the release of the most recent Ghostbusters Reboot movie, it seemed like it had been almost 20 years since we’d last had a taste of the orange/tangerine-flavored elixir of the gods. The strength of the Slimer iconography carried that drink for 8 or 9 years alone, even surviving a Hi-C rebranding in 1995. This is pretty amazing considering that there were no new movies after 1989, and the cartoon series sputtered out in 1991. The original life of the product did last longer than most food merchandise tie-ins running for about a decade between 19. And it wasn’t released in tandem with The Real Ghostbusters as much as it was a tie-in product with the release of Ghostbusters II in cinemas, though the packaging featured a cartoon-accurate rendering of Slimer on the cans and juice boxes from the start. ![]() But as the masters of nostalgia and Ghostbusters aficionados know, the drink was introduced in 1989. That feels right, and a lot of the folks I’ve chatted with over the years have similar memories of chugging Ecto Cooler straight from the giant 46 ounce can, taking care not to cut their tongue on the triangular-shaped hole their mom punched into the top with the can opener. If you’d of asked me five years ago to nail down the date when I first tried Ecto Cooler I probably would have said some time between 19 around the time that The Real Ghostbusters launched. Memory is a funny thing and it’s constantly playing tricks on us. And of course a major part of it is that Ecto Cooler is extremely nostalgic because it simultaneously feels like a product that we had for large swaths of our childhood, but also something that’s been gone from our lives for decades. Part of it is the charm of the neon green, sweet sugary bliss and idea that we’re drinking liquid ectoplasm. ![]() Part of this is the Ghostbusters connection, a franchise that seems to become more iconic each and every year that passes. Sure, we love our Ninja Turtle custard pies, our Keebler Pizzaria chips, Crystal Pepsi, and Bonkers candy, but Ecto Cooler quite frankly outranks all of these as one of the most desired, sadly expired, taste sensations from our collective youth. Of all the expired and long gone junk food products over the past 30-40 years there is one stand out that is probably the most popular and loved item by an entire generation of 80s obsessed kids-at-heart, Hi-C Ecto Cooler.
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