1977 – 1992retired
Atari 7800
“It played your old 2600 games before it was cool. Rest easy, pioneer.”
“Killed not by weak sales, but by one family's peanut butter grudge”
PB Max arrived on American shelves in 1989 from Mars, and it was a genuinely good idea: creamy peanut butter laid over a square whole grain cookie, enrobed in milk chocolate and studded with crunchy round cookie pieces. The marketing leaned into the joke, airing commercials insisting the PB didn't stand for piggy banks, polka bands, portly ballerinas, penguin black belts, or pink baboons — just honest peanut butter.
Then came the twist no candy bar could survive: according to former Mars executive Alfred Poe, the Mars family personally disliked peanut butter, and that was reason enough. $50 million in sales couldn't save it. Mars briefly resurrected PB Max in April 2009 for a limited run, but the details of that return remain obscure — fitting for a bar whose death made no sense in the first place.
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“It played your old 2600 games before it was cool. Rest easy, pioneer.”
“Heavy, pricey, glorious — it carried the desktop into the backpack.”
“Unmoulded, unbothered, unforgettable — the twist that never needed a reason.”