Why Versus Movies Suck And Need to Stop

Movies like Freddy vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator, and even the classic Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man seem like a guaranteed win. The idea of two beloved characters or monsters battling it out is exciting, and it promises a spectacular cinematic experience. What could be better than that?

A lot, as it turns out. Which raises a question: How come so many of these movies stink?

Our new video explores the trend of “versus” movies – films that pit two characters or franchises against each other. We examine what these movies typically have in common and why so many of them don’t quite work. We’ll then discuss whether these issues can be resolved, or if this type of movie should simply stop being made. Check out our complete analysis in the video below.

Enjoyed our video about why versus movies don’t work? You’ll find more great content on our channel! Check out our interview with James Gunn from DC, our breakdown of the Peacemaker Season 2 finale and what it means for the new DC Universe, and our look at the most crucial scene in Batman history. You can find even more videos on the ScreenCrush YouTube channel – subscribe so you don’t miss anything! Both seasons of Peacemaker are now streaming on HBO Max.

’80s Foods We Wish They Still Made

Bonkers

Bonkers was a popular, chewy fruit candy throughout the 1980s, famous for its bizarre commercials. These ads featured a woman with glasses correcting misunderstandings about the candy (it wasn’t gum!) while large fruits rained down, often on her family. Despite its popularity throughout the decade, Bonkers quickly lost customers and stopped being made just a few years later. Common flavors included grape, strawberry, and watermelon – my personal favorite! The watermelon candy was especially clever, with a green outside and a chewy red center.

C-3PO’s

If you grew up with the original Star Wars movies, you probably remember this cereal! C-3POs cereal came out with Return of the Jedi and was really popular in the mid-1980s. The cereal itself wasn’t anything special – it was just a bland mix of oat, wheat, and corn shaped like connected Cheerios, and didn’t really have anything to do with Star Wars. But the boxes were a big deal! Kids loved collecting the character masks on the back, wearing them as costumes, and often ignoring the cereal inside, which would end up sitting in cupboards for months.

Disney Pops

Mickey Mouse Ice Cream bars are a timeless favorite at Disney Parks and in stores everywhere. But back in the 1980s, you could also find Disney-themed popsicles! These fruity treats came in grape, cherry, and orange flavors, and were shaped like Mickey, Donald, or Goofy. It’s a mystery why they stopped making them, especially since people still love both Disney and popsicles! I’d love to have a grape-flavored Donald Duck popsicle right now.

Ecto Cooler

Ecto Cooler is a standout in the world of movie-themed foods. This bright green, citrus-flavored drink first appeared in the late 1980s to coincide with the popularity of the Ghostbusters cartoon. Even after the cartoon and Ghostbusters films ended, Hi-C continued to make Ecto Cooler until the early 2000s. It’s made limited comebacks around new Ghostbusters releases in recent years, and it’s so popular that people often resell bottles for surprisingly high prices – sometimes for dozens, even hundreds, of dollars! That really shows how much fans love it.

Five Alive

I remember when you could choose between a bunch of different citrus drinks! If you weren’t into the Ghostbusters Hi-C Ecto Cooler, Five Alive was a great option. It got its name because it was made with five different juices – orange, grapefruit, tangerine, lemon, and lime. Sadly, they stopped making it in the US back in the 90s, but I heard you can still find it in Canada. Seriously, if anyone’s heading up north, please bring me back a carton – I’m really craving some Five Alive right now!

Fruit Corners Fruit Bars

When Fruit Roll-Ups became popular in the early 1980s, it kicked off a huge trend of fruit snacks throughout the decade. Fruit Corners, the company that made Roll-Ups, and other brands all competed to profit from this growing market for treats marketed as healthy for kids. (After all, it had ‘fruit’ in the name – how bad could it be?).

Having grown up during this time and tried them all, I think Fruit Corners Fruit Bars were the best. They took the idea of a Roll-Up and made it in the shape of a granola bar. The original flavors were strawberry, cherry, grape, and orange-pineapple, and I’ve been searching for something that tastes like those cherry bars for years – I’m not kidding! (The That’s It Apple and Cherry bars you can find in stores now are actually a pretty good substitute.)

Fruit Wrinkles

Fruit Wrinkles were a fruit snack similar to Roll-Ups and Fruit Bars, but shaped more like jelly beans. Ads for Fruit Wrinkles highlighted that they had more fruit and less sugar than other snacks at the time. However, as fruit snacks started coming in more elaborate shapes based on popular kids’ movies and shows, simple snacks like Fruit Wrinkles lost their appeal and eventually disappeared from stores.

Giggles

Oreos dominate the sandwich cookie market today, taking up a huge amount of shelf space with countless flavors—the Sour Patch Kids Oreos were a bit much, even for me. But things were different in the 1980s. Giggles cookies were a major competitor, offering a fun twist with both chocolate and vanilla creme filling, plus a smiley face design in either vanilla or chocolate. Considering Oreos releases around 60 new flavors every week, it’s surprising they haven’t tried a chocolate and vanilla combination themselves—it’s a really good idea!

Hostess Pudding Pies

As a total movie and pop culture guy, I always remember Hostess snacks being everywhere – Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, you name it. They still make those little fruit pies, but seriously, does anyone remember their pudding pies from the 80s? Those were massive and only came in vanilla or chocolate. Apparently, they stopped making them because, let’s be real, they weren’t exactly health food! Even the apple pies they sell now aren’t great for you – a single cherry pie has eight grams of saturated fat and 25 grams of added sugar, which is half your daily limit. But honestly? They tasted so good, I don’t think anyone really cared about the health stats back then.

Jell-O Pudding Pops

As a total movie and pop culture nerd, I’ve always been fascinated by some of the weird trends of the 80s, and honestly, the pudding obsession is right up there. Seriously, what was with all the pudding? It wasn’t like they didn’t have other desserts! But it was everywhere. You could get it in little cups, baked into pies, and, get this, even as a frozen pop! Jell-O really went all-in, spending a fortune advertising their Pudding Pops – vanilla, chocolate, the swirl kind… and those Bill Cosby commercials? They’re surprisingly great to watch now, if you can find them. Apparently, Jell-O moved about $100 million worth of them in just one year, but eventually, everyone got their fill, and they stopped making them. It’s a weird little slice of 80s history, but I love it.

Kudos

Do you remember Kudos bars? They were incredibly popular in the 1980s, originally available in flavors like Chocolate Chip, Nutty Fudge, and Peanut Butter. Made by Mars, they were a unique treat – healthier than a candy bar, but more indulgent than most granola bars. They tasted great and were enjoyed for decades, but were eventually discontinued in the 2010s.

Mr. T Cereal

In the mid-1980s, Mr. T was a huge pop culture icon, largely due to his roles in Rocky III and The A-Team, and his distinctive style – a mohawk, denim, and lots of gold chains. His popularity with kids led to a strange animated TV show where he played a gymnastics coach who also solved mysteries. Mr. T’s image then appeared on boxes of a popular cereal made by Quaker, sold from 1984 to 1993. The cereal pieces were shaped like the letter ‘T’ and made from corn and oats. It even had a memorable cameo in the opening scene of Tim Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which helped keep it well-known for years.

O’Grady’s Chips

O’Grady’s was a snack food brand that disappeared during the competitive potato chip boom of the 1980s. They marketed themselves as having thicker-cut chips with a bolder cheese flavor. Fans especially loved their Au Gratin flavor, claiming it was much tastier and cheesier than anything available now.

Peanut Butter Boppers

One Reddit user perfectly described why people loved Boppers: “They were like the best parts of a granola bar, without the granola!” As a peanut butter lover, they really miss them. And they’re not alone! These crunchy, peanut butter-filled bars need to make a comeback. Luckily, Nature Valley, the original maker, does share a recipe on their website if you’re feeling ambitious and want to try making them yourself.

Product 19

Product 19, easily recognized by its red box and mysterious name (said to be because it was the 19th recipe Kellogg’s tried), was a popular cereal throughout the 1980s and 90s. Kellogg’s marketed it in the 80s by claiming it was the most nutritious cereal, despite not tasting like it. While people once might have chosen cereal for health reasons, that’s no longer the case, and Product 19 was discontinued in 2016.

Quackers

For generations, kids have loved the satisfying crunch and cheesy flavor of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. In the 1980s, Nabisco tried to challenge Goldfish with a similar snack called Quackers, which were duck-shaped and also cheese-flavored (a surprisingly tasty sour cream and onion version was also available). However, Quackers disappeared by the end of the decade, leaving Goldfish as the dominant snack once again.

Slice

Pepsi frequently launches new lemon-lime sodas to challenge Sprite and other competitors. Currently, they sell Starry, but previously offered Sierra Mist and Slice (which replaced Teem). Slice even experimented with flavors like Mandarin Orange and Apple – honestly, we could use more apple-flavored sodas! When Slice first came out, Pepsi heavily promoted its 10% fruit juice content, positioning it as a more natural option. This worked initially, but the formula later changed, and much of the juice was removed. Despite trying different packaging and marketing throughout the 1990s, Slice was eventually replaced by Sierra Mist in the early 2000s.

Sunkist Fun Fruits

Still reminiscing about old fruit snacks? Here’s another one! Sunkist Fun Fruits were about the same size and shape as Wrinkles, and came in cherry, orange, strawberry, and grape flavors. Interestingly, even though they were called Sunkist, they weren’t made by the Sunkist company. Instead, Leaf Confections licensed the Sunkist brand to make the snack seem more authentically fruity. (Today’s Sunkist Fruit Snacks are made by General Mills.)

Tato Skins

While many potato chip brands exist, Tato Skins, made by Keebler in the 1980s, were unique. They were made with whole potatoes, including the skins, to mimic the flavor of a baked potato. Popular flavors included Original, Sour Cream & Chives, Cheddar & Bacon, and Bar-B-Que. Today, you can find a similar snack called TGI Fridays Potato Skins Snacks, but fans of the original Tato Skins insist they don’t quite measure up.

WWF Superstars of Wrestling Bars

During the 1980s, when Hulk Hogan and the WWF were incredibly popular, WWF Superstars Ice Cream Bars were created to appeal to young fans. These treats consisted of vanilla ice cream between a vanilla cookie and chocolate, decorated with images of wrestlers like “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Ted DiBiase. Though initially designed to capitalize on the wrestling craze of Saturday morning television, the ice cream bars were surprisingly delicious and continued to be made even after the WWF’s peak in the early 1990s. Nostalgia for the original bars led to a brief revival in 2020 with Good Humor’s “WWE Super Stars,” featuring current wrestlers like John Cena and Roman Reigns on vanilla ice cream sandwiches. While tasty, these newer bars weren’t as successful or long-lasting as the original WWF version.

2025-11-04 23:59