Pop Qwiz Popcorn
Microwave popcorn that popped up neon: a Pop Qwiz bag hid its color until the kernels came tumbling out fluorescent green, purple, blue or orange. Pop Secret put it out in 1991 with brain teasers on the box and a game-show host in the ads, and it was gone from shelves about two years later.
Pop Secret was General Mills' microwave-popcorn brand, launched in 1985, and in 1991 it tried the most early-90s idea a popcorn could have: color. Pop Qwiz kernels were dyed so that the popped corn came out in fluorescent shades of green, orange, purple, red, blue and yellow. The colors did nothing to the flavor, which was the point. The gimmick was the reveal: the popped corn came out a color the sealed bag would not show you, and the ads dared you to guess it. The box carried the "Qwiz" half of the name in the form of brain teasers and little games with names like Match-Qwiz, Scramble-Qwiz and Riddle-Qwiz, the popcorn equivalent of the back of a cereal box.
The commercials leaned into the guessing game. An eccentric game-show host bounced around the screen challenging kids to call the color before the bag opened, with the popcorn itself as the prize. For a kid in 1991 it was irresistible: a snack that was also a surprise, in colors that matched the Trapper Keepers and the slap bracelets.
It did not last. Pop Qwiz was off shelves by 1993, and no official reason was ever given. People who remember buying it tend to remember the same complaints: it burned easily, it was messy, and the bags were small. One 2017 retrospective put it bluntly, calling the popcorn flavorless styrofoam. Pop Secret revisited the idea around 2011 with a similar product called Magic Colors, which also disappeared. With snack brands now moving away from artificial dyes, a rainbow of dyed popcorn is unlikely to come back, which is exactly why the memory of it has stayed so vivid.
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