This Vintage Store-Bought Sandwich Spread Had A Nightmare Inducing Mascot

Today, in 2025, our list of the best ways to upgrade a peanut butter and jelly sandwich includes employing spices, bacon, or exotic fruit spreads. In 1971, however, American consumers were introduced to Koogle. Billing itself as "the big peanutty surprise from Kraft," this spread was a peanut-based concoction that came in four flavors: banana, chocolate, cinnamon, and vanilla. Marketed to impressionable kids with a sweet tooth (and their parents), many youth of the 1970s thought Koogle was the best thing since ... well, sliced bread. Spread some Koogle between two halves of a sandwich, and you had a sweet treat perfect for picky eaters ... so long as they didn't mind the many-eyed mascot staring back at them from the ads.

Kraft touted Koogle as "peanut spread" in a groovy contemporary commercial because it couldn't call itself peanut butter. At the time, Consumer Reports actually urged parents not to feed Koogle to their children, because peanut butter had to be at least 90% peanuts, as per legal classifications. Meanwhile, Koogle was only 60% peanuts and a whopping 40% sugary, fatty filler.

Like many food products from the mid-to-late 20th century, including some discontinued '80s cereals, Koogle had a mascot. The Koogle Nut didn't have a catchy name, but what the figure lacked in it-factor, it made up for in sheer Lovecraftian horror. The creature was a vaguely spherical nut with arms and legs and a "K" emblazoned on its thorax. It had four rolling eyes and a shock of blue and purple hair. It was the perfect icon for the product, being a weird character that likely excited kids and made their bewildered adults look twice. 

Kraft made Koogle to compete with the two peanut butter heavyweights of the 1970s, Jif and Skippy. It also would have competed with Krema, the oldest peanut butter brand in America. On Reddit, consumers of a certain age remember the spread fondly. "I ate this stuff and loved it," one commenter reminisced. "I loved this stuff! Miss it!" sighed another. A '70s-vintage Koogle ad suggested spreading the product, which brings to mind a proto-Nutella, on apples, sundaes, or even donuts. (Koogle was never beating the allegations that it was basically candy in a jar.)

Koogle had begun to fall off the map by 1976 and was completely gone by 1978. Kraft did not publicly address why it stopped manufacturing the spread, although the popular theory was that the accusations of an unhealthy ingredients list caught up with it. Considering this was the same decade that brought us such paragons of wholesome eating as Tang, Hamburger Helper, Wonder Bread, and Twinkies, that seems far-fetched, but what do we know? 

Today, a Facebook group called "Bring Back Koogle Peanut Butter" is 204 members strong. There, commenters love to share memories of the good old days. "OMG, KOOGLE!!!" one woman gushed. "Bring it back!!! For a short time back in the '70s I was living the life, living on Banana KOOGLE and Dr Pepper!!! Sweet times that ended far too soon." Far too soon, indeed.