3. Pillsbury created food for astronauts which was later marketed to consumers
In 1962 astronaut Scott Carpenter flew in Aurora 7, an orbital Mercury mission during which he consumed cubes of food prepared for the purpose. The Pillsbury Company created a special team to develop nutritional foods for consumption in space, which conformed to guidelines created by NASA. During the 1960s these foods were created with both nutritional considerations and taste, though according to the reports of the astronauts, taste was an area in which they fell short. During the lengthier flights of the Gemini program, food became a pressing issue, both for the health of the astronauts and the means of storing sufficient quantities for the duration of the missions.
By the end of the decade, Pillsbury created a consumer version of the foods which it marketed to the public as Space Food Sticks. As with Tang, they were marketed towards children, as a form of candy with nutritional value, in several flavors which included chocolate and peanut butter. The precursor of the energy bars of a later date, the Space Food Sticks came individually wrapped in boxes, though no nutritional information was provided. Sales of the product were excellent, and they appeared in supermarkets and food stores around the world. In the late seventies for some inexplicable reason, Pillsbury dropped the word Space from the product and sales plummeted until they disappeared in 1982. They returned as a retro product, no longer manufactured by Pillsbury, twenty years later.