The Once-Popular Chocolate Drink That Couldn't Survive The '80s
A walk down memory lane sometimes dredges up fond memories of products that no longer exist; for me, it's the Cheddar Melt from McDonald's, which deserves a comeback. For others, they pine for a chocolate milk beverage that was named after a character in the long-running comic strip "Moon Mullins" and was discontinued in the 1980s. It was called Kayo, and though I never tried it myself, it sounds a lot like a version of Yoo-Hoo (which is still sold today, but had its own ill-fated '80s food fad — a chocolate soda).
Kayo was invented by a Chicago-based Russian immigrant named Aaron D. "Doc" Pashkow, who died in 1986. After starting his initial foray into chocolate milk by formulating a recipe for chocolate syrup, he went on to invent Kayo in 1929. Kayo contained both chocolate and skim milk, and was advertised as being a product you could drink both cold or hot. It's been off grocery shelves for so long that today, it's almost all but forgotten, but collectors can still find empty bottles of Kayo on auction sites, along with other nostalgic foods you can buy online right now.
You can still buy a version of Kayo, but in a much different form
So the ready-to-drink form of Kayo may be long gone, but incredibly, the product itself hasn't entirely disappeared. It's not available at your local grocery store, but a version of Kayo is still sold as a concentrate to food service companies by J.M. Smucker. The concentrate comes in 4-count boxes of 2-liter cartons, which can be then used to make cocoa or mocha drinks
I can't imagine you'd want to buy that for home use, but who knows? That formulation might not be an exact replica of what was in the bottle. But it's fascinating to know that not only do traces of Kayo still exist, but you can also sample them. There's also a chance that you've had it at a café or the like without knowing it, since J.M. Smucker is a national brand. It's too bad Kayo isn't widely available anymore, because there's quite a dearth of chocolate beverages in the soda aisle, but never say never. Nostalgia does sell, after all.