Have you ever time-traveled? I didn’t think I had until that day in the freezer aisle at Horizon Market, staring at an ice cream flavor that seemed like a practical joke: Jeni’s Cosmic Bloom. It sounded like an overpriced candle. The carton teased: “Citric like a mandarin, refreshing like a kiwi, punchy like passion fruit.” That told me absolutely nothing. But the color—a dreamy pastel orange—made my inner child hope, could it be?

I dropped my usual raspberry sorbet and gambled on this pastel-orange mystery. Back home, I tore off the lid, scooped up a perfectly creamy ball, and popped it in my mouth.

Indistinguishable citrus. It had that same syrupy, borderline-fluorescent smell I hadn’t experienced since the early 2000s, a tangy, wildly unnatural orange, radioactive creamsicle. Cosmic Bloom was not trying to pretend it was made of real fruit—something the future ruined with its obsession over real ingredients. It was something else, something familiar.

The second I had a second bite, my kitchen vanished.

Gone.

I looked around, bewildered. A kid zoomed past me on a neon-green bike with handlebar streamers. Another was arguing about the rules of tetherball. And in the distance, the faint sound of the X-Files theme hummed from a boxy TV inside someone’s house. A boom box blasted Wannabe by the Spice Girls. I looked down at my frozen treat, a small cylinder of ice cream encased in a colorful cardboard tube, a plastic stick protruding from the bottom, pale orange droplets spreading down my hand. The flavor I knew to be extinct in 2024. That must mean…

I was standing barefoot on a crumbling suburban driveway, wearing stonewashed jeans and a Ren & Stimpy T-shirt, and clutching—of all things—a Flintstones Push-Up Pop.

I was in the 1990s.

What would I do first? Would I binge on Dunkaroos, waste hours playing Super Mario Kart, and kill off my Tamagotchi? The world smelled faintly of Nickelodeon slime and pizza bagels.

I took a bite, shoving the entire popsicle into my mouth, and—BAM.

I was back in my kitchen, holding a spoon and staring at the empty countertop where the Cosmic Bloom carton had been. All that was left was its orange carton. My iPhone pinged with a loud Slack message, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City screeched, and three bottles of oat milk warmed on my white marble counter.

It was 2024, again. I rushed to Horizon Mart, desperate to return to the nineties. I scoured the freezer aisle. No Cosmic Bloom.

I returned to the store again and again. Waiting for it to reappear. While Flintstones Push-Up Pops had vanished from the modern world long ago, Cosmic Bloom had brought it back, but only for a moment. The taste of nostalgia, where flavors were colors and everything had a touch of synthetic Red.

Now, every time I pass the freezer aisle, I search for Cosmic Bloom with the same quiet hope I once reserved for Flintstones Push-Up Pops—an elusive treasure I stopped chasing long ago. Each time I peel back the frosted glass, I hold my breath, wishing—just for a fleeting moment—to discover something else that can whisk me back to the past.