Question: “When did they disappear?”
That’s not an easy answer. Hunt’s didn’t pull “Big John’s Beans ‘N Fixins” everywhere at the same time. Some markets had the product pulled in the early 80’s while other ares of the country had the product available into the 90’s.
Mergers and sales caused a lot of management changes. Hunt’s merged with Wesson, then they were bought by Esmark, Esmark was bought by Beatrice Foods, Inc.
Now Hunt-Wesson is part of the giant ConAgra megaCorp. Somewhere in all of this the product mix kept changing. Even today people post on the web when they find “Big John’s Beans ‘N Fixins”in a small store shelves, the canned food that time has forgotten!
My research shows it was ConAgra that pulled the product off the market.