All NewsDecember 10, 2025

Trader Joe’s quietly pulled a favorite holiday treat, upsetting fans

Trader Joe’s shelves are always packed with seasonal treats. This time of year, that means items like peppermint tea, gingerbread cookies, and pumpkin ravioli. But one highly anticipated annual item has quietly disappeared.

Trader Joe’s fans who look forward to, and who went looking for, one of the most popular holiday snacks, were disappointed.

Candy-Cane Joe-Joe’s, the peppermint-flavored Oreo knockoff that makes an annual appearance this time of year, is gone, and shoppers are not happy about it.

A disappearing product usually means one of three things:

  • A recall
  • A supplier issue
  • A permanent phase-out

In this case, it’s none of those but rather that this year’s batch “didn’t meet our standards,” a Trader Joe’s spokesperson told SFGate.

“Candy Cane Joe Joe’s are a fan favorite, so it’s disappointing that they won’t be hitting the shelves this holiday season,” said Maurie Backman, retail news reporter at The Street. “Unfortunately, there seem to be quality issues with the product, and at this point, Trader Joe’s doesn’t have much time to fix them. Peppermint products just don’t have the same ring in January.”

Backman said she drove 30 minutes to her local store, only to be confronted with every other type of Trader Joe’s cookies except the ones she came for.

Trader Joe’s is known for its seasonal snacks and foods.

Photo by Jaclyn Vernace on Getty Images

Why Trader Joe’s removes products from shelves

The FDA issues a new food recall at least once a week. Most of the time, FDA recalls foods and beverages because the product contains an undeclared allergen such as milk, eggs, or wheat. Sometimes the foods have potentially hazardous contaminants like wood shavings, metal pieces or plastic fragments.

When a food is contaminated with a dangerous bacterium, like listeria, E. coli, or salmonella, the recall is more urgent, since these bacteria can cause illness or death.

Related: Trader Joe’s secret to getting customers to buy new items

Most food manufacturers, including Trader Joe’s, are proactive and voluntarily pull products as soon as they realize there is a potential problem.

Earlier this year, Trader Joe’s pulled multiple items over:

  • Contamination concerns
  • Supplier manufacturing issues
  • Unlabeled ingredients
  • Unexpected allergens

“Legacy supply chains were built for cost optimization, not resilience,” grocery-retail expert Charisma Glassman argues in Retail Insider.

In today’s volatile global supply environment, experts say that can mean retailers may preemptively pull seasonal items — not because of safety recalls, but because supply-chain or quality risks make the products too risky to offer.

Related: Voluntary vs. mandatory food recalls: what you should know

No matter the cause, whenever Trader Joe’s drops a beloved item, like the Candy Cane Joe Joe’s, fans rant on social media, especially Reddit.

“When I spoke with a store employee about it today, they told me that often products are pulled due to packaging errors and she thinks that could be the case here,” wrote a redditor named bluethreads.

“Idk if I’m more upset about this or the fact that I’m having such an emotional reaction to a cookie,” wrote suddenparticular33.

Major Trader Joe’s recalls in 2025

Trader Joe’s Candy Cane Joe Joe’s were not recalled for a safety or health concern, according to the FDA and USDA databases, but Trader Joe’s did have some significant recalls throughout 2025, including: