A few years ago, Eric Lefcowitz had an idea that was out of this world.
He set up a Web site to gauge public interest in reviving a snack food not seen in American grocery stores for decades - Space Food Sticks.
"A lot of people talked about how much they really wanted them to come back," Lefcowitz said from his home in Port Washington, N.Y.
"In a way, they (Space Food Sticks) were just ahead of their time," he said, describing the chewy, foil-wrapped food product as a forerunner to the nutritious energy bars on the market today.
The sticks hit store shelves around the time the Apollo space project was sending astronauts to the moon, and their popularity waned along with public interest in the space program.
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A company in Australia makes something akin to the original food sticks, but after trying to market them here Lefcowitz decided to revamp them from the ground up.
He teamed up with a food engineer who put together a new formula based on the original Space Food Stick ingredients, and Lefcowitz plans to relaunch the brand early in 2006.
"The really good surprise is, they taste great," Lefcowitz said.
He said while Space Food Sticks probably flew on NASA flights, they were intended as an emergency food supply and probably weren't consumed in outer space.
Nonetheless, they remain a symbol in many people's minds, Lefcowitz said.
"That whole concept of eating foods that the astronauts ate seems to come from a different time," he said.
"I wanted to preserve the whimsy that was implicit in the original product."
Readers can reach Forum reporter Dave Olson at (701) 241-5555
