Looks like the other stuff might be cheese. Gross, whatever it is.

The last picture pretty much explains why the non-sweet jellos were discontinued. Looks like an alien brain.

wow, that is horrible.

Clearly they are squares of butter. :)

Yellow peppers, I bet.

cheese? i was thinking cheese. isn't there pimento in some cheese spread?

i can't be the only one wondering what italian flavored jello tastes like... i'm imagining italian dressing? jiggly, jiggly italian dressing...

That is nasty! I would pretty much pick off the tomato slices around the edge of the last one and then ditch the rest. (Does make me feel better about my own eating habits, though -- at least my vegetables are identifiable, although slightly less frequent than they should be.)

I love how the first one shows a salad-Jello with what appears to be a desserty-Jello sprouting out of the top. An entire meal consisting only of Jello!

For more vintage "things" with gelatin (I dread to call it "food"), check James Lilek's Gallery of Regrettable Food:

http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/

The entire site is hilarious and there are two sections devoted to packing stuff in jello: Knox Gelatin and Jello confronts the depression.

(Warning: the entire site is highly addictive, so pursue at your own peril. It might be hours before you walk away).

Eh, this doesn't seem too weird to me. We still have carrots and beetroot in jelly when we visit my auntie's and it's really nice :)

Welcome to the world of "congealed salad." Every year at major holidays my family has black cherry jello (made with part coca cola instead of water) with pineapple, cherry, and nut chunks in it. Any other southerners relatively used to this idea?

Congealed salads are often very tasty. People's repugnance has more to do with them being culturally alien. The ingredients themselves are usually fairly innocuous. It's the presentation that folks seem to object to. Perhaps we have broached the "uncanny valley" for foods?

This revelation of celery-flavored Jell-O is a (small) weight off my mind. When I've seen pictures of green Jell-O molds packed with vegetables before, I assumed that the Jell-O was the sweet lime flavor I ate in childhood. Olives & cheese + lime Jell-O = IckIckIck. But if those were really celery-flavored Jell-O molds, I can move from 'what sick mind would put those flavors together?' to 'why would you put cheese in Jell-O?'

I made a tomato aspic recently.

http://cookingwiththejuniorleague.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/week-8-i-hath-clasped-an-aspic-to-my-bosom/

I have not yet exorcised the horror from my palate.

We have an old cookbook that contains a lot of recipes for aspics and meat flavored gelatin foods. I've always been intrigued - but not enough to actually make one of them. Clearly they were quite the fashion at one point in time.

i'm russian, and jellied meat dishes are pretty common in russian cooking. it's called chaladyets. you make the gelatin yourself by cooking the meat with bones and then you chill the whole mess with carrots and slices of boiled eggs on top. you eat it with horseradish or mustard or anything nice and spicy.

it's interesting to read that jellied foods are a fad in the rest of the world...

The weirdest thing to me is how we turned rendered connective tissue into a kid-friendly dessert.

Jello with Tuna, eh? How ironic... because I am a crazy wild person, I made jello once by using the water drained from tuna cans + unflavored gelatin.

Unfortunately, I diluted it too far and the result was jello with a faint but pervasive tuna... influence. IT WAS THE MOST DISGUSTING THING I HAVE EVER EATEN. THE. MOST. DISGUSTING. I couldn't get it down even slathered with mustard, and mustard makes a lot of stuff bearable for me.

YUCK

I live in Germany, and here, this no new, gimmicky thing. Sülze is a combination of meats (usually from the head of a cow), herbs and vegetables held together with gelatin and served in a sliceable loaf. I think it's similar to head cheese. Anyway, I saw this because I'm guessing Jell-o was trying to combine this traditional use of gelatin with artificial flavoring. Disgusting, sure, but why is fake-fruit flavor more palatable than fake-meat flavoring? (Actually, as an eater of Ramen noodles, fake-meat flavoring rocks).

I just wrote all that, and then read the comment by Marianne from Russia saying basically the same thing.

It's funny how our expectations of food are so entrenched into societal views of "normalcy". A gelatin artificially flavored like pepperoni pizza would disgust most Americans; however, they'd have no qualms with the equally bizarre practice of spraying these flavors onto a fried corn-chip.
I'm sure you could put plenty of strange flavors on chips and get someone to at least TRY them. Buffalo chicken J-E-L-L-O? N-O - W-A-Y

Jello meals were a big deal! They meant you had ice/a fridge - you were rich enough to serve jello. And you could prepare dinner, leave it to set, and get on with your day.

This has turned into an exercise in pointing and laughing at something simply because it's outside the comfort zone of most people here.

i'm in my twenties and i remember eating a salmon jelly thing as a kid. it was a fancy meal course. 

My mother used to make a jello salad every two weeks or so. We never ate it as a desert. Most of the time she just put shredded carrots in it.

I was at a resort in the Greek Islands for a conference and the hotel buffet had aspic. So. It's still around...alive and well.

Horrifying. Partially because Jello has been rebranded as a fruity dessert food, but also partially because gelatinous things make me think of congealed substances, and cold congealed substances just don't appeal.

I used to cook for nuns. They were stuck in the 50s and had me make them jello salads. It made me question my validity as a cook.

What's surprising to me is how many people don't know that gelatin is made from animal products. Today a friend of mine, who knows that I'm vegetarian, suggested that I should try a certain Jell-O recipe.

I had to explain that gelatin came from animals (for her sake, I didn't go into details). She was pretty shocked.

Tomato aspic is still fairly common in the South, horrible though it is. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic

I collect old recipe books as a hobby. A lot of the recipes sound outlandish to the current palate, but I've made more than a few congealed salad dishes. Intrigued, I wanted to know how these foods tasted and I have been surprised how good they taste. I've used plain unflavored Knox brand gelatin with broth, vegetable juice or lemon juice as the liquid component to great success in savory recipes but still appreciate how interesting it can be to combine sweet and savory flavors using the popular fruit flavor gelatins.

As a British person, I find the idea of savoury jellies and aspics entirely unremarkable.  Most Europeans do.  I was raised on things like pork pies - in fact I think the jelly is the tastiest bit.  Any repulsion is entirely cultural.

I've eaten my fair share of jell-o salads, but at nearly 40, I don't think I have ever seen vegetable jell-o!

I am cross posting this as I already commented at the Mental Floss site, which I came through that site linked to yours:

When I worked at a homeless shelter one of my duties was to sort through
the food that was donated to our food pantry. A very common practice
seems to be when an elderly person dies jumbled boxes of items are
donated to shelters and other charities as though whomever cleaned the
cupboards out just swept everything into the box without looking at it.
One day as I was sorting through one of these donation boxes I came
across a box of Tomato Flavored Jello for Salads, which I actually
remember from my childhood. Yes, someone had donated a 45 year old box
of Jello to the homeless! I kept that box of Jello, it is sitting on my
fireplace mantle. I have left instructions in my will that it is to be
auctioned off after my demise and the proceeds be donated to the shelter
I used to work for.

I do remember the vegetable Jello flavors from my childhood and they were a VAST improvement over the alternatives -- adding some vinegar and possibly some herbs to lime, lemon or orange Jello along with the various veggies.  Shredded carrots in orange Jello isn't too bad.  I'm at a point that a tomato aspic with a lot of salsa in it sounds interesting....  I like textures, what can I say?

Southerner Julia Reed observed
In "Gourmet of the Delta," a cookbook put together by the region's
Episcopal churchwomen, there are 70 salad recipes, and 51 of them
contain gelatin; in the "Memphis Cookbook," 23 of the 33 salads are
congealed. I didn't even bother to count the desserts. We congeal
everything.
Her "Miss Congealiality" provides some nice insights into gelatin and class.

I recall back in the 60s seeing a jellied fruit salad served with lettuce. Looking at these dishes now, l see this was nothing compared with some of these horrors. Seeing l am a kind of pasta with everything cook, these creations fascinate me in a wierd kind of way

I am 80 years old, remember the celery flavored jello, and made a hearty salad using canned corned beef, celery, onions plus horseradish sauce, excellent!! We used lemon flavored jello, and will try flavoring plain jello with vegetable broth. In this heat wave we are experiencing, a cool dinner is a must.

What many don't know and must now be told is that these were NOT non-sweet jellos. They had the same amount of sugar in the packets as their fruit flavored counterparts, hence the repugnant factor. I dreaded seeing a box of celery or tomato jello in the cupboard. All that sugar in the "savory" mayo laden gelatinous muck was the nightmare of my childhood and college days.