I had a similar experience involving pizza. Growing up I remember eating sbarro. I remember liking it. I know I liked the look of how shiny the pizza was. It reminded me of cartoon pizza.

Anyway, fast forward till I'm 30 year old man recruiting for the military. I was in malls walking around and I noticed the shiny pizza from sbarro. I ordered it. I ate it. It tasted like cardboard. I don't know if they changed their recipe, but chances are my taste buds just grew up and had better quality pizza over the years.

Well....I'm a slow learner and over the course of about 2-3 months I ended up eating sbarro like 3-4 times. Everytime I saw that shiny pizza, my brain had a nostalgia hit and I just went an ordered the 2 slice and a drink deal. After the last time, I wanted to throw it away but I forced myself to finish the cardboard pizza so I would remember how terrible it is.

I haven't had sbarro since.