Attention my Nickelodeon friends generation, I know most of you who are on my Facebook buddy list grew up in the 90′s, the greatest decade in history to be a kid. Everything great (and bad) was magnified 100 times when you were young. The slip n’ slides seemed like they were a mile long, 4 inches of snow seemed like 3 feet and 50 grams of sugar wasn’t enough. I was sitting at work today and became inspired when I was thinking about what it must be like growing up in this day and age. iPods, iPhones, computers, Xbox and Playstation 3. As I sat there and through to myself, I wouldn’t trade my Sony walkman, Game Boy, NES or Crossfire for anything. And then as I thought about it more, I started to think of the cool shit that we used to eat as a kid. And, what do you know, I have a food blog to talk about with you about.
I would just like to preface that due to our softening country finally coming around to the thinking of “Why are our kids so fat,” half of these things would not even be allowed to hit the super markets today. Without further a due, here is my top 10 list of snack foods we used to eat as kids: (Drinks to come in a later post)
10. Starburst – I used to hose my parents every time they took me to the movies for a solid 5.00 for a bag of Starburst. And I used to eat the whole damn bag. So many great flavors and that blinding yellow bag, I’m surprised they didn’t throw me out of the theater! Ha, terrible, just awful joke. This is probably my favorite commercial as a kid and I’m glad it cracked my list of top 10.
9. Ring pop – I really don’t have anything to say about this, but it was cool, good and it made your fingers really damn sticky.
8. Lunchables – Now, they are quite possibly the nastiest thing I’ve ever seen. The ham is shiny and slimy, the cheese tastes like it’s right out of the processing machine, the crackers are moist and soft because of the condensation from the ham, but I used to eat the shit out of these. I don’t think I started developing taste buds until they came out with the pizza flavored Lunchables, those almost made me throw up. But, I still at the pepperoni (or whatever those disc-shaped objects were in the package. And the salsa was nasty in the nacho brand. Oscar Meyer really got away with these.
7. Pizza Bagel bits – “Pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening and pizza at supper time. When pizza’s on a bagel, you can eat pizza anytime.” Quite possibly one of the most successful advertising jingles in any food product, pizza bagels really did hit the spot all the time every time. But, I always burnt the shit out of my mouth and had that dangly piece of skin hanging from the roof of my mouth for 2 weeks after it. Sorry, I had to.
6. Ellios Pizza – But it had to be the Ninja Turtles box. Does anybody remember this? There used to be punch-outs of the characters on the back of the box. I would only eat this if the Ninja Turtles were on it. I liked, I’d eat anything as a kid, they used to put the Flyers logo on the back too, when hockey used to be really cool. Apparently, each rectangular piece of was 1 serving. I used to eat 3 at a time. And, no matter how long you left it in the oven, the middle was ALWAYS cold.
5. Charms Blow-Pop – Come on, you knew the lollypop infused gum ball had to make the list. I felt like the majority of my Halloween candy ended up being blow pops one year. I always loved the grap5e and cherry flavors. And you know what’s great? They still have the same wrappers today. I used to get one of these in my lunchbox every now and again as a treat. From Charms, I know everybody remembers this commercial:
4. Bubble Tape – The 2nd best gum if you played baseball as a kid. This gum was great and it came in a circular container (that always came undone) that you could unwind your gum. Eventually, they put a tricky little device on the end of the container that allowed you to cut the game. I was always a fan of the grape flavored brand. It’s for you! Not them.
3. Fruit by the Foot – Jumpin’ jehosaphat! This craft little snack came in a small package but rolled out to 3 feet of pure artificially fruit flavored joy. Eventually, they started putting designs on the paper that lined the fruit. Who the hell actually payed attention to that anyway? I usually just unraveled the whole thing, crunched it up into the smallest ball I could make of it and let my insides do the rest. Always liked this kid’s shirt:
2 Gushers – Great googly moogly. How good were these? The stickiest, juiciest of all fruit- related teeth-rotting glory. I believe they came in 2 or 3 flavors, I always remember asking my mom for the red kind. The red kind as a kid covered flavors touching the cherry and strawberry spectrums.
1. Dunkaroos – Good. God. The dessert version of a Handi snack, a pouch filled with delicious kangaroo shaped cookies and a connected container of sweet, delicious fudge knocked any kid’s socks off. Me? I just ate the chocolate and threw the cookies out, screw all that work.
Stay hungry retro style. Now accepting rebuttals and honorable mentions.
I LIVED for DunkAroos! Of course I ate the cookies!