Image via Complex Original
The single greatest thing about being a child in the '90s, aside from everything that aired on Nickelodeon and Steve Urkel's laugh, was the sheer variety of snacks available to us. Snack-making creativity knew no bounds, and conversely, lunchtime was our favorite hour of the day.
The entire first half of class was consumed by a strange mix of anticipation and fear: What would our Power Rangers lunchbox hold for us today? Would it be feast or famine, heaven or hell? Would mom's lunch-packing skills be up to snuff? Only the snacks could decide.
Open up wide: These are The 25 Greatest Lunchbox Snacks of the '90s.
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25. Warheads
Maker: Impact Confections
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As a child, the ultimate test of strength was not how many pull-ups you managed for the Physical Fitness test, or even how far you could shimmy up the rope climb without experiencing chaffing. No, the real test was how many sour Warheads you could consume without puckering your lips. Appear as though you'd sucked on a lemon, and you'd face social ostracism. But if your face showed no hint of strain, you'd be cool forever. Or at least until middle school, when you broke out in bacne.
24. Polly-O String Cheese
Maker: Kraft Foods
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Mom was all about trying to find a way to smuggle you a dose of calcium, and giving you Polly-O was like baiting a dog to swallow a pill by wrapping it in bacon. You were all like, "Fuck dairy, I just like peeling layers off this stick of cheese." It took about an hour to eat, but the deconstruction process was well worth it.
23. Goldfish
Maker: Pepperidge Farm
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Before Nemo hit the scene, we had these unnatural, almost neon-hued sea creatures to entertain us. The obvious advantage: While your kid sister had to suffer through Nemo's melodramatic journey, the only place this sucker swam was into your mouth. Why was he wearing sunglasses? Only God knows.
22. Sprinklins Yogurt
Maker: Dannon
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If you opened your lunchbox and a container of plain yogurt was inside, you were at the bottom of social food chain. Yes, even in second grade, a hierarchy existed, and it was determined by the volume of sucrose you sprinkled on the top of your yogurt. No sprinkles, no friends. It was tough out there for a young G.
21. Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies
Maker: Little Debbie
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Little Debbie wore a straw sunhat, and she created a snack food with a misnomer. There was nothing pie-like about this treat; there was nothing extraordinary about her. But these sumptuous oatmeal sandwiches elevated her to the realm of Mother Teresa. Was it marshmallow spread between those two cookies, or some indeterminable substance? Maybe it was pure happiness. All we know is that Little Debbie did work.
20. Hydrox
Maker: Sunshine
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Little known fact: Hydrox hit the scene before Oreos even existed. It was the premiere sandwich cookie, and as we grew, our fierce loyalty to this groundbreaking snack knew no bounds. Talk smack about Droxies and get smacked. That was our motto, and all the kids on the playground knew it.
19. Nilla Wafers
Maker: Nabisco
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Vanilla is the underdog of flavored snacks. But while all the other lemmings in class opted for a double-chocolate-something-or-other, we were repping hard for Nilla Wafers, or Nilwas, as we liked to call them. Actually, we never said that. All the good nicknames are conceived in retrospect, aren't they?
18. Barnum's Animal Crackers
Maker: Nabisco
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These were cookies for joyless children, chalky and cardboard like, but we were swayed by Nabisco's brilliant marketing. The box was a self-contained circus, people! Sure, those shapes were ambiguous (the gorilla was clearly shaped like an orangutan) but the feeling of demolishing an entire gang of circus animals with our teeth was a high like no other. Yes, we were (and still are) that twisted.
17. Milanos
Maker: Pepperidge Farm
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While other kids were pulling janky cookies out of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lunchboxes (FOH, bran cookies), you were elevated to king status when you whipped out the Milanos. Can you say your cookies are "distinctive," kid? We didn't think so. Now give us some elbow room on the lunch bench; you're cramping our "distinctive" style.
16. Uncrustables
Maker: Smuckers
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When you discovered Uncrustables in your lunchbox, the jokes wrote themselves. Glaring at your neighbor's fully-crusted sandwich, you just had to say it: "Your mama's so lazy, she makes you take the crust off yourself."
As the lunchroom erupted with mean-spirited laughter, it was official. You were the boss of the the third grade, and no one could stop you.
15. Zebra Cakes
Maker: Little Debbie
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Zebra Cakes were the adventurous, slightly zany cousin of Oatmeal Cream Pies. Only looking back did we realize that an acid-dropping Zebra probably wasn't an ideal mascot for children snack foods. He was wearing gloves on a sunny day. Is there ever a rational explanation for that?
14. Hot Fries
Maker: Andy Capp
Who is Andy Capp? As kids, we had no idea he was a British comic strip character, but we knew the man made a mean spicy snack. These "fries" gave the illusion of your favorite diner food, but had an airy texture that made them possible to consume in mass quantities. So many memories, and so many belly aches. Thanks for that, Andy.
13. Ritz Bits
Maker: Nabisco
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Unsure of how to fit more sodium in a single snack, Ritz spread an artificial, cheese-like substance between two heavily salted crackers. The salt glistened like diamonds, and we salivated. It was a Pavlovian response we're no more capable of controlling now than we were then. We're still hooked on the bits.
12. Kudos
Maker: Mars
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Let's set the record straight once and for all: This was a candy bar. There was a reason your mother packed these in your school lunch, but wouldn't let you eat them at home. It wasn't for the sake of the environment, it was for her sanity. After polishing off one of these M&M bespeckled bars, you were like a human ping-pong ball, ricocheting across the cafeteria. Those poor lunch ladies.
11. Fruit Roll-Ups
Maker: Betty Crocker
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Boredom was unimaginable thanks to Fruit Roll-Ups' ingenious design. If the pleasure of its fruity flavor dulled for you, the novel punch-outs would pull you back in. A perforated SpongeBob? WE'RE BACK IN THE GAME!
10. Bugles
Maker: General Mills
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A surefire way to get clowned at recess was to roll up to the cafeteria with a regular, run of the mill chip. But a chip shaped like a traffic cone? Danger: Cool kid ahead.
9. Teddy Grahams
Maker: Nabisco
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Mom may not have loved you (Why else would she have packed your lunch in a brown paper bag, no note to be found?) but these saccharine little Teddys? They were on your side. All you needed to do was open the bag and love and acceptance would abound.
8. Handi-Snacks
Maker: Kraft Foods
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The artificial wonder of Hand-Snacks' cheese spread was only trumped by the DIY process of smearing florescent cheese on Ritz crackers. This was cooking, right? In our young minds, this was the preface to becoming real, domesticated human beings.
7. Shark Bites
Maker: Betty Crocker
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Long before The Discovery Channel's "Shark Week" was a twinkle in our eye, we were enamored with Shark Bites. Those other kids could keep their Hawaiian Punch fruit snacks. Why would you fuck with island knickknacks when you could eat the predator of the sea? Every bag felt like an adventure: Would you have a favorable number of gummy great white sharks, or get shafted, and be stuck with all clear ones? Fate would decide.
6. Airheads
Maker: Perfetti Van Melle
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There was White Mystery, and then there was every other flavor of Airhead. We didn't care how pause-worthy it was. It was delicious and we wanted it all up in our face. Wait, no. That's not what we meant.
5. Lunchables
Maker: Oscar Mayer
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If your mother gave you Lunchables as your actual meal, and not as a snack, she probably hated you. These boxes of all-fake-everything had zero nutritional value, but they were fun to make, and crazy delicious. Constructing a pizza with diabetes-inducing tomato sauce (in a packet, no less) on a disk of carbohydrate with cold cheese on top was a collision of dietary sins, and all the other kids were rubbernecking. Hard.
4. Fruit by the Foot
Maker: Betty Crocker
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If the cafeteria was a stage, Fruit by the Foot stole the show. If you whipped one of these out, your young lady friends were initially unimpressed. Little did they know, this snack was a grower, not a shower. A full foot long? Why one person needs a ruler's length of fruit snack is a mystery.
3. Capri Sun
Maker: Kraft Foods
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If your juice had a cap that required you to twist it off and exert actual effort, your beverage choices were all wrong. According to our estimations, there were about five sips to a packet of Capri Sun, but its tiny straw made it feel like far more. From the first poke, we were hooked. Ayo?
2. Gushers
Maker: Betty Crocker
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Gushers set the standard for every other fruit snack we would consume in our lifetime. If you couldn't stain our shirt like a tye-die attempt gone wrong, you weren't the snack for us. Move along.
1. Dunkaroos
Maker: Betty Crocker
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If these didn't make it into our lunch box on a bi-weekly basis, we threatened to revolt. It was too, too clever not to enjoy regularly. A kangaroo that dunks? We may not be in Australia, but that's all kinds of awesome. Not even the flawed frosting-to-cookie ratio (so much leftover frosting!) could thwart our enjoyment of this quintessential snack.