For kids in the ‘90s, where you stacked up in the social hierarchy was heavily dependent on what snacks you brought to the lunchroom. Kids who had the most processed, brightly colored, and sugar-filled snacks were the envy of every other kid who had to settle for their sandwiches their mothers made with love.
Pathetic.
The best snack in your lunchbox granted you the power to trade for anything in the lunchroom. Or, you could be like me, and fill up on the jealous looks the other kids tried to hide as you slowly chowed down. Either way, you were eating good.
‘90s snacks were the last era of foods being blatantly unhealthy and were all the better for it. It was a time of innovation and experimentation that the world may never see again. If you had any of these 10 snacks in your backpack, you might as well have been royalty.
Sure, let’s sell a couple cookies and a dish of pure sugar to kids for lunch. What could go wrong? Dunkaroos were the perfect lunch snack to drive all your friends crazy. There were just so many ways you could eat them to torture your friends. There was the standard way of dunking the cookie in the frosting, making your own little frosting sandwich, or being a complete monster and loading up ALL the frosting on a single cookie.
The angle of theming them around kangaroos never made any sense, but that’s how it was in the ‘90s. Like animal crackers, something about shaping your cookie like an animal just made it taste better.
2. Go-Gurt
I’d bet a lot of money the main reason parents bothered buying Go Gurt was because they were sick of kids losing so many spoons. For kids, though, these were almost as much fun to use as a toy as they were to eat. I know I wasn’t the only kid who stomped on one on the ground to shoot out a geyser of yogurt. Plus, freezing them was a complete game-changer.
If you were really a menace, or just had a bone to pick with a kid, waiting until they had it in their mouth before squeezing it with all your might to blast yogurt into the back of their throat was a classic prank.
3. Lunchables
Now, we can all look back and recognize kids who had Lunchables probably had the laziest and cheapest parents in school. But at the time, we all WISHED our parents would lower their standards and give us Lunchables. Watching that one kid with the pizza pack put the sauce, cheese, and “meat” on the soft cracker and not share a single bite is the kind of thing that creates supervillains.
Seeing Lunchables now is a sad sight when you realize you were getting quarter-sized crackers, three dime-sized pepperoni slices, and less cheese than I have on my fingers after eating Cheetos.
4. Fruit by the Foot
Another snack that was also a toy, Fruit by the Foot had it all. It was big enough that most kids were willing to tear off a piece, was perfect for pretending to be a snake, and even had awesome designs and jokes on the wrapper. But then there was the one kid who would unravel the whole thing and roll it all up into their mouth at once like a caveman. You gotta savor these things!
Just be careful who you ask for a piece from since healthier alternatives that used real fruit quickly came along and ruined the fun.
5. Hi-C
Hi-C was when kids learned how to be little salespeople. When we saw this at the store, all of a sudden we were using every method of persuasion to convince our parents to buy them. “They have 100% vitamin C and are made from real fruit juice!” we’d claim, only knowing we were addicted to whatever elixir they packed into those juice boxes.
If you were lucky enough to live through the Ecto cooler flavor with Slimer from Ghostbusters on it, you were one of the blessed ones. They did briefly bring this back, but it could never be the same.
6. Bagel Bites
Mankind as a whole took a massive step back after the ‘90s when we stopped investing in new pizza innovations. Pizza ruled lunch and dinner, obviously, but was still seen as “degenerate” to have for breakfast. Well, what if we put a pizza on a bagel? Bam, now it’s a breakfast food. Try and judge me for eating pizza for breakfast now, mom!
Imagine if we kept pushing pizza technology. Could we have some form of pizza coffee? Pizza ice cream? The possibilities are disgusting, but also limitless.
7. Pop Rocks
When you stop to think about it, it’s actually very impressive how many ways we came up with to sell packages of pure sugar in different ways. Pop Rocks would’ve been okay as just flavored sugar chunks, but that added texture and feel of the “rocks” fizzing and crackling in your mouth was unlike anything else. The marketing of “Taste The Explosion” was a stroke of genius that made every kid beg for a pack. You always knew when someone had them because they’d stick their mouth right next to your ear so you could hear the popping.
I’m sure that whole urban legend about Pop Rocks and soda also created a massive bump in sales. I know I tried it.
8. Ring Pops
The ‘90s was the era of big bling and Ring Pops were there to ride that wave. Looking like a comically big gem, these lollipops were totally hands-free. Thinking about it now, that isn’t actually all that important, and actually looked really dumb to hold your fist up to your mouth to suck on it. For some reason, they were still viewed as cooler than a regular lollipop.
On the other hand, they were like mini-brass knuckles while Push-Pops became claws. The candy wars of the ‘90s were a bloody affair indeed.
9. Cosmic Brownies
Is there anything more ‘90s than Cosmic Brownies? Brownies are great, but how could we make them more rad? By adding a layer of chocolate icing and colored sprinkles, of course! I don’t know for sure if those sprinkles actually tasted like anything, but in my mind they did. The most important thing here was that each one had a convenient divot to break it in half and share. Everyone knew that, so once we caught a whiff of that cosmic goodness, the kid who had it became everyone’s best friend.
Any kind of pure dessert was always a hot commodity, but Cosmic Brownies had that special something that made them irresistible.
10. Doritos 3D
Man, whoever came up with this idea at Doritos deserved a huge raise. They managed to sell us the same sized bag of chips, but inflated each chip so they held ⅓ as many. And we were happy to buy it, too! These conical chips hit different in every way, and almost fooled you into thinking you were eating bigger chips. You were also legally required to bite the ends off and stick the tips on your fingers
The whole 3D gimmick has died off now and hasn’t had a proper replacement. Chips used to push the boundaries with things like this and the ones that turned your mouth green. It just shows how far we’ve fallen as a culture.
