Entertainment
Top 10 Snacks That Will Take You Back to the 90’s!
If you grew up in the 90’s, chances are you have some pretty fond memories of these snacks of your youth. Take a trip down memory lane and enjoy this list of the Top 10 Snacks That Will Take You Back to the 90’s!
10. Trix Yogurt
You may have been more familiar with its cereal counterpart, but Trix yogurt holds its own as a snack staple for 90’s kids everywhere. The gimmick for Trix yogurt was the fact that it had two different flavors that you could mix together, and the corresponding colors would swirl together. The commercials for Trix yogurt way back when made it seem like swirling the two flavors together would hypnotize your enemies and enter you and your friends into a yogurt-flavored alternate dimension, but what actually happened was much more anti-climactic: the darker of the two colors would overpower the lighter one, causing it to look more like a muddled mess that a fun spiral of color. Even so, the flavors would still combine nicely and taste good together, even though the yogurt appeared radioactive in color. The mild flavor and fun colors made it good for lunchtime at school, but the street cred you’d get when pulling out a Trix yogurt definitely wouldn’t hold a candle to some of the other entries on this list. Though the yogurt itself may not have tasted like anything special, the commercials that were shown on Saturday mornings have definitely made an impression that will stick with 90’s kids forever.
9. Fruit Roll-Ups
All the cool kids at the lunch table in elementary school had these tangy, sweet delights, so it’s no wonder that they’ve made their impression on those who grew up in the era in which they were at the peak of their popularity. If you’ve never had a Fruit Roll-Up before, it’s pretty hard to describe what these snack oddities really are: sticky, fruit-flavored strips that were rolled onto a waxy paper in a spiral shape. When you unwrapped them, they’d have printed patterns on the inside that would transfer onto your tongue if you stuck them there. First sold in 1983, Fruit Roll-Ups originally came in four different flavors: strawberry, apricot, apple, and cherry. Since then, they’ve expanded to include flavors such as strawberry kiwi, lemon-lime, and cola. (Considering that last one, it’s hard to believe that mothers accepted this snack food as a fruity and nutritious option to put in their kids’ lunch bags.) Fruit Roll-Ups were a unique and fun snack when they were introduced, and created an entirely new genre of snack alongside other fruity trailblazers. Fruit Roll-Ups, Fruit by the Foot, and Gushers were all part of this family — sticky, tangy snacks that weren’t your average fruit gummies, but weren’t really candy, either. No matter what you classify them as today, there’s no denying that these types of snacks were popular for kids in the 90’s, and still hold their own today. Luckily, Betty Crocker still makes Fruit Roll-Ups, so you can pick some up during your next trip to the grocery store and try them for yourself if you’re looking to relive some of your childhood memories.
8. Planters Cheez Balls
In hindsight, it doesn’t make much sense why a company renowned for peanuts would make cheese balls. In fact, these probably weren’t all that unique when pitted against other cheese balls on the market, but the experience of eating these ones in particular make them worthy of a slot on this list. Everything about the way the Planters Cheez Balls were packaged made it a good snack. From the fact that they came in a convenient little can that protected the contents inside from going stale to the Mr. Peanut pictured on the label, who was adorably unfitting to represent cheese balls as a mascot. Fans of this snack declare that it’s the best cheese ball available on the market, claiming that the cheesy flavor blows Utz’s rendition of cheese balls out of the water. Luckily, you can still find them online! The Planters Cheez Balls are available on Amazon not only in their Original flavor, but in White Cheddar and Nacho flavors as well. They’ve even added a new Blazin’ Hot variation if you’re in the mood for something spicy. They’ll arrive in bulk, too, with most flavors selling in packs of 12 — enough to tide you over until the next time you decide to make an impulsive Amazon purchase. Better grab ‘em before they’re gone!
7. Cosmic Brownies
Finding one of these at the bottom of your lunch box was like finding buried treasure. Cosmic Brownies, along with other Little Debbie Snack Cakes, made their mark in the 90’s as the perfect snacks to share with friends during picnics or playdates. As their name suggests, these sweets have a brownie base topped with fudge icing and sprinkled with multicolored chocolate chips. Sure, they might not have been anything other than candy-coated chocolate, but any Cosmic Brownie enthusiast will tell you that those chocolate chips make a world of difference in how they taste. Chances are, you thought these arguably average brownies were out of this world as a kid thanks to the way Little Debbie marketed them, but the magic of Cosmic Brownies has still managed to persist today. Eating one now will not only satisfy your sweet tooth, but take you back to the days where you’d beg your mom to buy a box of these whenever you took a trip to the grocery store. As an attempt to market themselves, Little Debbie’s Cosmic Cupcake – a cream-filled cousin of the Brownie we know and love – actually went to space in 2014 as a marketing campaign. The cupcake was attached to a weather balloon, which was equipped with GoPro cameras and a GPS system. People anticipated that the cupcake would climb up to 98,000 feet in the air and travel over 100 miles, essentially sending it to space. Who knew the Cosmic marketing ploy would actually grow to live up to its name? Funnily enough, the airborne Cosmic Cupcakes have since been discontinued, but you can still buy the OG Brownies at nearly any grocery store.
6. Butterfinger BBs
Although the OG Butterfinger bar is still around today, nothing will beat these snack-sized bites of chocolate and flaky peanut butter that were all over the place in the 1990’s. Whether you ate them simply because you liked Butterfinger or because you saw Bart Simpson eat them on TV, something about making an already tasty candy bar bite-size made it all the more tempting and delicious. The one downside of the Butterfinger BBs seemed to be their ridiculously low melting point: you could have a pack of them in your pocket for just a few minutes and they would be a drippy and chocolatey mess as soon as you tried to eat one. The low melting point may have been because the outer coating of the BBs was made from compound chocolate, which is a cheaper alternative to true chocolate and is made of cocoa, vegetable fat, and other sweeteners. Regardless, Butterfinger discontinued them in 2006, and the reaction from fans was overwhelmingly negative. The BBs have made countless entries on lists of snack foods people wished were brought back from the dead, and there was even a petition made by fans of the chocolate snacks to resurrect the Butterfinger BBs. Although the BBs won’t be returning anytime soon, you can still get their movie-theater equivalent, Butterfinger Bites, online or in some stores.
5. Shark Bites
These guys may have just been fruit snacks, but they were so much more than that. Each package contained different fruit flavors that corresponded to the species of shark. If you ate these at the lunch table in the 90’s, you probably bragged to your friends about what colors and species you got, especially if you got your hands on the featured special pieces. The Great White Sharks are the ones most 90’s kids will remember fondly, but Shark Bites also had special pieces that looked like shark’s teeth (and could be placed over your own teeth if you wanted to play around with them before eating them.) The Great White Sharks didn’t last forever, though: they disappeared along with the other flavors when Betty Crocker agreed not to use artificial colors in their products. The correspondence of flavors to different types of sharks made eating Shark Bites a uniquely educational and fun experience, and the taste of the fruit snacks themselves was different from similar ones on the market. Nostalgia forums online reminisce about how the consistency of Shark Bites were completely different from any other fruit snack, putting them a peg above the rest in terms of how they tasted. Although you can still find them today if you look hard enough online, the flavors and recipe of Shark Bites have changed, making them a lot different from the Bites you knew and loved in the 1990’s.
4. String Thing
If you thought Fruit Roll-Ups were weird, String Thing was definitely weirder. Made by Betty Crocker — who is making their third appearance on this list — and cherished by 90’s kids everywhere, String Thing consisted of thin, spaghetti-like strands of fruit-flavored sticky stuff that was formed into kid-friendly shapes. To eat it, you’d have to peel the string and, if you wanted to take full advantage of the occasion, slurp it up like you would with your spaghetti at dinnertime. This made it super messy and inconvenient to eat, but that would be overshadowed by the fun experience that came with eating it. String Thing made it clear that, in the 1990’s, kids’ snacks placed more of an emphasis on entertainment value than nutritional value. Playing with your food may be considered taboo now, but it’s all anyone ever did at the lunch table in elementary school, especially if a String Thing was involved. Even though they probably weren’t healthy and always got stuck in your teeth, the String Thing has still managed to wiggle its way into the hearts of anyone who used to eat it. Although some news sources have reported to find dupes of the String Thing for sale online, it doesn’t seem like there are any that can be bought from Amazon in 2020. Thirty years later, it’s pretty safe to say that stringy fruit spaghetti is better off remaining a memory than making a comeback.
3. Fla-Vor-Ice Freeze Pops
Whether you ate them at your school’s field day or on a hot afternoon at summer camp, Freeze Pops remain a fond memory in the mind of anyone who grew up in the 1990’s. The composition is super basic, but super effective: a sugary, juicy base that, when frozen, makes a refreshingly cold snack to munch on in the summer. You couldn’t really get full from eating only Freeze Pops, but they’d be tasty and cold enough for you to want to pop open more of them anyways. They also came in a variety of flavors: orange, lemon-lime, berry punch, and strawberry, to name a few. No matter which flavor you got, though, each one tasted equally good — a rarity among fruit-flavored kids’ snacks. Because of this, choosing a Freeze Pop was more like choosing your favorite color out of the lineup. Although these frozen delights were a highlight at any block party in the 1990’s, they’re still sold nearly everywhere in the summertime, proving that keeping it simple is a surefire way to stay in business. Picking up a box may seem like a good idea, but don’t expect any crazy flashbacks to your childhood immediately: the almost magical experience of opening up a neighbor’s cooler and seeing it filled to the brim with ice-cold Freeze Pops is kind of lost when you have to freeze them yourself. If you’re a die-hard fan of these, though, it may be worth picking up a box and passing along your childhood experience to someone who might not have had the pleasure of enjoying one of these before. With huge boxes of these available for sale, you can enjoy Freeze Pops any time of the year.
2. Doritos 3Ds
Though these iconic snacks were introduced at the tail end of the 1990s, their puffy deliciousness is seared into the minds and hearts of snack enthusiasts who grew up during that time. As their name suggests, Doritos 3Ds were puffed-up versions of the original. They were triangular in shape and smothered with cheesy powder, giving them a strong flavor that is synonymous with the Doritos brand. Although everyone seems to remember this game-changing snack food, it didn’t last a very long time. Fans were devastated in the early 2000s when Frito-Lay announced that they would be discontinuing these treasured snacks due to low sales, despite the seemingly cult-like following the Doritos 3Ds had. In their short lifespan, the Doritos 3Ds gained such notoriety that fans are still trying to get their hands on them today. If you’re really looking to find these discontinued Doritos snacks, your best bet is to travel to Mexico, where they are rumored to still be in circulation – albeit in a queso flavor that may be less intense for fans of the original. You won’t have much luck looking online for the Doritos 3Ds, but you can find fun Doritos flavors, like Tangy Pickle, Queso, or Ketchup, for ridiculous prices.
1. Dunkaroos
They may have been something as simple as cookies and icing, but these bad boys tasted like so much more than that. Dunkaroos were cookies paired with sweet icing and came in a multitude of flavor combos: vanilla frosting with chocolate cookies or rainbow sprinkle frosting with chocolate chip cookies, to name a couple. If your mom was nice enough to pack Dunkaroos in your lunch box to eat in the middle of a boring day at school, lunch time became a celebration really quickly. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they dipped their Dunkaroos: if they skimmed the surface to save the icing to make sure it was easily distributed, they’re probably level-headed and careful in their snack endeavors. Now however, if they were the rebel who made a cookie-icing sandwich with their Dunkaroos, they’re probably a bold rule-breaker when it comes to snacking. Originally introduced in 1988, the combination of cookies and sugary-sweet icing quickly became popular among kids, and Dunkaroos were flying off the shelves all the way up until the early 2000’s. Once they reached their peak, though, it was only downhill from there — production ceased in the United States in 2012 and in Canada in 2018. However, Dunkaroos have hinted on their Instagram about a possible reboot coming sometime soon, so there’s a possibility customers can enjoy them just like they did when they were kids!