About This Quiz
There is one part of school that every kid remembers: lunchtime. It was a great way to socialize with our friends without getting in trouble, and we could discuss all of the cool things we were going to do when school was over. Lunchtime in the 1980s gave us the opportunity to check the awesome lunch boxes our friends had. They were stamped (or stickered) with our favorite cartoon characters. They came with little plastic thermoses that had small cups on top. They were awesome, but what was inside was way more important than what was outside.
Cool parents gave their kids snacks and various lunch treats in the 1980s. If you were lucky enough to have some of these packed in your lunch, your friends always wanted to trade, but you would only trade if they had something way cooler than you. Of course, you always had the option to split something and share, but only if your friend shared as well.
Right now, it's time to see just how much you remember about school lunch from the '80s. If you can name all of these, you probably had them in your lunch box (or you had that friend who always pulled them out).
Sizzlean was a healthier form of bacon that claimed to have 50% less fat without sacrificing the flavor. You had to hurry to buy it though, because it was "flying out of the store" (it wasn't).
Hostess was the leading company in sugars and saturated fats, and children in the 1980s loved them. Pudding pies were an excellent way to get your pudding and your pie at the same time (lunchtime) when you were a kid.
Tato Skins no longer exist, but you can get a similar product in the TGI Friday's bagged potato skins. However, in the 1980s, if you wanted a real crunch to your chips, you could get these bad boys that came in several flavors.
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Chips Ahoy! cookies had a lot of great marketing techniques. They talked about how many chocolate chips were in each cookie (and even went so far as to advertise that on the packaging). It was an odd guarantee, but it worked, and kids loved the little cardboard circles.
Fruit Wrinkles were basically just Fruit snacks. They didn't have a lot of different flavors (they all pretty much tasted the same), but they were a great alternative to gummy bears.
Ecto Coolers were the greatest thing on Earth because they had Slimer from "Ghostbusters" on them. The taste was dangerously close to melted green Jell-O, but this was back in the days when high fructose corn syrup was totally healthy for kids.
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Cheez Balls were awesome. They came in a little canister so you didn't crush them on the way to school. Though they aren't made anymore, there are some pretty close substitutes you can get these days.
E.L. Fudge cookies had a little elf on them, and they were shaped like the cartoon characters who made them. It was a great marketing technique that attracted a lot of children, and the cookies weren't half bad if you dipped them in milk.
Star Crunch bars were made by Little Debbie. They had chocolate covered rice cereal surrounding some sort of soft cookie covered in caramel. They were everything we wanted in the 1980s because they were pure sugar (you know, for energy).
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You can say what you want about Doritos, but if you've never had a taco flavored Dorito, you've never lived. They had a cheesy taste with just a hint of sour cream on the back end. They were the perfect chip.
Capri Sun was originally marketed as a sports drink for kids ... because pure sugar and citric acid will get anyone hyper. Every '80s kid who brought these to school lunch knows the pain of having that cheap straw break.
What do you get when you sprinkle crushed chicken bouillon cubes onto a cracker? Chicken in a Biskit by Nabisco. These crackers were salty and absolutely delicious when mixed with cream cheese and pretty much any dip.
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Easy Cheese was simply the best. Sure, it had the same texture and fortitude as plastic, but putting it on a cracker was absolutely life-changing. If you brought one of these to the lunch table, everyone served up their chips and crackers for a squirt.
Animal crackers were all the rage in the 1980s, mostly because Teddy Grahams hadn't hit the market just yet. They were an excellent way to have a cracker that wasn't too sweet. Kids needed their carbs back then, and these were the best way for them to get it.
Kudos granola bars were the side that healthier parents chose for their kids' lunches. However, the only thing that made these healthier is that they were about half the size of other granola bars on the market.
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There was something about eating a Lunchable at school that made you feel far superior to your classmates who had homemade sandwiches in their lunch boxes. Not only did your parents purchase this for you, they even placed it in your lunch bag. It was pretty sweet of them, really.
Like most Hostess products, Zingers were made up of a sponge cake substance filled with hydrogenated oil and covered in a plastic-like frosting. Their shape changed their flavor (they didn't), and kids in the '80s loved them in their lunch boxes.
Though you can still get Bugles at your local grocery store, the 1980s really showed them off as the most amazing snack in the world. They were light, airy and crunchy all at the same time. Oh, and they were saltier than ramen.
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The '80s wanted to make everything bigger. We were a country of wealth and growth, so why not make the biggest Oreo possible? Calories didn't matter back then, but sugar always mattered to kids, so these were a hit.
Magic Middles were about as plain as cookies could get in the '80s. Everything in the '80s had to be packed with various candies and fruits and sprinkles, but Magic Middles stayed true to themselves and were simply filled with chocolate.
Handi-Snacks certainly were handy to have around. Although, no one recommends that you drive and eat them. They take two hands. One to hold the plastic container and one to maneuver the little red stick around in order to get the plastic cheese out of the tub and spread it on your cracker.
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Everyone knows that Shark Bites were the fruit snack of choice back in the day. Though each piece simply looked like a blob (and definitely not a shark), children would throw wild fits until these were thrown in their lunch boxes.
Thanks to the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (movies and cartoon), pizza was the only thing that children of the 1980s wanted to eat. It only made sense that a company would try to profit off of this and make a chip flavored appropriately for the children of the time.
What are they laughing at anyway? Putting human faces onto food was a good idea back in the day. Once the Internet was popularized and taking pictures of epic fails came along with it, the faced-food started to fade away.
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Fruit Roll-Ups were the corporate take on fruit leather. However, being made with "real fruit flavor" was just a ploy to get kids to eat the sugar that they packed into these little guys. But hey, we all loved them, and they were a great trading tool at school lunches because you could split them up.
Everyone knows that Reese's Pieces made a huge comeback after "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" came out. A lot of people don't know that M&Ms candies were the first choice, but they turned down the deal. That was silly.
Pasta in a tomato sauce. It didn't taste like mom's spaghetti, but it did the trick, and for some reason, the children of the '80s loved these nasty little things. It was tomato soup with circular pasta in it. End of story.
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Nabisco's Swiss Cheese crackers were packed with cheese flavor (that means sodium). They were baked, so they were clearly better for you than potato chips ... or at least that's what they tried to tell parents.
Fig Newtons were a very sophisticated cookie for the children of the 1980s. They had a chewy consistency, but if they were old, you might get a few crumbs in the back of your throat ... which would always cause you to cough.
Keebler Rainbow Chips Deluxe cookies were awesome to have in your lunch box as a kid. Simply trading one colored candy that was baked into the cookie could get you half of a Fruit Roll-Up. They were that good.
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You twisted off the plastic cap and squeezed the juice into your mouth. That was the delivery method of this sweet drink that mocked the taste of Kool-Aid. They were important to all '80s kids, but not every '80s kid had them.
Cool Ranch Doritos were all the rage in the 1980s. However, if you ever had a taste of Wild and Mild Ranch Fritos, you probably liked them better. But the chip everyone remembers from back in those days were Doritos (for some reason).
Wild Cherry Pepsi was first seen in 1988. It gave people exactly what they were looking for in a soda: extra sugar and flavored syrup. These days, you can walk into a fast food place and pick any flavor of soda you can imagine, but back in the '80s, it was much more difficult to get your hands on one of these.
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In the late '80s, someone decided to capitalize on the success of animal crackers, and make crackers that were shaped like one specific animal. Sure they were graham crackers, but they were glazed with sugar, making them purely '80s. Chocolate Teddy Grahams are shown here.
The big thing about PB Max was that it was made with real peanut butter on the inside — as though every other peanut butter snack wasn't made with real peanut butter. But who doesn't love a commercial with hairy-armed wrestlers in it?
Any kid who had one of these in their lunch box was envied by every other kid at the lunch table. Not only was it a sugary drink, but it was a sugary drink that tasted like bubble gum (well, kinda).
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Carnation Breakfast Bars gave you a morning boost, but they were often put into children's lunches as substitutes for things like granola bars. They first arrived on the scene in the 1960s, but they were all the rage in the 1980s.
Bagel Bites were what every kid dreamed of, but they were gross. If you were lucky enough to have your parents buy them, you probably just pretended to like it so you didn't get in trouble for wasting your parent's money.