School Lunches

All the advertisements and articles lately about back-to-school, particularly stocking up for school lunches, has gotten me feeling nostalgic for the foods of my childhood. I still pack a lunch everyday, but I've graduated to leftovers or sandwiches and fruit or yogurt. No expensive single-serving snacks for me. Sigh. Here were some of my favorites:

• Dunk-a-roos. Little graham cracker sticks with a tub of chocolate frosting to dip them in. What's not to like?
• Goldfish. A girl at work brought Goldfish for lunch the other day, and it just took me back. Goldfish = childhood.
• Chewy Chips Ahoy. Mmmm. The softest packaged cookies ever. If you heat them in the microwave a few seconds they're even better.
• Juice boxes. Why, oh why, did I have to grow up and find out that most fruit juices are pure sugar and actually not very good for you?
• Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies. These were actually more of a high-school obsession, but I'm counting them because I still often packed a lunch in high school. They are more like fudge than a brownie. And at Christmas time, they come in the shape of Christmas trees.
  

Then there are those foods that I look back on and think, "How could I eat that?" For example:

• Lunchables. All of them. These are vile, but the worst offenders are the pizza ones. Sickeningly sweet sauce and rubbery cheese product shreds on top of a communion wafer? No thanks. Also, they are a huge waste of money. You could buy a box of Ritz crackers, a package of cold cuts, and a package of sliced cheese and make about 10 Lunchables for under $10. Not to mention, it would taste about a thousand times better. But as a kid I loved these! Lunchables has some kind of amazing marketing strategy. I don't think Mom let me have these all the time (smart woman), but I do remember being so happy when I got them.
• Handi-Snacks Cheese and Crackers. These are similar in theory to Dunk-a-Roos, but much grosser. Remember the cardboard breadsticks that you dip in the alarmingly yellow "cheese" spread? Just thinking about that taste makes me gag.
  

Thanks, Mom, for packing hundreds of lunches for me throughout the years. (And, for the record, my mom made me sandwiches and packed fruit for me; I didn't only eat junk!) It is so much less fun now that I pack my own lunch.

What about you? What were your favorite childhood foods?