20 Childhood Foods from the 80s/90s

If you grew up in the suburbs in the 80s/90s, Goldbergs is a must watch. 25 minutes of remembering what life was like before work, kids, and responsibilities. It was a time we didn't need to work out, we didn't care if our jeans were tight. We ate quickly and rushed out of the house to play "bloody murder" with all the kids in the neighborhood until the street lights came on.

It was a time when we didn't think about "organic" and "local" and checking ingredients on the back of a box. Our moms put on their sensible heels and shoulder pads and went out into the working world while we sat home and fed ourselves. We wouldn't have had it any other way.

Pizza Rolls



Little pockets of fiery heartburn.

Pizza in a tiny bite sized pocket, that is sure to burn your mouth completely. What's the sauce that's in these things? Is there really pepperoni? No one really knows because there doesn't appear to be any recognizable ingredients. The one thing we absolutely know for sure is that you will get raging heartburn 10 minutes after having one if you are older than 25.

 

Ramon Noodles

Maybe you were in high school scarfing these down while watching Animaniacs after school or in college coming home from the bar at 2am, watching a Jay and Silent Bob movie... everyone from the 80s has eaten these. A package of noodles that has zero nutritional value and leaves you starving an hour later, this pantry staple still entices me after all these years because you can't beat $0.30 for a 12 pack.

Bagel Bites

We couldn't get enough pizza in the 80s and with the 90s brought bagel bites! The supreme way to eat pizza while watching late night TV. If you were lucky enough to have the cheese and pepperoni stay on top of the bagel, then you only had to wait 45 minutes for them to cool off so you could take a bite without burning your mouth to the point of blistering. Good times...

Tiny Cereal Boxes

Did you know you could make your own bowl out of them?

When my mom came home from the grocery with these tiny boxes of sugary goodness, I couldn't wait to turn one into a bowl and eat and some breakfast. Except that box of Honey Smacks... nasty.

Hostess Desserts

Nothing says dessert like a twinkie, or a ho-ho, or a cupcake, or a fruit pie. Nothing was better than peeling the chocolate coating off the ho-ho, eating it, and then savoring the cake swirl inside. Mmm...

Tato Skins

Chips are delicious but nothing says healthy like Tato Skins. These hard, salty and disgusting little chips made every parent feel little better about feeding their kid chips.

Funyuns

I could eat a bag of these right now.

A bag of fried onions, sort of. If you were ever friends with me in my childhood, you know how much I loved Funyuns. Sure they tear up the roof of your mouth and you smell like a foot hours after eating them, but they were worth it. 

Bugles

These were much more fun to wear on our fingers than actually eat. The taste was more dusty than tasty... Gag me with a spoon.

Fake Fruit

There was Fruit Rollups, Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Wrinkles, Fruit Gushers, and Shark Bites. They came in everything from Garfield, to Ghostbusters, to Ninja Turtles. No sense in buying real fruit when you could just hand out tiny packs of sugar instead.

Chef Boyardee

Scalding hot on the outside, icy on the inside.

I can't limit this to just one product. There was spaghettios, spaghettios with meatballs, ravioli. Then there were smurfs, dinosaurs, pac-man, teenage mutant ninja turtles and tic-tac-toe. Then to top it off they came out with the mini cups... What can't this chubby chef do?

Squeeze-It's

It's a good day when you pop open your He-Man or She-Ra
lunch box and see one of these.

Let's wash down all this sodium rich goodness with a lot of sugar in a really nasty tasting plastic bottle. It's the ultimate BPA packed drink. The taste = subpar, the thirst quench = zero, the fun bottle that made you feel cool = priceless!

Tab or Faygo

Cream soda is heaven in a bottle.

Sure Tab was a huge 80s drink, but in my part of the world there was only one brand of soda to drink and it was Faygo. Orange, grape, redpop, moon mist, cream soda, root beer, cola and so much more.

 

Hi-C juice boxes

Some of the rich kids had Capri-Sun, the rest of us had Hi-C and it was AWESOME. Especially the ecto-cooler flavor which tasted like... well I have no idea, but I'm sure it was tubular.

Kool-Aid

My life wouldn't have been complete without a full jug of Kool-aid in the fridge, and 100 packets of powder in the pantry. I don't know a house that didn't have Kool-aid in hand, all the time in the summer. There's nothing like a giant purple stain surrounding your whole mouth in every single picture from your childhood.

Happy Meals

Remember these transformers? Micky Ds food that
converts into play figures. Double win!

Nothing says a happy child like a happy meal. We didn't want them for the food, we wanted the toys! Of course 80s happy meals consisted of a box you could make into a tiny house or castle, cookies, chocolate milk or soda, gnarly chicken nuggets and a selection of sauces that were tossed for plain old ketchup. Man, to be a kid again...

Let's not forget about the other drive-thru knock off happy meals. My favorite was Arby's because I actually liked their food, but their toys were definitely subpar.

Gum

Why were these squares so giant?
No one needs to chew that much gum at once.

 

We had the BEST gum! Ouch gum that was in the shape of a bandaid, Bubbleyum, Bubble Jug, Doublemint, bubble tape, big chew, and bubblicious which blew the most gigantic bubbles that would get stuck all over your hair and face. Everyone loved gum, like, no duh!

 

Blow Pops!

 

There's gum and then there's gum with sharp bits of sucker all stuck into it. Finding a blow pop in your lunch box was the ultimate in parental lunch packing.

Sour Candy

You only ate these for shock value. Thinking about them made your mouth water, didn't it? I loved anything sour: Tear Jerkers, Cry Baby's, DinaSour Eggs, and the weakest of them all - Sour Patch Kids.

Nuts & Bolts



One final shout out to my favorite 80s food of all time, homemade Chex Mix. In my house it was called Nuts & Bolts and it wasn't made with peanuts or chocolate. It was rad goodness in a crunchy, salty bowl.  I learned how to make this for my kids because sometimes, nostalgia tastes better than healthy.

Share if you want to send some childhood nostalgia to someone in need. Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I may have missed some of your favorite 80s/90s food, please remind me and my readers what it was by commenting on facebook or below!