Brown Bag Lunches: Top Ten Snacks of the 90's

Growing up there were two basic kinds of elementary school kids: ones who bought lunch and ones who brought lunch. The kids who bought lunch were incredibly lucky on rotini & meat sauce, Thanksgiving dinner and pizza days, but forced to suffer through countless nutritionally-challenged meals like bouncy hot dogs, chicken cordon blue, and "Grade D But Edible" hamburgers.

But let's not assume that all the kids who brought lunch lived in mealtime luxury because these little ones can be further assigned to one of two categories: envy-envoking snack-packed, savory sandwich lunches and bland, blah, boring whatever-is-in-the-cabinet lunches. Even though every now and then I'd get a little pasta salad or a can of Coke in my brown bag, I was, on the whole, a member of the latter designation. While my friends enjoyed individually-packaged Fritos and sandwiches on bulky rolls laden with fresh sliced turkey, lettuce and tomatoes, I was grabbing at the crumbled remains of regular potato chips from a greasy plastic baggy and trying to swallow my regular-old peanut butter on wheat.

Because my lunchtimes lacked indulgence, I was painfully aware of all the awesome bagged-lunch options out there. Here were the snacks I wished and prayed for, stared longingly at in the grocery store aisles and got only on the days we went on field trips:

1.) Dunkaroos
2.) Peanut-butter Twix bars
3.) Hostess chocolate cupcakes
4.) Kraft cheese & crackers
5.) Table Talk apple pies
6.) Jello pudding
7.) Gushers
8.) Fruit Roll-Ups
9.) Keelber Fudge-Stripe cookies
10.) Pringles (little individual cans)

When my spawn eventually goes to school, I'd like to say I'm going to pack them brown bags filled with goodies... but I have a strong feeling they'll be hitting the cafeteria armed with bananas, bottles of water and yogurts... sorry future children, I'm only thinking about your health!