From my ridiculous and somewhat disgusting childhood memories of school lunchboxes....
Weetos/Ricicles/Nesquik/Cookie Crisp/Golden Nugget cereal, Wildlife/Echo/Fuse/Mars Planets & white Maltesers/Cadbury’s Dream & Double cream chocolate, Penguin/Club biscuit bars (the naff jokes on the wrappers still haunt me), Fox Party Rings & Midget Gems (aka Michael Owens), & Jammie Dodger/Cadbury Animals/BN/Wagon Wheel/Cartoonies/KP choc dip biscuits, Fabulous Bakin’ Boys cupcakes, Flump marshmallow sticks, Frufoo/Frube yoghurts, Angel Delight milk pudding, Mr. Freeze/Sun/Jubbly (autocorrect makes this ‘junky’ which...yeah)/Twister ice lollies, Slush Puppies (I would only ever have these at the bowling alley), Ribena/Panda Pops/Squeezit/Kwench/Sunny D (always California-style, never Florida)/Fruit Shoot (I always liked the tennis-themed TV advert)/Um Bongo drink (which I’m certain they do not actually drink in the Congo..), Coke Vanilla (they keep bringing this back randomly as limited edition then retiring it again—does that happen in the U.S.?), Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape/Bubbaloo/Double Bubble gum & Chupa Chups (with some you got good football stickers with fit players’ pics on them—ditto the Powerpod Microstars chocolate shells), Atomic Fireballs/Push Pops/Swizzle Sticks/Sherbert straws/Flying Saucers/Bursting Bugs/Fruitella/Fruit Pastilles/Mr. Bones/Brain Lickers/Baby Bottle Pops/Toxic Waste/Candy Cigarette sweets (no way you could market those last few anymore), Wrigley’s Extra-thin Ice strips, Fruit Winder rollups, Quavers/Discos/Frazzles/Monster Munch (one flavour turned your tongue blue, it was wild)/Space Aliens & Transformers crisps, Cheesestrings (what was society thinking), Heinz Green Sauce (what the hell was this stuff and why did it need to exist?), Lunchable snack packs, Bernard Matthews’ Turkey Twisters & Billy Bear ham slices (shudder to think what cursed creature that meat originated from, if indeed it was meat)....
While a lot of these products are long discontinued, you can still buy some of them today (at least in England & Wales, you can), with the caveat you have to be prepared to search the darkest corners of the most provincial supermarkets or corner shops, and know that you shall receive dirty or confused looks from other customers or checkout staff for asking after them—much less buying them—in this Daynayj.
And I wouldn’t expect to go into a family home of now and see any of the aforementioned stocked in the cupboards. No-one I know buys any of this regularly or even more than once every few years for nostalgic reasons; even the people who were once regular consumers.
Considering the deleterious effects of these foods on health, I suppose the drop-off in popularity is a good thing, really. We don’t view the 1990s-2000s as a Dark Age, but we must remember that kids back then were still blithely eating microwaved chips, ready-made potato waffles, mini pizzas, jelly (jello, to you lot) with ice-cream, and litres of pop/soda/soft drink (whatever you want to call it) daily, like it wasn’t revolting or neglectful or a problem.
And I don’t really know exactly what sugar-addicted little kids like to eat these days, but given the way younger mothers seem to shop in my local supermarkets, I assume that much trendier and higher-end health-conscious GOOPy sweets & snacks are de rigeur. I imagine only common factor between the lunchboxes of my childhood and those of now are pieces of whole fruit (say, an apple), carrot sticks (Maccy D’s style), and those tiny boxes of Sun Maid raisins you can still gey.
