Childhood Snacks We Never Outgrew

Childhood in the early 2000’s was crazy, there is no way around that.  From the red carpet fashion to the TV shows, it defined who we are and our humor as Generation Z as zany, quirky and unconventional.  However, what shaped our tastes, quite literally, were the snacks that were advertised to and consumed by our childhood selves in kitchens, in living rooms and in bedrooms.  This is not a comprehensive list of the snacks that shaped our childhood into the golden years we remember but is instead a quick reminder of the excitement and longing we felt when we saw them— whether we ate them ourselves or watched in envy as the kids in colorful advertisements ate them instead.

Scooby Snacks:

• Scooby Snacks are the graham cracker sticks we both needed and deserved as kids.  Being raised on the hijinks of the Mystery Gang, Scooby Snacks were memorialized to us just as spinach was memorialized to the generation who watched Popeye the Sailorman.  They were one of the few snacks our parents let us get at gas stations, convenience stores, or the grocery store for snacks, and we ate them with excitement to feel like our favorite mystery sleuths and friendly canine.

Rainbow Goldfish:

• Rainbow Goldfish are the exciting counterpart to the normal, regular, good but boring goldfish.  In their small, colorful cartons, Rainbow Goldfish were the snack cherub children would grasp at with chubby fingers and hands from their seat in the shopping cart in the bright supermarket.  Accompanied by the friendships built in the Goldfish commercials, and the adventures the characters pressed onward with underneath the bed, Rainbow Goldfish were quirky, stand out Goldfish we all craved.

Gushers:

• Gushers are the bursts of flavor, excitement and envy of childhood.  If you had Gushers, you had the baby gaze of green-eyed-jealousy of the lunchroom population aimed right at you.  They popped and exploded in our mouths, and, despite their mess and meltable quality, we loved them all the more for it.  They were fun and fresh; a gooey, chewy treat our childhood selves begged for in the grocery store— and you could bet they would be gone in less than a day.  Stolen and devoured hungrily until our tongues were stained blue and green and red.

Cosmic Brownies:

• Cosmic Brownies are the king snack of childhood; they take their crown and their Little Debbie title of perfection.  Children would gorge themselves on the deliciousness, and we would still gorge ourselves on the treats now, but they were the pinnacle of taste and confection in elementary school. The fudge layer topping and the hard sprinkles that really should not be looked at too closely haunt our hunger-induced dreams, and we are proud of that.

From crackers to gummies, and to cookies, these four snacks still make mouths water even now and remind us to think fondly of our golden, youthful years.