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Okay, Lunchables. Many of you have probably tried these little lunchy kits, but if not, you've most likely at least heard of 'em. Curious? Of course you are! They're marketed to kids and for kids, but really - who doesn't want to play around with little turkey frisbees while being given an excuse to consider a fun-sized package of Skittles part of a balanced meal? You're a damn sadist if these things don't excite you.
Now personally, it's been years since I've had Lunchables. It's not that I didn't want them, rather that I couldn't help feeling a little embarrassed buying this bright kiddy box with pictures of Nickelodeon characters eating sandwiches all over it. Really, it's a pretty degrading thing to walk onto the checkout line with. And this is coming from a person who's willingly decorated their walls with old Christmas wrapping paper because he thought Santa looked more evil than usual, so you know what I'm saying is true.
But you know what? Screw that. So what if one measly old checkout lady thinks I'm a big retarded pedophile loserguy? Why am I seeking to impress old checkout ladies, anyway? It's not like I'm gonna hit 'em on the rebound once my woman dumps me for buying Lunchables. At the very worst, all I'd really have to deal with a few snooty looks from some hag who remembers the public outrage when former president Chester Arthur admitted to shooting a squirrel. I don't need the respect of old checkout ladies. What are they gonna do, scan my carrots twice when I'm not looking? I took the risk, and I'd take the risk again. Friends, I went home with Lunchables...
Today, we review two different varieties of the kits - 'Cracker Stackers' and 'Tacos.' The Cracker Stackers were the ones I had at the tail end of my childhood, representing a more traditional entry into the extensive lore of Lunchables. The Tacos kit is the more in-your-face, 27th century blue raspberry of the crew. Both versions are relatively cheap, as in, there aren't many other full meals out there which don't involve eating sand that are more inexpensive than Lunchables. While not incredibly unhealthy, I wouldn't recommend making these the seven-day-diet of a 2nd grader unless you're attempting to grow an army of Jumbo People who will scout new areas of the world for you to conquer.
We'll start with the Cracker Stackers, because I'm really anxious about showing off those turkey frisbees.
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Ritz-like crackers, turkey discs, Kraft cheese rectangles, Skittles, and a bag of juice makes up this most holy of offerings. The Skittles are one of many different types of candy included with the Lunchables kits, and are a relatively new addition. Formerly, candy wasn't present, and one of the big selling points Oscar Mayer made in the commercials was about how healthy these meals were. There were a few problems with this, though...
First off, Lunchables weren't exactly healthy. Kraft cheese doesn't really fit in with any of those negative calorie diets, and even the few little Ritz crackers carry enough sodium to make a kid's dick hurt when he pisses. The only thing which could feasibly be construed as a low-fat snack is the turkey, but the last thing Oscar Mayer wanted to do was draw attention to cold cuts that look like they were just pulled out of a Fisher Price Lil' Cookarina's Kitchen refrigerator. While surely healthier than a bag of Wise chips and a salami sandwich, they couldn't really get away with marketing these like they would tofu.
Plus, kids weren't interested. They didn't care if something was healthy, but they certainly cared if it didn't come with any kind of candy. Mothers were going to have a hard enough time making their sons open these girly nerdy boxes in front of their Little League friends - the task was just downright impossible if the meal didn't have candy. So, Oscar Mayer changed their outlook, and their methods of advertising. They no longer claim that Lunchables are particularly good for us, but they make damn sure you remember that it comes with Skittles!
The cheese was cool and the crackers were just kinda 'there,' but that turkey - oh that wonderful turkey! Tastewise, it's pretty on the mark. They've toyed with the shape and probably added some freshness ingredients, but if the taste is any indication, they didn't go the whole nine yards by adding turkey beaks and ostrich genitalia trickily referred to as monophosphate ostmix powder. Course, by the time these circular creatures actually landed in a kid's mouth, they were covered in the dirty fingerprints of everyone else at the lunch table. You didn't just eat this turkey. You made friends with it. You played with and fondled it. You let everyone else do the same. By the time you put the stuff in your mouth, it was probably only around 30% turkey, with the remaining 70% being distributed evenly between various fingernails and kid snot.
Excusing that for the moment, up above is a photo of what you're actually to do with your Lunchables kit. First you take out a cracker, then you add turkey, topping everything off with a slice of cheese. Actually, there weren't any set methods - you want to put the cheese on before the turkey? Go for it! GO NUTS! It was all up to you. If you so preferred, you could even put two slices of turkey and cheese on a single cracker. Just remember this, though. If you go ahead and do that, you're gonna have to eat a bare naked cracker at the bottom of the box. Lonely, uncheesed, unmeated, unhappy.
To avoid such experiences, make sure each 'stack' has an even number of gross processed animal discs, crackers, and slices of orange brick butter which could possibly be regarded as 'cheese' by a few distant cultures chock full of high-hoping dreamchasers.
For those of you who like to just like to know these sorts of things, here's a breakdown of the different color varieties found in the aforementioned bag of Skittles:
As much as I like Lime Green, I've gotta admit, they seem to be getting a little more than their fair share of the spotlight. That's a whole lotta lime and too few cherries, in my opinion. Grape, I don't care, I'd rather there be no grape Skittles. For some reason, I always feel like I'm raining on some dung beetle's parade when I eat one of those. Orange, well...I'm kind of undecided about orange. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. And what's more - you never know what kind of orange you're gonna get. Sometimes it's sour orange, sometimes it's sweet orange. Sometimes the orange falls under an as-of-yet untitled flavor category that can either repulse or delight you. I will say this - four orange Skittles is two too many. Oscar Mayer just don't give a shit about any of us.
Both of the kits we're taking a look at today come with a bag of 'Capri Sun' juice. I got 'Fruit Punch,' and I can only pray the distribution of fruit falls under a more even jurisdiction than that misfit package of Skittles. The drink tastes pretty good, to be honest. I'm not at all averse to washing down turkey CDs or phony tacos with a Capri Sun, but there is one small problem. Now I've mastered the art in recent times, but I distinctly recall a fairly long era when getting the straw into a bag of Capri Sun proved nearly impossible. When I was younger, Capri Sun was considered the Rubik's Cube of the beverage world. There were just way too many things that could go wrong.
Sometimes, you'd 'double poke.' This refers to the rookie mistake of pressing too hard, causing the straw to pierce not just the silver hole, but also the back of the bag. This caused a loss of air pressure and lots of spills. Another frequent mishap was 'ballooning.' That's when you squeeze the bottom of the pouch and hold it like that before inserting the straw. All of the juice swells the top of the bag, and when you finally make that almighty straw punch through, everyone starts shouting 'Oil, oil!' It took patience and finesse to insert the straw correctly, and most kids felt those were skills of a much heftier price than they were willing to spend on something that wasn't soda.
And those are Cracker Stackers. Let's take a look at the Tacos kit...
Three taco fajitas, a mystery ingredient, taco sauce, shredded cheese, and a small box of Nerds candy. Mmmm Nerds. Ewwww grape-flavored Nerds. When I say that the box of Nerds is 'small,' I mean it. It's actually around half the size of the boxes people give away on Halloween, and couldn't possibly play host to more than a dozen tiny pieces of the candy. In the case of the Tacos kit, it's an acceptable amount of Nerds. I doubt many kids were going to eat them after this anyway.
The shredded cheese seems to be legitimate Kraft goods, but on appearance and texture alone, I can't rule out the possibility that they're actually shavings scooped off the table after someone finished sharpening their crayons. But these gripes, folks - these are small gripes. At least, they're small gripes compared to the Big Gripe...
There it is. The casecracker of The People Against Lunchables trial. The taco meat. Now before I begin, they've already got one strike because they're forcing you to eat positively cold taco meat. Perhaps you can circumvent this issue if you're near a microwave, but most kids eating the stuff were doing so in a lunchroom, far away from the heavenly radioactive rays of a microwave. Still, if it's half as good cold...
Now pardon me if I've been misled, but I never knew that meat could still be referred to as 'meat' if it's actually 'liquid meat.' I was always of the mind that it's a pretty mandatory prefix to use where it's applicable. Yes, the taco meat comes in a small sealed condiment pouch. It's decidedly unappetizing, and potentially dog diarrhea. I only finger-tasted the stuff, and can't argue that it's not reminiscent of beef. Unfortunately, I could finger-taste roadkill and I still wouldn't be able to argue that. I'm not factoring in that tobacco has dulled my tastebuds down to a level where I can drink wine vinegar without flinching, so you might take a greater offense to the crud than I did.
After squeezing out the meat glue and adding a generous amount of plastic cheese onto the surprisingly soaking wet fajita, you finish the entry by adding just a touch of the included taco sauce. I say 'just a touch' because anything more than 'just a touch' could do serious harm to your digestive track. So, why not just skip the taco sauce? Because a taco ain't a taco without taco sauce. I'm pretty sure that's in the bible, Pedro 12:22.
Despite all of this, it's hard to consider anything based on a dinner where minced cows are shoved into tortilla shells 'disgusting.' Hey, I like them, but they are disgusting. If an entree was designed specifically to mask the quality of Grade Q beef, there was something wrong with it from the start.
And there's the finished product. You get enough crap to make three of these, and if you're feeling particularly brazen, you could sprinkle the grape Nerds on top. I'd have to give a much stronger recommendation to the Cracker Stackers kit, though. At least the meat was still partly solid there.
So ends our short journey into the forbidden realm of Lunchables. This is just a small sampling of the kits currently available, which run the gamut from cookie desserts to frozen cheeseburgers and beyond. Sorta makes you think the ol' apple in a brown bag might be a little underrated, but if nothing else, we've finally been given full clearance to guiltlessly play with our food.
