The X-Entertainment Blog

08/21/2006: August Megaparty #21: Fizzing Lunchables!

I’m not in the mood to see how hard I railed on Lunchables back in my 2003 review, but if I said I hated them, I was lying. Sadly, Lunchables arrived just as I was on the cusp between it being okay to bring lunch to school and it not being okay to bring lunch to school. Junior High was hard knocks, and aside from a fast-learned lesson that lunchboxes were no longer acceptable, it seemed like only the cream of the socially retarded crop still brought lunch to school, even in plain brown bags. It’s not that I wasn’t a social retard too, but at least with this, I had a chance to hide the truth.

Knowing that, it would’ve been career suicide to bring something as cutesy as Lunchables to school, no matter how much I liked ‘em deep down. I’d still make my mother buy them for me, but they were relegated to home-only eating. With their original formula consisting of a plastic tray with darling compartments for processed cheese, turkey frisbees and special treats, Lunchables have managed to become an edible dynasty, bigger today than ever before.

Through the many years I’ve spent watching Lunchables evolve from something simple to something not so simple, I’ve been at times delighted and at times appalled at the many ways Oscar Meyer saw fit to feed children. While there have been plenty of Lunchables varieties that seemed more absurd than palatable, nothing was quite as weird as the latest incarnation: “Mess With Your Mouth” Lunchables, with “Sour Tongue Teasing Fizz.” Read between the lines: They’re insinuating that you should put Pop Rocks on deli meat.

It sounded disgusting to me at first, but then I reminded myself that Lunchables are for kids, and kids’ ideas about what’s good and what’s gross differs greatly from non-kids, even if those non-kids try desperately to still act like kids. Truth is, we really aren’t born with any sense of what’s good and what’s gross — it’s all taught behavior, whether through family, friends, media or our own positive/negative experiences. Example: I can’t eat spaghetti because it reminds me of worms. I didn’t come out of the womb associating spaghetti with worms, but somewhere, along the way, I picked it up. I’m not entirely sure how to tie that to my argument that adding Pop Rocks to wet turkey slices isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t matter, because I am flip flopping. I tried one, and it was disgusting.

The “Mess With Your Mouth” collection only adds packets of “Sour Tongue Teasing Fizz” to existing varieties of Lunchables and redresses their boxes. For a minute I tried to convince myself that mostly all was mostly well, but that packet of Teasing Fizz was a real elephant in the room. Afraid to call something disgusting without knowing the whole truth, I prepared my cracker/turkey frisbee/cheese slice sandwich and opened up the ominous packet. On it went. Down it went. Weird face I made. Like cheetah who ate live duck that shit in its mouth mid-swallow. Bad thing this was.

I’m exaggerating a little, because Oscar Meyer at least had the good sense to tone down our idea of what Pop Rocks or candy sprinkles taste like: Sour Tongue Teasing Fizz is only mildly sour, and in fact, its overall flavor isn’t very strong at all. As far as the flavor goes, it’s not much different from a Lunchable sandwich sprinkled with plain sugar…except for the fizzing part. Yeah, that’s kind of hard to get over. Through the many centuries of turkey-eating people, I don’t think, “man, this would be better if it was fizzing” crossed anyone’s mind. Not ever. I could swallow it without gagging, and maybe I could swallow it with some comprehension of why kids might like it, but I will never, ever eat a fizzing turkey cracker sandwich again. Not ever.

Oh, and what about those early-grade tables at school lunchrooms? Could you imagine how disgusting it must be for some poor kid to get stuck next to the schmuck with a “Mess With Your Mouth” Lunchables pack? “Hey buddy, look at my tongue long and hard, and study the disgusting bits of saliva-drenched chewed turkey as they flop around the pockets of my cheeks by way of Sour Tongue Teasing Fizz.” Ugh. I haven’t had this much sympathy for someone I’ve never met since Dan called David a “lying little bastard” and kicked him straight out of the Conner house and into a bunch of terrible made-for-television movies about mothers coping with teenagers from the wrong side of the tracks.

I mean, jeez, a turkey frisbee is an acquired taste in of itself. We don’t need to fuel that fire.

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!

Speaking of Jr. High (or Middle School) lunchboxes, I got my mom to buy me a LOONEY TUNES lunchbox for the 6th grade. NOW, I KNEW that it was inapproriate. It was supposed to be a joke. Obviously, the joke was ahead of its time in that I am now 27 and I could probably get away with the same lunchbox better now than I could when I was 11. Nobody got it, I was made fun of, and the whole shtick only lasted about a week.

My co-worker bought one of these at the 7-11 for lunch today. I wish I had gotten his thoughts so I would have more to add.
On a related note I almost made fun of him for buying a lunchable with “Sour Tounge Teasing Fizz”

Bleagh. I read that those Lunchables are terrible for you anyway, sprinkles or not. Geez, this from the guy who just bought light mayo, reduced fat hot dogs and sundry healthy-ish things at the grocers. I just can’t take too much junk food. My inner child is dying. or horribly ill.

Sometimes I like to go into filthy public restrooms just to “mess with my nose”.

Best lunchables ever…THE NACHOS!!! I still eat those, I had some on Saturday. Yeah, i’ll neevr grow up!

The original Lunchables weren’t bad at first, but they paled in comparison to Jimmy Dean Tastefulls. Dammit those were good.

Those things are awful for you. And I used to sit down after school and eat ‘em for snack.

In high school someone brought a lunchable to school on the last day before spring break. We threw the turkey discs at the window to see if they would stick. They did. And they were still there when we got back to school a week later.

Turkey is kind of gross to begin with. That looks like a concoction crafted by Satan himself. Or maybe, just maybe, the guys at Oscar Meyer have started dropping acid. I don’t know.

LOL. X-E + disgusting new Oscar Meyer product = the best laugh I have had all day.

Whoa! I remember trying lunchables when they first came out and I hated them. Even the simple cracker ones didn’t taste right. I’ve always been amazed they were a lasting product. In fact, after seeing this addition to the lunchable lineup I’m even more amazed they’re still around.

That reminds me of Green Ketchup and that apple flavored mcnugget dip when A Bugs Life came out. What the eff were these companies THINKING????
Also it reminds of Bertie Bots Jelly Bellies( barf, pepper, grass and booger flavor)

I love pizza lunchables. Mmmm. Even though the bread is like cardboard, I still lovelovelove cold pizza lunchables.

I don’t think I’ve EVER heard anything more hilariously described as “fizzing turkey cracker sandwich” before. I just love how those words go together.

Does it bother you that the fizzies are the same color palate as the turkey and crackers?
Gag.

It is kinda gross conceptually thinking, but if I was six again I am sure I would beg my Mom for it. I’d also probably never ask for one again, but then again I used to dip my bologna sammiches in my Kool-Aid and put ketchup on potato chips just to spite my sisters. Gross food is made better when you are grossing someone else out more than yourself.

I was wondering what those were all about, because I have seen them at the grocery store where I work. I’ve never been a fan of Lunchables; I only ate them when very desperate for something for lunch. It’s been years since I had one.

I used to work at a summer camp and the kids would bring the taco and pizza lunchables with them for lunch. The only thing that sucked really bad was, they all wanted them heated and cooked. They’re freakin lunchables, the point is make them yourself and eat them, not come up to me ten at a time and have me prepare you little pizzas and tacos in the microwave so you can pretend your a giant eating at Pizza Hut.

Anyway, does anyone else remember the monster huge lunchables that were out a long time ago, I mean, like when they first came out in the late 80’s early 90’s? I seriously remember eating a lunchable that had various cracker types and a couple different meats and cheeses in the same packet with a few mustards in weird little packs that you squeezed through little pin holes.

Personally, I find the cold chicken nuggets dunked into equally cold spaghetti (watered down ketchup) sauce ones to be far more gross than a fizzing turkey cracker could ever be.

Fox is right! I hadn’t thought about those in forever, but now that he mentions it, I remember those.

I used to have Lunchables in middle school… I think they used to come with a single Andes mint…

Never understood the appeal of the cold pizza one â€” it’s not even close to what a real cold pizza would be like, not that I eat cold pizza.

I haven’t had a Lunchables lunch in at least ten or eleven years. I do remember enjoying them but I only ever ate the ones that had lunch meat (I find the idea of eating cold, uncooked pizza disgusting). When I was in fourth grade, I had a friend named Eric who never ate anything for lunch except Lunchables. It’s kind of funny; I didn’t become friends with him until I got in trouble for hitting him. I had one of those “Home Alone 2″ backpacks that had the latch with the electronic alarm that would simulate Kevin McAllister’s scream when you opened it. He kept opening it every day even though I told him to stop, until one day when I couldn’t take it anymore. I probably wouldn’t have become his friend if I hadn’t had to apologize to him. Looking back, it’s probably good that I lost touch with him; he was the kind of guy who could not stay out of trouble. Once, he and one of his other friends set off the fire alarm and got the whole school out on the playground before most people realized what happened. They got dragged out in front of the whole school and had to apologize to everyone, but managed to avoid being expelled.

Mike: they did have an Andes mint, nice to know I’m not crazy, or at least I’m not crazy in a “making up lunchables that never really existed” crazy

Seconded on the tastefuls remark. I liked the pizza lunchables and that’s about it back then. Once tastefuls came out there was no going back to lunchables. In fact I have Jimmy Dean to thank for my love of swiss cheese.

I remember back when I was younger (pre-vegan) I would eat the turkey/cheese/cracker combo, but I can’t remember what the dessert was. I know I had Andes Mints too, but maybe those little ones didn’t have a dessert. Anyhow, yeah, the “meat” was really gross and I couldn’t take more than one frisbee of it… I’d end up eating the cheese and crackers (though I didn’t have Ritz - I hate the original ones) and I’d leave the stack o’ meat behind. Mom didn’t buy them much. after that.

They should totally make healthy versions of Lunchables, though. I would LOVE a compact little boxful of raw veggies, or sliced up chunks of fruit. But no - they give kids freakin’ pressed gross meat with candy on it, and Reese Cups. And Capri Sun? It’s probably only 5-10% real juice! Idiots!

With the addition of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, this package of Lunchables was particularly unhealthy.

What the hell is Oscar Meyer thinking? Haven’t they heard the story of the kid whose stomach exploded by mixing pop rocks and turkey?

sweet, I called this one on the blog friday, it had X-E written all over it. In fizzing letters. I’m going to pretend I’m psychic now. Even knowing how awful these must be, I’m still sad I haven’t eaten them yet. I remember grossing out my friends by taking the nachos from lunchables, wrapping them in pieces of fruit roll up, and dipping them in the cheese. I’m sure it wasn’t good, but honestly, I don’t remember it being all that bad. And someone mentioned ketchup on chips earlier - I still eat that sometimes.

Man, in my junior high school it didnâ€™t matter what you brought your lunch in, as long as it wasnâ€™t made of hard plastic and had images of cartoon characters on it. Then you got punched in the throat. I actually never ate lunch in junior high; I just gave it all away to the needy, or anyone who would take it. I hate eating with people besides my closest friends and even then Iâ€™m a little squeamish. Ya know, now that I think about it, Iâ€™m pretty fucked upâ€¦ oh well; time to go masturbate while crying in a closet.

Click on my name for lists of all lunchables available, and their nutritional info!

Here’s my (sarcastic) favorite: “Shelf Stable Ultimate Nachos with SHOCK TARTSÂ® and LUNCHABLESÂ® Cola” lol It has half of the daily fat, and more than half of the sodium you need for one day. Oscar Mayer is soooooo sad.

But the other day I took this mini Pop Rocks lunchbox into work and there was gross watermelon inside. So I gave it to my friend and he downed them with his coffee. I was highly amused. Then we continued to make Chuck Norris jokes back and forth all day long.

Anyway this might be my last post ever because tomorrow I’m going to the movies with some random dude I met on MySpace tonight. So, y’know, when you see a story on Fark in 2 days about some ho getting raped and murdered because of MySpace, it’ll be me. Make sure you put all kinds of weird pictures of me in the thread, otherwise I’ll haunt your computer from the grave.

Mystie, make sure you report back. I’ve always wondered how many of these Myspace meet-ups result in death. You’ll be our barometer.

They have trix yogurt with the fizz in in now as well. That combo does not seem as repulsive, but I have yet to try either. My son would not eat the fizz/yogurt mix though.

Speaking of Myspace, Weird Al premired his first single off his new Album tonight on his page! It’s a “We Are The World” parody, and has an incredibly ironic title…”Don’t Download This Song”

Click my name to go to the page and my review of it: It’s hilarious, It’s great, and I can’t wait to get the album.

Oh, and I might be making a myspace page myself, probably before the night’s over, or until the next Megaparty Post…whichever one comes first.

I packed my lunch in a TMNT lunchbox throughout most of my schooling and never took any shit about it.

Anyway, Lunchables kinda strike a cord with me because I used to eat them all the time. But, then one week I actually lived on them! Seriously, I ate nothing else. (And, in those days they only came in the “Cracker Stacker” variety) I ended up feeling really sick. And, that RUINED the meat in those for me. I could still eat the cheese and crackers. I could eat the Pizza, Hamburger, and Taco ones when they came out a few years later. But, to this day, I still can’t eat Lunchables Lunch-meat!

And, IMO Jimmy Dean Tastefuls were far superior but just don’t strike that nostalgic cord.

BTW I second Ryane’s idea for a healthy Lunchable made from fresh fruits and vegetables. It sounds good. Great idea, Ryane!

It’s not like it wouldn’t sell either. I LOVED raw veggies as a kid (still do),and would have totally jumped at a veggie Lunchable.

And, IMO Jimmy Dean Tastefuls were far superior but just donâ€™t strike that nostalgic cord.

I think it would if more than 3 people ever heard of them but I just know that’s not the case.

And awwwww. Now I HAD to link my myspace, just because I’m really self-important like that.

No MySpace for me. I’m on Facebook, though, and I have a Flickr site. That’s about it…

A few weeks ago I picked up a Lunchables on a whim, mainly in a vain attempt to capture my youth. It was ok, but I was pretty damn hungry even after finishing it. I guess that’s why they’re for kids!

So is Season Three of Arrested Development. As great as the show is I find it silly how G4 of all networks is airing reruns of the show. I know that NBC owns Bravo, but I think that would have been cool to see NBC pick it up after Fox neglected it for so long, even if it’s only for reruns.

I would occaisionally eat those lunchables, but they weren’t a regular part of my diet. I actually liked the cracker sandwiches, but the other ones were gross. Some things just need to be eaten warm.

Speaking of lunchboxes, let’s have an informal surveys. What lunchboxes did you own?

I had two. One was an old Disney one from the 70s that was shaped like a bus with all the major Disney people on it. But the one that captured my heart was the Pound Puppies. I loved Pound Puppies.

I didn’t have a whole lot of lunch boxes, I did brown bags. One day though we didn’t have any and I was forced to take… my sister’s Jem lunch box.

I had a few lunchboxes, but the one I remember most is my old Go-Bots box & thermos set. Crappy juice tasted so much better coming out of Cy-Kill.

This isn’t exactly a veggie lunchable but at my grocery store they used to sell little handi-snacks shaped packages and some had carrots with ranch, others had celery with peanut butter but the best were ones with apples and caramel dip, yum! caramel might not be healthy but it tastes good!

I’d add my myspace page but it says im 14 and therefore set to private, too many weirdos sending random messages about things we should do…yuck

oh and mystie, good luck! hopefully the worst that will happen is he doesnt look as good as he does in the pictures!!!

This is incredibly mean but has anyone else noticed that? youll see someone’s myspace that you knew in high school, and they look pretty good, its like, okay ive seen you in real life, and you dont look like that! maybe im jealous cause ive never been photogenic…oh well

I want a cool new lunchbox, one of my coworkers has a sweet batman lunchbox, with a CAPE!

Katella-
I used to get the carrot ones. Mmmmmmm, ranch.
I like to think I look like my pictures on myspace. I try to give more angles than the from-over-my-head views, which are just really flattering. But I also don’t want to look gross.

I’m so close to buying that Batman lunch bag, but it’s the logo from the new cartoon and so far I’ve refused to buy anything associated with that. Old school comics/TAS logo only. Family members and friends have been lectured on this and know which logo is which even though they have no idea what the actual difference is. But it’s such an awesome lunch bag–much better than the $1 X-Men one I got from Wal-Mart and will never use.

Whole Foods has their own version of Lunchables now. Can’t remember the name. But they have crackers and meat and cheese and probably some veggies. I know I won’t pay what they’re asking so I never looked too closely.

As for MySpace, I had to set up a page because one of my favorite bands now only puts news through via MySpace. There are no details about me that are correct on there and I used the name of a comic book character. Surprisingly I haven’t gotten any messages. Not even “o god ur a d0rc.”

Lunchboxes: All I ever had (That I can remember, anyway) was a blue fabic box that was insulated, like those fabric coolers you can buy. It had a pouch inside that you could put a BluIce pack in to keep stuff cold. I remember using it in elementary school, but starting in Junior high, I just bought my lunch.

speaking of that looney toons lunch box, senior year in high school i got batman folders that were so awesome. it was meant to be a joke, but, yeah, no one got it.

I haven’t eaten Lunchables in at least 16 years. I remember eating them in a tree during a field trip. I didn’t really like taking lunch to school period. By the time lunch rolled around, your sandwich and whatnot were wet. Maybe it was just me, who knows. Anyone else have the wet lunch problem?

Oooh, Mystie: Good luck, and yes, for the love of all that’s holy, be careful. Get some mace, a stungun, and tell everyone else you know where you’ll be, and uh, stuff like that.

I know I had a Care Bears Lunchbox, Strawberry Shortcake … I can’t remember what else, but right now, I have a Hello Kitty Lunchbox. It’s hot pink, canvas, HK’s big face on it, with glitter, and yes, I use it every day I go to work.

Fox, those large Lunchables were the bee’s knees. Far superior to the smaller variety. I especially liked the various kinds of mustard which came packaged in. Does this make me odd?

The one thing that always disturbed me about lunchables is I never understood how a normal person could eat the contents of the box and actually feel full. For all the packaging and plastic, there was almost no food involved. I alwasy felt so bad for my friends who had a lunchable variety while I had my thermos of homemade stew. Coolness be damned!

Also while we’re on the facebook/myspace thing, take a look for me. On facebook, I go to NYU and can be easily found because my profile claims I’m marrried to one Admiral Ackbar. On myspace I’m a girl named Cait who happens to be dressed in a princess Leia slave outfit. Conspicuous? Yes, definitely.

Oh, you can definitely feel full from these. They’re loaded with fat, carbs, sugars, and sodium. They’re practically field rations.

Lunchables may be 74% fat and 26% sodium, but they’re an “excellent source of calcium”! That makes ‘em super-nutritous! I think I’ve eated one lunchables in my life. It was the pizza one. I assembled it at my ex-girlfriend’s, and put it in the microwave thinking it would be all hot, chessey and tasty. Hot yes, fake-cheesey yes, tasty…no. Wait…maybe I did eat them a couple times before that. Yes, perhaps I did. I seem to remember eating one of the regular kinds, like turkey or what have you.

And the myspace thing; if I was a girl, there’s no way I would be on there. I kind only imagine the amount of sickos/weirdos/cheerios on there. I use it purely to post idiotic pictures/videos and whatnot on my friends’ profiles. And that’s always fun. And we also make up fictitious band profiles…hours of fun. Not to mention the real profiles of us as fake musicians playing real music! Clicky my name for hilarity! Check out “miniscule” and go from there. Most of the “friends” are us also. the end

Waaay back in elentary school and before I knew what words like “cool” or “excepted” meant I brought a Wuzzle lunchbox in for like two days when I finally clued in that the thing everyone was laughing at was me…

I always partake in standard el-cheapo lunchables from our local discount food store. But my favorites are the giant deli-trey ones, which come with a dijon mustard squeeze pack. As the son of a teacher, and sub myself, I find my way onto one too many fieldtrips every year as a chaperone. That is when I enjoy those monuments of unhealthyness.

I cannot even begin to calculate an accurate guess at how many lunchboxes I had. I practically had a new one everyweek. The one that comes to mind is the Transformers lunchbox which had the same pic that adorns the sides of the cases they sold for transporting the smaller figures and the various loose weapons of the larger ones. I know as a kid you’re supposed to lose those, but I’ve got three of those cases and one of those giant icecream buckets packed to the brim with weapons. So I think I have all the ones you lost. Mystery Solved.

I was waiting for this one, ever since I saw the ad on TV. So, so funny. I’m glad to know it’s not as sour as it sounds. Not that this makes a difference.

Yay Weird Al! I was out for a few hours tonight, and the first thing I did was get online and download this song. (”Even Lars Ulrich knows it’s wrong!”) Yes! My first non-Disney tape was Running With Scissors, and the first CD I bought when I made the switch was Even Worse.

Lunchboxes, eh? I honestly cannot remember all the ones I had. I had one Mickey and Minnie one that kept breaking. I think I replaced it once and it broke again. What I liked the most were the paper bags with Animaniacs designs. I think that was fifth grade. I, too had the wet lunch problem. So gross. By high school I lived on fruit snacks and a pop, with the occasional Chex in Chex Mix, because my friend would eat everything but the Chex.

I might start watching Arrested Development. I mean if it’s on G4 and it’s a decent show stuck within the 21 hours of crap, I’m gonna watch it. Instead of spending them reading the Xplay and Cheat forums, while I await sweet nectar.

I saw these at the store and I wondered if they’d make the megaparty :). I’d be hard pressed to think of a worse thing to drop into a kid’s lunch carrying receptacle. I loved them way back when, though I always skipped the meat products in favor of the crackers and cheese.
I can’t remember my kidhood lunch boxes! I know I had some of the 80’s greats (I’m thinking Care Bears and Rainbow B?). I actually carried the trendy metal ones as purses from middle school on; I had one with classic happy faces, and one with The Monkees that I pined after for longer than I’ll admit even here. I had a plain red plastic one that I covered with pics of Drew Barrymore, which I carried until it fell apart.
On the subj of school supplies, I got some tonight in an attempt to stir up some enthusiasm about starting class tomorrow, but it didn’t really help. I got a Spongebob notebook and a folder with Timon from Lion King (to reprezent for my homies The Whiskers from Meerkat Manor). By the way, would it kill them to put some damn college rule paper in a notebook with a cool cover, for once? Big kids like Hello Kitty too, but wide rule paper just doesn’t cut it.

I also just remembered the little ice pack things I used to have to keep my food cool. I had an Oreo and a teddy bear. The bear rocked, and my friend and I used to play table hockey with it. I think we called it bear hockey. (Fourth grade!)

Also, what I forgot to mention about the post itself: is it wrong that my first reaction to the photo on the front page was “PopTart?”

Squee- it also drives me nuts that cool cover notebooks are wide rule only. I can’t stand wide rule. Good luck with classes. I can’t believe it’s that time.

I have NEVER eaten a Lunchables, although I have picked them up, examined them and ALMOST put them into my shopping cart before…now I have a serious craving for one.

I had wicked cool lunch boxes, and I don’t know where ay of them went! I had ‘My Little Pony’, ‘Garfield’, ‘TMNT’ and my favorite: POPPLES. I was obsessed with Popples. Pretty-Bit was my best friend when I was 5.

Good luck Mystie- I recently met up with a guy I met on OkCupid, since he works at Toys R Us in my mall, and I knew he couldn’t kill me while he was at work. We met since we both love ‘Firefly’ and had no other friends to talk to about it….

I ate lunchables a few times, until I helped my mom make meatloaf one night. My job was to crush up the crackers and then mix them into the raw meat by hand…which was admittedly pretty cool at that age. But then the next time I tried to eat lunchables, the mental connection between cold turkey with crackers and raw hamburger with crackers was too strong to overcome. No more lunchables.

My lunchbox for the first couple of years of school was one of those little cheap plastic red ones. Mine had motocross jumpers on the front, even though I had shown absolutely no interest in motocross previously. Then my uncle found out that I was the only nine-year-old in the family with an unhealthy obsession with “Kung Fu,” and gave me his old lunchbox from the seventies. I was cooler for the next few years than any time before or since, and nobody realized it because they had no idea who David Carradine was. Stupid kids.

Man, I used to live off those things. The ones I particuarly remember were the ‘deluxe’ set with two kinds of meat, two kinds of cheese, two kinds of crackers, and a packet of mustard. They also had a ‘gourmet’ version with thin-sliced meat, big crackers, and a little tub of dip.

I always hated lunchables, from the too-small portions, to slimy meat, to rubbery cheese, and stale crackers…and this comeing from someone who ate nothing but beef jerky, ritz and e-z cheese on a cross country drive (3 days, 4 nights) while in college. But alas, I’ve learned my e-z cheezy lesson.

I don’t remember having lunch boxes in school, I think I always ate the school lunch, till I was old enough to pick otherwise and demand money from my parents…$10 a week for lunch would never work for me now.

I think the reason I don’t eat more fresh vegetables, is cuz they’re not pre-packaged and advertised

I remember that I could never talk my mom into buying luchables for me. Nope, I had to settle for cafeteria food. Pity me now. To make matters worse, since I come from a smaller town, the cafeteria and the auditorium were combined. Someone had genius idea to dub it the Cafetorium. I hate that name to this day for some reason.

I only had 4 bought lunchables during my entire schooling period. The rest of the time I just scrounged for scraps from my friends.

I can’t eat processed cheese or any kind of ham willingly. Processed cheese of any kind tastes like ass soaked in urine laced with shit, and it’s extremely hard to find a good ham.

Nice Roseanne reference, by the way. That family mirrored mine quite eerily except for them winning the damn lottery.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never eaten a lunchable. I think lunchmeat is the grossest.

My lunchboxes were awesome. My first one was a metal Peanuts box, then a metal Strawberry Shortcake box, then a plastic Smurfs box, then a plastic Garfield box. Then I think I switched to the brown bags with Care Bears printed on them. That was 6th or 7th grade. 8th grade I took hot lunch, and high school I just sat and watched the other girls eat, sipping on my diet coke.

Karmafist: I completely agree about the processed cheese. I used to just tolerate it because I like cheese so much, until I was old enough for my dad to tell me what happened at the ‘proper’ cheese factory he used to work at. and the horrors that occured and the screwed up batch would just be shipped of to Velvetta.

My Mum aways made me sandwiches at school so I’ve never had lunchables (i assume there’s somekind of UK version)… I remember having a Ghostbusters lucnchbox and flask, i kind of wish I had a reason to buy one now in all honesty!

I only managed to snag a Lunchable(s) when I had to take lunch for a field trip during the time I always bought lunch. Even though my parents balked at how overpriced they were, it was still cheaper than buying a loaf of bread, a pack of lunch meat, and some cheese that probably would go bad before anyone finished it.

I was the biggest dork as a kid. I only remember having two character lunchboxes. My mom ordered a Mickey and Donald lunchbox off of the “Emporium” page of the Disney Channel Magazine for my first day of kindergarten, but it didn’t show up in time, so we had to run to Bradlee’s and buy a Rainbow Brite lunchbox. When those weren’t in play, I had to take that big Tupperware lunch box with the locking handle and all the little food containers inside. I also had one that was integrated into my bookbag. Try to contain your jealousy. In high school, I just threw my food into the front pocket of my bookbag, which promptly backfired when my Yoo-Hoo drink box got squished and ruined my new literature book (which I had to pay for at the end of the year.)

By the way, Deuce, I believe that most elementary and middle schools built in the past 30 years have cafetoriums. I actually visited one that had a gymetorium.

Knegative, as long as you’re watching episodes consecutively you can never ever go wrong with Arrested Development. Yay for season 3 DVDs at long last!
I had a friend in high school who carried that Kung Fu lunchbox, Jedoc.
Thanks Rainbowfeet, I can’t believe the summer’s gone either. And Weird Al was my first non-Disney album too!
Since we’re talking about MySpace, BobK asked about LiveJournal a few entries ago…I bought a permanent account when they offered them, because it was the only way to get 100 icons, without ever having to worry about paying again to renew. They didn’t offer the ad service at that point, but if I didn’t already have a perm account I’d definitely go for it to get the extra icons out of it. If you want your blogging to actually be read, or to hit on chicks, MySpace is probably a better bet. If you don’t want NewsCorp to own your journal and it’s contents, or to try to sell things to you constantly, then MySpace is not the way to go.
I’ve got friends who met their girlfriends through MySpace, so hopefully Mystie will be in the lucky percentile that doesn’t get chopped up and dissolved in acid or anything else untoward. Anybody watch Most Evil? I shudder to imagine how what some of those serial killers could have accomplished with the help of social networking sites.

I swear, they must be gathering children from all over and sticking them in a big, white room. In the room is a table covered in a variety of candies, sauces, meats, breads, and whatever else they can think of. Then from an overhead comm they say “Make yourselves some lunch.”

And thus new Lunchables are born as the scientists watch from behind the mirrored window…

I hate Lunchables. In fact, I pretty much hate anything that comes in a box. Frozen dinners are the most horrible things ever created.

Ragnarok: Yeah, Ithink I remember the mustards being something that really amazed me for some reason too.

And people keep mentioning jokes that no one else got, like the Looney Tunes lunchbox and the Batman folders, well I can top those:

Every year my family gets together on Christmas eve, i mean a lot of us, aunts, uncles, cousins, about 40 of us all together. My brother and I thought it would be hillarious to make poof paint sweaters like grandmas make three year olds wear. Well we made them, mine even had battery opperated Christmas lights on the tree, they were awesome. We wore turtle necks up under them as well. I’m sure you can all see how hillarious a couple of guys look in these outfits, well, no one else got it. My aunts kept saying how nice they looked, and my uncles looked at me in horror like they wanted to disown us. Now anytime we have a bad idea my brother just says “why don’t we wear wacky sweaters”

mjf7583 are you actually one of the guys in Local H? Or are you just on the street team or something? Because if they’re just your favorite band, well I’m going to start linking bands’ websites myself

mjf7583, if you are really from Local H, neato. I had a girlfriend once who LOVED Local H. Good copulation music at times. By association, I am now horny and filled with hate at the same time.

To my mind, you save the fizzing crap and use it to spike someone else’s food. Nothing like fizzing someone’s bologna.

I was driving back from Columbus Ohio when I was 18 (about 1991) in my ElCamino and stopped for gas at a truck stop at around midnight. I was starving so I pumped my gas and went in to buy something from the cooler. Imagine my delight when I saw the pre-packaged lunchables for the first time. How handy this would be to eat in the car. I got two and a couple of gatorades and headed out on the highway. I got stopped about 25 miles later by a policeman who made me go back and pay for my gas after I convinced him to not arrest me. It seems they rang me up for the food, but not the gas and I didn’t notice because it was the middle of the night and I just signed the receipt and left. It added another 50 miles to a 10 hour trip.

I had a Care Bear Cousins lunchbox (animals that cared but weren’t bears- they could still stare down unhappiness with their chest pictures.) It was made of metal, and I used to fill it up with rocks at recess, so it has a bunch of dents in it now. I was one of those kids.

I also met my girlfriend on Myspace, and it’s gone well for just over a year now. Beating the odds…awwwwww hells yeah.

Lunchables are pretty disgustingly unhealthy, but they hit the spot. I don’t go for the newer editions of the line (chicken nuggets, pizza, tacos, etc.) I grub oldschool on the turkey/ham and cheese.

Kneg, I’ve searched day and night for the trays with the damned dijon mustard. I don’t know what it is, but it’s unlike any spicy mustard I’ve had. Can’t find the bastards anywhere though. When Lunchables first came out, all of them had it, and with the little Andes chocolate to boot.

I too had quite the many lunch boxes growing up. The few that come to mind are the Mario Bros 2, the Batman-fighting-Joker one, and then just one with Batman perched on a skyscraper.

Least memoriable: 101 Dalmations. Two weeks into fifth grade I regretted ever laying eyes on it. Didn’t really broadcast the fact that it was mine.

I saw Lunchables today at the store with the fizz. They had all the varieties for it the mess with your mouth lable, crackers, pizza, tacos.

hahaha so awesome. i was always a kid with the brown bag, warm 100% juice box, soggy sandwich, and even soggier snackwell’s cookies that tasted like whatever lunch meat the sandwich contained. so ive always hated the lunchables kids. and the gushers kids.

I had several character lunchboxes when I was little. My favorites were a Lisa Frank one with unicorns, My Little Pony (hot pink plastic), Care Bears and one year I had a Zelda lunchbox I believe… my parents let me pick out one and a new backpack every year when the school year started. Kind of softened the blow of having to go back to the learning grind again,

I have never had a Lunchable before, I don’t think I would have ever eaten them. Plus my Mom wanted to make sure I was getting a good meal, so she made sure it was something she made herself. After seeing these Lunchables I don’t think I would even consider trying them. I’m not really against gross combos, I like to dip my McD french fries into my milkshake!(try it, its good! Promise) I just don’t think I could handle fizzy meat.

I had one luchbox as a kid. I had a Disney luchbox in grade 1. Either someone stole it or broke it on me, I can’t remember. Almost everyday from grade 1 to 5 I got beat up and or someone stole something from me. It’s a sad story, I know.

I went to Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Hastings before finally finding it at Wal-mart. So look there if you want a copy.

It’s about as Barebones as you can get, with only Subtitles. There’s not even a chapter selection page. But it’s the Wizard. On DVD. It’s So Bad…

But I’ll tell ya about my lunchboxes: I kinda don’t remember my early ones, but I did have those plastic-like lunch bags that had a separate compartment to keep the drink cold and the food not soggy!

I always used my A-Team lunchbox. I still have it but the sticker is faded so badly that Mr. T just looks Mexican now. I also ued a cool lunch bag that had a radio on it, and for a thermos I had this strang accordian shaped thing that was like 2′ tall when you strecthed it out and filled it. When you were done you got to squeeze it back down to like 6″ size and it made this cool slurping noise. I loved that thermos so much, and my daughter uses it as a pool toy now.

Oh god, don’t get me started on cafetoriums. When I was in elementary school, I remember the school making a big fuss about the nice, brand new auditorium they had just built. And it really was nice, with a big stage and lots of room.

Now I’m an adult, and I work at the same elementary school. Somewhere between then and now they added a cafetorium, despite already having an auditorium and a cafeteria. Because apparently while there is rarely enough funding to make sure schools have, say, proper computer and science equipment, there is always plenty of money for building cafetoriums, because nearly every school in the county has built one in the last six years. And what kills me is the once-new auditorium, the one built when I was in second grade, is now used… for PE class.

So I guess you could say I work at a school that contains both a cafetorium AND a gymetorium. What’s next, a playgroundtorium? A librarytorium? I shudder to think.

And if you combine a dairy with a auditorium, guess you’d get a Cream-a-Torium.

Colonel you’re aware that my mother buys them at like the 7-11 by the beach, right? You know the one, the one that’s basically equidistant between our houses?

I know dijon mustard isn’t really a subject that comes up in our conversations often, so I apologize if this sounded smartass-y. If you had asked, I would have bestowed the knowledge upon thee much sooner.

My elementary school had a “Multi-Purpose Room.” Part cafeteria + part gym + part auditorium = Cafegymetorium.

Since we’re discussing lunchboxes, the first lunchbox I remember clearly was a hard plastic one. Green, I think. This wasn’t a standard plastic lunchbox, but was shaped more like a briefcase. It had two snaps on the top side, and the inside had a separate yellow insulated ‘coffin’ for juiceboxes. I recall it saying patent pending. Bought it at an Albertson’s, if I recall correctly. I just remember it because it was odd.

The other lunchbox I remember distinctly was a Jurassic Park one. That was the first issue, when the thermos had biohazard markings on it. Whoever though that up was brilliant. Loved it. I remember there was some general official hubub, and Thermos offered dinosaur stickers to those who wished to cover the biohazard markings. I think. Memory’s a little fuzzy.

I went to an elementary school that had a cafetorium. Never thought much of it at the time â€” seems odd now. I do recall that it had probably a dozen huge folding tables. Long tables on wheels, with integrated benches, covered with formica or something. They split down the middle and folded up so it looked like they were standing on end, and eight feet tall. It seemed dangerous somehow. Whenever there was a performance in the ‘auditorium’, the tables would all be folded up and pushed to the back of the room against the wall, and the kitchen stuff would be rolled into the kitchen area. I think they must have filled the floor with folding chairs.

Jedoc: I’m reading Good Omens right now. A friend thrust it into my possession and told me I had to read it, scant hours after you posted. I’d call it a coincidence, but “I like God do not play with dice.”

Mike: If the folded up tables seem dangerous to you, you should see how they put up the removable wall between the cafeteria and auditorium where I work. One day our kids were eating lunch and the custodians just started pulling panels out of an alcove in the wall and flinging them along their little groove in the floor. They were sailing right past us about eight inches behind our class, and this is a special ed class so we had to keep telling the kids not to lean their heads back to look, lest they be guillotined by flying wall panels. A fun time was had by all, I assure you.

Wow. My school was dangerous too. Maybe it was all the guns and gang members, but who really knows. All I know is I lost my virginity in our Multi Purpose room. That has to count for something.

Arg. I picked up some circus peanuts at the grocery store. I ate three, and I’ve spent the afternoon loathing the rest of them so fiercely I think I’ve given myself cancer.

Are thost the orange marshmallow wannabe peanuts? If so I empathize with you whole-heartedly. Those peanuts are probably what gave you cancer.

My elementary school had a gym, a Cafetorium and a “Cafegymetorium,” which was referred to as “The Small Gym”

And Mike, I’m probaby scared, but what elementary school did you go to? You basically described my school’s cafetorium in a nutshell. And 92-93 I was probably in Kindergarten (born in ‘87, do the math cause I don’t feel like it)

From what I’m reading, MySpace sounds like an awfully good place to meet women. This interests me because I’m absolutely sick of being single.

There’s just one problem. I have no idea what the hell MySpace is. Could someone please explain it to me?

Ah, yes, Lunchables…I remember around fourth-fifth grade, they were the big thing to have, but only because Pokemon was the big thing to have. They had began to come out with Pokemon-themed boxes (it would have been cooler if they had had creature-shaped processed turkey or something). I remember saving the boxes and they served very well as a house for my talking Pikachu plastic figure. You would place your hand the bottom where there were two little sensors or something and it would say “Pikachu! Pikachu!” and I carried it around with me everywhere in its little Lunchable house. Wow, I was weird…I blame the school system.

That fizzy stuff is pretty freaky. I can’t imagine it going well with turkey, whether the fizz was sweet or sour. Eeeek. Normal non-fizzing Lunchables already tasted kind of bleh to me. Was there even any product placement (like Pokemon, even though I know they wouldn’t do that specifically anymore

) on the back that you could at least read while you downed that crud, Matt?

French fries and milkshakes!! i love that!! i started doing it years back with french fries and wendy’s frostys but now my favorite is in-n-out shakes and fries…mmm salty and sweet is so good together!

Tetsu, just be very careful. The signal/noise ratio on MySpace, she isn’t so good. You have to kiss a lot of frogs, is what I’m saying. If you’re willing to brave the frontier, just go to MySpace.com and start clicking around and you’ll figure it out quick. Oh, and don’t forget to turn your speakers down. Very important.
Wendy’s Frosties are the best dippin’ shakes. The new vanilla ones are good, especially with the mix-ins, but nothing beats the chocolate for fry dunking.

I went to a Catholic high school, and though we had a cafeteria, our gym was also an auditorium, chapel, and BINGO HALL. Every Thursday night, a million old ladies would pile into the gym with their cigatettes hanging out of their mouths and daubers at the ready. It was then I knew that I would never understand Catholics…

If fast food milkshakes come up, I consistently feel it is my duty to point out that vanilla shakes from Burger King taste mystically like ice cream mixed with air. It’s wonderfully tasty, but don’t go overboard and get too much.

See, now all I’m thinking about is MySpace murderers. I’ll say this and this only: MySpace is no different from real life these days. I met an absoloutely stunning, beautiful girl who contacted me through MySpace. She flew to see me and several months of obsessive doting on me, she was off like a bottle rocket and I’ve never seen her since. The fact is. EVERYONE is a lunatic, whether you meet them in real life, or MySpace. True story that. I made it up myself.

Norbert, it was Shore Acres Elementary, St. Petersburg, Florida. I assume a lot of schools were similar, just due to the nature of the cafetoriums.

One of our cafetoriums worked as previously mentioned, with the tables folded up in the back of the room when it came time to use the “torium” part, but at one of my elementary schools, they just made the parents sit at the cafeteria tables. I think I would have resented that as a parent.

I had the sad misfortune of attending Catholic school from kindergarten until 12th grade. For the first 9 years of my educational life, I had no cafeteria to combine with the gym. If we wanted a noon time meal, we had to bring it with us. Thus, I had a menagerie of lunchboxes — Gremlins, Garfield, Pound Puppies — until about third grade when it was no longer “cool” and switched to brown bags. I distinctly recall my mother buying my brother, cousin, and I Nintendo themed brown bags with Mario, Donkey Kong, and Link on them. Come ninth grade, it was all hot lunches from the cafeteria on those scary-ass folding tables that could kill a man dead, or so my chemistry teacher and lunch monitor claimed. Except Fridays in Lent. Then we skipped out to the 7-11 for Big Bite Hot Dogs ate on the wooded trail in back of school.

Okay, I often go up and down the blog’s main page to see if anyone is willing to comment on older entries, and every time I come to the picture of the Lunchables box, this happens:

Remember the scene in Seed of Chucky where the still not-alive audio-animatronic Chucky keeps saying “FUCK…with your MIND” like a broken record? I keep altering that scene in my head with the new line, “MESS…with your MOUTH.”

One of my favorite expressions is “sweet cracker sandwich”. Now I will have to change it to
“sweet fizzing turkey cracker sandwich”.

I saw these and the chesseburger version at my work and noticed a lot of kids picking them up and loudly saying “EWWWW! That’s disgusting!”

They are AWESOME! I can’t make it through the day without sugar covered discs of fizzing meat! And to think all these years I have been stuck using just a Maui Punch Pixie Stix as my Deli Condiment of choice. The FIZZ is pure genius.

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