What Junk Food Reigned Supreme The Year You Were Born?

To be a millennial: the '80s and '90s were that sweet spot of snack food history where snacking really took off, while concerns over healthy eating hadn't quite yet hit the mainstream consciousness. Since the 1950s, America has been well-known as a country that loves its snacks and junk food. Between 1980 and 1993, the number of new candy and snack products hitting grocery store shelves skyrocketed, and people couldn't get enough of these newfangled tasty and affordable treats (via National Museum of American History). 

Junk foods are notoriously loaded with calories while lacking nutrients. Instead, they're full of processed sugar, salt, fat, and hard-to-pronounce ingredients. The snack scene started to shift in the early 2000s, when organic and health food products infiltrated the market as shoppers began to learn and understand how diet has an impact on health (per Food Dive). Still, however, Americans haven't slowed down on snacking — the U.S. snack market has continued to grow, making almost $116.6 billion in 2017 and hitting $150.6 billion in 2022, according to CNN Business. Let's take a walk down memory lane and revisit some of our favorite snacks of the past that are sure to stir up some nostalgia. 

Who doesn't love pizza? The only thing better than a pizza slice might be a bite-sized pizza roll. They're easy to make and easy to eat — probably the hardest thing about them is being able to wait long enough before devouring them to avoid burning the roof of your mouth. In fact, according to recent reports, 89% of Americans shared that they love, or at least like, pizza. "Pizza is America's favorite food," Mike Kostyo, a data analyst, told the Chicago Tribune. 

In 1968, Jeno Paulucci created the pizza roll, inspired by his Italian roots and love for Chinese food. He wanted to combine a slice of pizza with an egg roll, and thus, the pizza roll was born (via The New York Times). He sold them through his company, Jeno's Inc., until Pillsbury bought them out in 1985. Pillsbury trademarked the name Totino's Pizza Rolls shortly after, and they have grown in popularity ever since. Today, Totino's Pizza Rolls are so well liked that they make up at least 26% of sales in the frozen snacks section of many stores across America, per The Michigan Daily. And they still taste just as good as you remember.

At first, Fruit Roll-Ups may not sound like junk food. After all, the word "fruit" is in the name, and they do indeed contain fruit, however, the first two listed ingredients are corn syrup and sugar. They also have a touch of palm kernel oil, as well as red 40, yellows 5 and 6, and blue 1 (via Betty Crocker). General Mills, the maker of Fruit Roll-Ups, was actually sued in 2011 for false marketing campaigns leading the public to believe that Fruit Roll-Ups were a "healthy" food, when in reality, they are far from it, per Snack History.

Regardless, General Mills nailed a snack that was pleasing for both parents and kids. Adults could feel good that their children were eating at least some fruit and getting Vitamin C, while kids were actually allowed to play with their food. They could roll it up, mold it, tear it, make it into a ball, or even get some temporary tongue tattoos. The product was modeled after fruit leather, with the founding flavors, including strawberry, apple, apricot, and cherry. Gradually, they released more exciting options, like Tropical Tie-Dye and Electric Blue Raspberry. And despite the controversy, you can still find Fruit Roll-Ups in stores today.

There's nothing quite like that serotonin rush when you hear the jingle of the ice cream truck in the distance. As a kid in the '90s, hearing that song meant that you immediately drop whatever you are doing, grab some change, and run outside. Of course, it was always a tough decision when it came to which ice cream to get, but one that really sticks out from the rest was Flintstone's Push Up pops. These sherbet treats were invented by Nestle and playfully called IceScreamers. They came in many delicious flavors, including Yabba Dabba Doo Orange, Bedrock Berry, Lime Rock Lime, Stone Age Strawberry, Granite Grape, Cave Kid Cherry, and Raspberry Rubble (per 80's Baby).

Even if you didn't love sherbet, Nestle made the Flintstone's pops fun and interactive. Your job was to race against the summer heat and push the ice cream out of a cardboard tube decorated with colorful Flintstone cartoon characters before it all melts. Push Up pops still exist, but the Flintstone's theme has long since been retired, though they will live on forever in our memories.  

Fruit Gushers: they're sweet, colorful, and chewy, with a surprise juicy center. This snack was created in the early '90s by the same company that made Fruit Roll-Ups — Betty Crocker and General Mills. Like Fruit Roll-Ups, don't be fooled with the word "fruit" in the name — this tasty treat lands more in the candy category (via Mashed). Gushers do have some fruit in them, and contain similar ingredients to Fruit Roll-Ups, like sugar, corn syrup, fruit puree concentrate, modified corn starch, fructose, maltodextrin, palm oil, and food coloring (via Betty Crocker). Surprisingly, Gushers are vegan and gluten-free. Instead of using gelatin to make them chewy like their gummy candy relatives, they contain agar-agar, a jelly-like material derived from seaweed.

And who can forget the particularly strange Gushers commercials in the '90s that featured children's heads transforming into disturbing images of fruit after eating a single Fruit Gusher (via YouTube). The ad contained slogans like, "So fruity, they'll really turn your head" and "A blast of fruit punch that's going to drive you totally fruity." You know what they say — you are what you eat.

Say it with me: "Taste the rainbow." Even though Skittles hit U.S. store shelves in 1979 and steadily gained popularity in the '80s, the "Taste the Rainbow" ad campaign in 1994 was a game changer. As a matter of fact, the phrase has become one of the longest-running slogans out there (via Mashed) with over 40 "Taste the Rainbow" commercials being aired so far, per The Drum. Some are funny, some are dark, and some are just downright creepy — like the one featuring a full grown adult man guessing the flavor of each Skittle his mom is eating by using the umbilical cord that is still attached to both of them. That ad came out for Mother's Day in 2017 (via YouTube).

When Skittles were first created, the original flavors were grape, orange, strawberry, lemon, and lime. Since then, they've released many more. Some took off, while others crashed and burned. Skittles Sour and Skittles Tropical Fruit did very well, but other ideas like Fizzl'd Fruits, which was modeled after the popular Pop Rocks, were only on shelves for two years (via Mashed). In any case, Skittles still remain a huge pillar of the candy aisle. 

Cheese and crackers is a classic snack that was made quintessential by Nabisco and the little red stick packed inside. Nabisco, which later became Kraft, took note of the wild success of Dunkaroos and capitalized on it by creating a savory version. The little packages contain two compartments, one for crackers and one for "cheese," plus a little red stick for cheese spreading. The reason these goodies made it on the junk food list is because they do not contain real cheese. Instead, the cheesy sauce was made with whey protein concentrate, canola oil, maltodextrin, and a touch of cheddar cheese (via Food Network).  

Kraft went on to release other Handi-Snacks products, like breadsticks and cheese, eliminating the need for the iconic tiny red stick. Other items that were not as successful included pretzels and cheese, a peanut butter and cracker version, and an Oreo cookie stick and cream dip (via Children of the Nineties). Sorry, but the Oreo Sticks 'n Creme had nothing on Dunkaroos. Still, Handi-Snacks were an instant crowd favorite, and in 1996 alone, they raked in $79 million of profit, per Snack Stack. 

GoGurt made this list for two reasons. First of all, it was so iconic in the '90s that any snack round-up would be incomplete without it. And secondly, as hard as Yoplait tried to market GoGurt as a healthy snack, it's still in the junk food category. Why? Even though GoGurt is low in fat and the modern product is now free of high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors, it is still loaded with lots of sugar (via Yoplait). Three tubes of GoGurt contain a whopping 23 grams of sugar — that's 36% of the recommended daily value. And we all know kids can't eat just one.

Regardless of this fact, GoGurt was still high in demand as soon as they made it to market in 1998 (via Mashed). In fact, TIME said GoGurt was "the fastest-selling yogurt product ever released," according to General Mills. GoGurt was super convenient — no spoon or clean up required. As their commercials pointed out, GoGurt is "the yogurt you squeeze and slurp, grab and glurp." The product seems to keep pumping out new themes and flavors that are irresistible to kids, like the Glo-Gurt that comes with glow in the dark Halloween decorated tubes, and creative flavors like Cotton Candy and the infamous Sour Patch variety that's based on — you guessed it — the Sour Patch Kids.