Morning everyone,
I need some more time to test this theory, but I think waves of snack obsessions might be the classic sweet/savory cycle at a macro scale? Illustrating this point, I have moved on from White Cheddar Pop Corners:
Last week I stopped by my sisters’ apartment and saw this box in their pantry:
I was immediately transported to a time when snack machines were deeply relevant to my life–and absolutely magnetic.
My elementary school (shoutout to any Schechter kids) had two snack machines—one on the basement level where my kindergarten and third grade classrooms were, and one in the multi-purpose room where we had school assemblies, Kabbalat Shabbats (Friday night services) and ate lunch. I looked at these machines longingly each time I passed them. Growing up, we weren’t allowed to have junk food (aka any of the snack machine food) in the house. There was a short, heavenly Nabisco mini packs era that was cut even shorter by my sad middle school initiation into Weight Watchers. No more mini peanut butter Ritz for me! Oh and there was also a Lunchables moment. But in general, my lunches had nothing trade-able in them. I savored my challah bread and cream cheese sandwiches (still the best combo I know) because the snacks I had to look forward to were air-popped popcorn and one of those tiny raisin boxes:
I spent any downtime I had scrounging specific corners of the school for change to buy supplemental cool snacks. I usually had a few nickels or dimes at the bottom of my backpack as an encouraging jump start. Do kids today love quarters as much as I did? Every once in a while I’d find a coveted dollar bill and I’ll never forget when an 8th grader taught me the trick of smoothing it out on the edge of the machine before feeding it into the cash slot. I spent most of my middle school weekends playing Sims and had a total of two sips of alcohol in high school, so this dollar trick is up in my top five of older kids showing me cool things.
When I saw this fruit snack variety pack at my sisters’ I got giddy remembering “oh, right. I’m a grown-up and can buy myself whatever snacks I want.” There’s a bit of a rush that’s lost when you’re not crawling on the ground looking under desks and tables for dimes, but there’s still fun in it.
Tropical flavor to be exact. I’m not known to love the tutti frutti, fruit punch flavors. Just smelling the fruit roll-up I was brought back to kindergarten. There was a boy in my class named Mookie who always had fruit roll-ups in his lunch. Usually the red ones. He had a special way of enjoying them:
What a THRILL.
I love that when you first sit down on the couch you are wearing a sweater, but by the time you are several roll-ups in, it's tits out. Iconic
So well written, Ariella... And love all the Schechter references!!! (You had a crush on Mookie?)
love, your kindergarten teacher!!