To many 70s cafeteria connoisseurs, Twinkies are the classic snack cake. A good case can also be made for Hostess Cupcakes, with their flat icing top, and Ding Dongs, which came wrapped in foil. The foil was unique among snack cakes and unmistakable when retrieved from a lunchbox.
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It seemed like the only bread for kids in the 1970s was Wonder Bread. It was your basic, white, sliced, sandwich bread. Some loaves in the mid 70s had Topps football cards in the packages. They featured players like Bob Griese and Franco Harris!
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Before pudding came in little plastic cups, it came in tiny metal cans that brought an element of danger to the cafeteria. To get to your pudding, you had to pull the tab and remove a lid with what seemed like razor-sharp edges. If you were brave, you licked the lid to get the pudding that stuck to it.
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Being called a breakfast bar gave these any-time-of-day treats an air of nutritional value. In reality, they were delicious and tasted just like a candy bar. The yellow package was easy to spot coming out of a lunch box.
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Pringles, the stackable potato chips that came out of a cardboard tube, were a coveted lunch room item—not only because they're tasty, but also because you could entertain your friends with duck lips. In elementary school, and perhaps in middle school too, this never got old.
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This snack cake empire had Peanuts characters on the packages. A cute little iced Twinkie competitor called a Zinger was a popular Dolly Madison option, as were their fruit pies.
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Bugles are cone-shaped corn chips created by General Mills. Like Pringles, Bugles had the "food you could play with" factor, which made them a real hit in the cafeteria.They fit easily on your fingertips to make monster claws or to poke other kids with.
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Kids probably weren't sure what Slim Jims were, and parents probably had no idea what was actually in them. Classified by the company as "meat snacks," their smoky flavor and greasy texture made them their own category of beef jerky.
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Goober Grape was peanut butter and grape jelly in alternating stripes in a jar. For moms, it made making PB&Js faster. For kids, the most fun thing about it was that it was called goober. It went perfectly with Wonder Bread!
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Moms loved to pack raisins in our lunch. The most memorable brand was Sun-Maid, which featured a red box with a picture of the sun maid on it.
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We now know that it was not really cheese in those slices, only "processed cheese food." But in a 1970s kid's lunch box, this was the cheese of choice for a sandwich and was simply known as "American" cheese.
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Kids still enjoy these peanut-shaped sandwich cookies today, but in the 1970s, they were new and exciting. Like Oreos, you could eat them different ways. Some kids ate them straight while others opened them and ate the two sides separately.
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Every metal 70s lunchbox came with a thermos. If you were lucky, on a cold day your mom might fill it with SpaghettiOs. These are little pasta Os in tomato sauce from Campbell's Franco-American division. Kids could quote the commercial line all day long, "Uh oh, SpaghettiOs."
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Hostess and Dolly Madison were not the only snack cake options out there. The Little Debbie brand made a variety of sweets, including the classic Oatmeal Creme Pie that consisted of two super soft oatmeal cookies with cream inside.
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Okay, not every 70s mom packed fluffernutters, aka peanut butter and marshmallow creme sandwiches. This super fattening cafeteria tradition is apparently a regional thing. A Massachusetts Senator once tried to restrict the sandwiches in lunchrooms!
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