Life is great and all, but after 30 years or so of it, a certain apathetic malaise starts to set in. The day-to-day grind starts to feel stale and endlessly repetitive. Things that once got big reactions out of you like going on a roller coaster, beginning or ending relationships, or hearing that a loved one passed away just don’t hit the same, or really at all.
Okay, maybe it’s not just aging. Maybe we’re going through something.
Suffice to say we’ve been pretty down in the dumps lately, and we decided to combine our two favorite go-to band-aids to combat the problem—nostalgia, and binging on junk food.
We used the resources afforded to us, including a company credit card and a research team, to go and hunt down edible servings of our favorite childhood snacks just to feel something, anything. That’s what complacent, numb, self-centered pieces of crap we’ve become. This better work because Christ alive, where do you go from here?
30. Yoo-hoo
Not only do we feel nothing drinking Yoo-hoo, we taste almost nothing too. Is this the Mandella Effect? There is no way we could have given a shit about this chocolate drink at any age if it’s tasted this way the whole time.
29. Lunchables
Does indigestion count as a feeling? If so Lunchables gave us all the feels. It didn’t bring us joy or remind us of a time when the world seemed full of wonder and possibility, but we’re pretty sure we won’t be shitting for a week so hey, that’s something.
28. Trix Yogurt
You think you can trix me into thinking healthy food is a treat by putting a fucking bunny rabbit on it and loading it with food coloring? Didn’t work then, doesn’t work now.
27. Handi-snacks
Sure it’s basically just a dollop of cheez-wiz and some club crackers with a shitty plastic stick for spreading, but these things were a staple of our childhood. We were pretty confident that with one bite we would be whisked away to that feeling of getting home from school, grabbing one from the pantry, and watching Simpsons reruns while Mom cooked dinner. The actual result? Shitty cheese-wiz on a shitty cracker in a cold, shitty world. Next snack.
26. TMNT Ice Cream
To be fair we didn’t have high expectations from this one to begin with. Even as a kid, these things were vaguely disappointing when you opened them. 30 years in the freezer at Kraoszers has not done Raphael any favors. His mask and skin have basically faded into the same greyish color. We chipped a tooth on one of the gumball eyes, and we’re still too depressed to do anything about it. Definitely not a #nostalgiawin here.
25. Push Pops
It’s just a Ring Pop with more steps. Let’s try Ring Pop.
24. Ring Pop
Tastes boring, and way more opulent than anything we feel like we deserve to wear. Next fucking snack.
23. Fruit By The Foot
Turns out it’s gonna take a lot more than three feet of high fructose corn syrup to fill the void we’re feeling. Remember just unspooling one of these and squeezing it into a big glob and just eating that? We did that to the whole box and can’t even feel the appropriate shame, let alone the shade of joy from times gone by.
22. Fruit Barrels
Come on fruit barrels, take us back to field day in 4th grade when we went up against the teachers in tug of war and Mr. Heisner totally bit it and slipped in the mud and we won and cheered! Nope? Just gonna give us immediate heartburn huh? That’s fair.
21. Royal Dansk Butter Cookies
We remember there being a tin of these at every family function and had high hopes that a little paper tray or two of these mostly butter, rock sugar-encrusted treats would fill us with a sensation of familial warmth. Other than a slight fascination with the fact that we just ate 3000 calories worth of Royal Dansk Butter Cookies, we feel nothing.
20. Cheez Balls
Not sure how these made the list to be honest, we’ve been mindlessly eating cheese balls pretty much non-stop since middle school. Let’s go ahead and see if this particular batch somehow shakes us out of this existential funk. Nope.
19. Creme Savers
They were like Life Savers, only creamier, in case you’re insane. While they were discontinued for years, they re-emerged back in 2021 because it turns out a lot of people are in fact insane. We’re not really nostalgic for Creme Savers and don’t really see the appeal. We were hoping maybe the reason they inspired such a demand was that they secretly contained a bunch of dopamine or something, but no. Just hard, creamy sugar.
18. Viennetta
Growing up we had this pseudo ice cream cake every time our parents dragged us to dinner at Grandma’s, we think to trick us into looking forward to it. While eating it would certainly help you sit through dated racism and stories about how your town used to be all orange groves, it doesn’t bring us joy.
17. Capri-Sun
There was a time when puncturing an ice-cool Capri Sun and sucking the bag flat felt bodacious, tubular, and radical. We can remember the way the refreshing sugar rush made us feel like liquid Terminator X-game people like in the commercials. We would kill to be that susceptible to marketing again.
16. Kool-Aid Bursts
Narrowly beating out Capri Sun on our list is another nostalgic beverage, Kool-Aid Bursts. We put them a notch above Capri Sun for no particular reason as everything is pretty much the same and life has no meaning.
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