Snacking Through The Decades: 1990s and 2000s

The 1990s and 2000s brought many fun snacks to lunch boxes and vending machines. Despite the fact that we’re not too far removed from these decades, many of these snacks have already been lost to snacking history, but many of them can still be found today.

1990s

School lunches benefitted greatly from the 1990s with the emergence of Lunchables, string cheese, Goldfish, Barnum’s Animals, oatmeal creme pies, Fruit Roll-Ups, Handi-Snacks, Bugles, Gushers Fruit Snacks, Teddy Grahams and Ritz Bits. Beverages like Capri-Sun, Sunny Delight (now Sunny-D) and Fruitopia could also be found at many school lunch tables. Popular candies included War Heads, Air Heads, Push Pops, Dubble Bubble gum, and Reese’s Nutrageous. The 1990s also welcomed Lay’s Baked Potato Chips, Snackwell’s Brand Cookies, V8 Splash and the short-lived WOW! Potato Chips.

2000s

This most recent decade brought us many new spins on existing foods: Dannon Danimals Yogurt, Life Savers Crème Savers, personal size Jell-O Pudding, Pringles Snack Stax, M&Ms Dark Chocolate, and Chips Ahoy! Chewy Cookies. It also brought some new creations to the snacking landscape: Nutella, Egg Beaters, Crystal Light, Quaker Chewy Granola Bars, Nabisco Triscuit Crackers, Fig Newtons, and Blue Diamond Almonds.

We hope you enjoyed our snacking journey through the last eight decades, and we look forward to seeing what creative new snacks are developed during the remainder of our current decade. If you missed any of our other decade spotlights, be sure to check them out on our news feed archives.