30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

School Lunch Snacks

I'm not sure about you, but I actually loved going to school when I was a kid.  I had the opportunity to learn cool things, watch felt board stories, attend book fairs, take trips to museums and zoos, hang out with friends, play four-square, and best of all... eat the delicious school lunches.

Yup.  I was one of those freaks that enjoyed eating cubed turkey and gravy over mashed potatoes.  But most of the time, my mom insisted on packing me a lunch.  Looking back on it... it wasn't the end of the world.  I had a really cool Star Wars lunch pail that typically included a sandwich, some carrots, a Handi-Snack cheese and crackers pack, and these snack sized puddings that came in a can.

But every now and then, I'd get lucky and find a fruit pie or one of the Hostess treats sitting in my lunch pail.  I can still remember begging my mom for boxes of raspberry Zingers.

Back then, my focus was on the treats themselves instead of the cards on the bottom.  I want to say that I remember seeing these panels printed on the boxes, but since they were in the 70's (a few years before I started collecting)... my guess is if I did, I probably had little to no interest in the cards themselves.

These days, it's a whole different story.  I don't eat Hostess snacks very often, but I might actually start if they printed cards on their boxes again.  I mean, how cool would it be to turn over a Twinkies box and see this:


Or... working your way to the bottom of the box and catching a glimpse of this...


You know the old lady digging through all of the milk cartons at the grocery store finding the latest expiration date?  I'd be the guy sitting down in the grocery store sifting through all of the boxes finding my favorite players.

I recently picked up a small lot of 1975 Hostess panels on eBay... and started wondering how exciting it would have been had I collected in the 70's and stumbled across this pair of hall of fame pitchers:


Or how about Buzz, Mad Dog and Cakes...


And I'm sure I would have been excited to find a panel that included one of the game's greatest hitters...



Back then, there's not a doubt in my mind that I would have taken scissors to these panels and cut out my favorite players:



However the forty-three year old collector that I am plans on keeping these panels intact for the time being.


Okay.  What about you?

What kind of treats did you enjoy the most when you were in elementary school?

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

11 comments:

Zippy Zappy said...

Bob Bailey, one of the greatest hitters who ever played the game. #FujiHotTakes

Man, the likeliness of contracting diabetes among card collectors would go up at an alarming rate if they distributed cards like that again. Although at this point I'm sure the cards would taste better than the actual "treats."

As for treats from my elementary school days, it was either peanut butter & raisins on celery sticks, plain carrot sticks, Doritos or Hi-Chews. The last one was really popular. Although I personally liked carrots the most, mainly because my parent never packed it too often since just throwing a bag of Doritos in my backpack was easier. At the time I didn't mind but roughly a decade later I can tell that I've only got four more decades to live (at most).

BobWalkthePlank said...

Every once in a while my Mom would give me a soda for my lunch.....that was always a big deal. When I would stay with my Grandparents my Grandfather would always hook me up with a ton of junk food like Twinkees and Zingers.

Generally speaking the cafeteria food was pretty bad. Once I got to high school they had an area that would make fresh sandwiches which was nice. The hot lunch only had a few desirable items.

JediJeff said...

"I'm not sure about you, but I actually loved going to school when I was a kid"

I finally figured out why you are the way you are. :)

I brown bagged it until Jr. High. And even then, most of the time I brought lunch from home. Just wasn't in the finances to buy lunch. I can't say I recall special treats in the bag, though. I usually put together my lunch before hoofing it to school. so if I found a treat, I threw it in the bag. Usually, it was 4 cookies.

SpastikMooss said...

In Elementary School it was all about Apple Pies. McDonald's sold our school their Apple Pies, and they were in HIGH demand in that 4th grade lunchroom.

Then in Middle School they had these really good chewy cookies at a snack stand in the cafeteria. I wanna say they were 50 cents a piece, and offering to pay for someone's cookies was a great way to gain social standing for a hot minute.

I don't remember real good food being at our high school. It was all just gross, ice cold turkey sandwiches.

Nick said...

I packed a lunch all through high school because of how bad our cafeteria was. Peanut butter sandwiches, five days a week!

Steve at 1975BaseballCards.com said...

I remember eating those Handi-Snack cheese things.

Did you keep your Star Wars lunch pail?

Matt said...

Dunkarooooooooooooos

Anonymous said...

Those are some sweet panels! I'd keep them intact.

My mom bought us Drake's cakes for our snacks, so I enjoyed Ring Dings and Yodels.

And while it's not elementary school, this popped in my head so I'll mention it anyway: I enjoyed eating my high school cafeteria's knishes (just in case anybody doubts that I grew up on Long Island).

Fuji said...

zippy - carrots? my mama would have adopted you. hi chew is still a favorite among my students to this day.

matthew - hot lunch was good in elementary, but got progressively worse through high school. your grandfather sounds cool ;)

jedijeff - maybe i should clarify my first line... i really loved elementary school. i actually didn't like middle school, but then high school was okay... and college was awesome!

spastik - wth? mcdonald's apple pies? luckiest campus in the world.

nick - peanut butter (& jelly) sandwiches seemed like my mom' go-to too. i'd end up trading them all the time for things like burritos.

steve - no... i wish i did. every time i see them at the flea market or at a collectibles show... the vendor wants outrageous prices. i do have a replica an ex-girlfriend gave me a few years ago, but it's about a third of the size of the original and didn't come with a thermos.

sport card collectors - the younger teachers always talk about them. i've never actually tried them myself... but you're definitely not alone.

shlabotnik - are drake's an east coast thing? i've seen some food reviews on youtube with their snacks (pumpkin cakes) and haven't been able to find them at my local safeway. yeah... not planning on touching the panels. don't trust my scissor hands.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Drake's Cakes are an east coast brand... more specifically a northeastern brand. To translate into Hostess terms, Yodels are like HoHos and Ring Dings are like Ding Dongs.

Drake's came out with those Big Hitters / Super Pitchers sets in the 1980's, in case people are wondering where they've heard of Drake's before.

GCA said...

I still remember in the first couple grades or so, we used to go to the cafeteria for snack time, and they would have these peanut butter bars that were like brownies, but a little thinner and denser. They were the bomb.com!

Nowadays, I look for four-pack Zingers in the convenience stores, but if they don't have those, then I pimp me some (Ho-) Ho's