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Today on Weird History Food We Are Delving Deep into the coolest lunch kit ever - Lunchables! They were ubiquitous during lunchtime gin the 90s, all the way to today, boasting a huge variety of combinations. Perhaps you remember having one at lunchtime in the 90s, or even more recently, and take a trip with us to found out how this phenomenon came to be!
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If you were a 90s kid, then odds are you've had a Lunchable or two in your day
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But where did these mealtime miracles come from? And just how good for us were they
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Well, today we're assembling the stacked up history of Lunchables. While people loved singing about the proper spelling of their bologna's name
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by the 1980s, they weren't too high on bologna itself. Bologna, as it turns out
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is kind of terrible for you. Sales stagnated along with other lunch meats
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and the marketing department at Oscar Mayer went to DEFCON 1. At the time, one of the company's new
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hires, Dr. Roddy Hawkins, was looking to make an impression. Inspired by the success of Kraft's
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Cheese and Crackers product, which came with a little plastic red wand that allowed consumers
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to spread the cheese and the crackers themselves, Hawkins proposed the concept for the product that
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would become Lunchables. But Hawkins was really just an idea, man. So the concept was then developed
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by a team that included Bob Drain, Deborah Gioruso, Jeff James, and Tom Bailey
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To stress that it was really a meal, the team decided to put the product in a tray
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that resembled a TV dinner. You'd think Lunchables were to be squarely aimed at children
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but you would be wrong. During development, focus groups revealed that Americans were working longer hours
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and were increasingly having trouble finding time to do things, like make lunch for themselves
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And to the folks at Oscar Mayer, the solution was Lunchables But not surprisingly hungry adults weren super excited about building a series of tiny sandwiches on crackers Children on the other hand were a different story Market research also showed that kids were much more likely to experiment with flavor variations like the now famous Pizza Lunchable
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As a bonus, research also showed that parents enjoyed giving Lunchables to their kids and thought of it like a present that could be delightfully unwrapped
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It was win-win-win for parents, kids, and the Oscar Mayer Corporation. And from there on out, Lunchables were for kids
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Lunchables were an instant hit, selling over $200 million worth of product in just their first year on supermarket shelves
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And things only got bigger from there. Research showed an astounding 50% of consumers that tried Lunchables came back for more
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Lunchables weren't all that nutritious. To save costs, Lunchables came packaged with processed cheese
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And to extend shelf life, the crackers were butter crackers. In other words, pretty much every ingredient in Lunchables was the most unhealthy version of that particular food possible in terms of calories, fat, and sodium
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In 2017, the world bought nearly $1.4 billion worth of Lunchables. In 2023, Oscar Mayer managed to get Lunchables, their fun but admittedly unhealthy line of junk food, approved as an option for school lunch menus across America
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And in all fairness, the Lunchables they're selling to schools aren't the same ones you get in the supermarket
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Long story short, they have a higher protein content, but a lot more sodium
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