When I was a little girl, I would beg my mother to buy me Lunchables. All the cool kids had them and I wanted to be part of the cool crowd. (I was decidedly not cool.) She always refused, asserting they were disgusting and unhealthy. Well, now that I am an adult, I decided to take matters in to my own hands. There is no one to stop me from putting toxic things in to my body, and I was set on doing just that.

Smell: A faint smell of wet cardboard wafts from the packaging. It is not intense, but it is definitely there. It in no way prepares you for what is about to come.

Texture/Appearance: The first thing I noticed was the lack of a plastic knife or any sort of spreading implement for the sauce and chocolate frosting. I am a resourceful person, being a grown up and all, and pulled out a knife to spread my sauces. But a 6-year-old? I imagine them making a huge mess with this and some poor lunch lady (meal technician? is “lunch lady” PC?) having to clean up chocolate smears all over a cafeteria table. The texture of the pizza “crusts” is spongey. The frosting for the chocolate pizza has more of a pudding feel.

Taste: Oh, where to begin? A friend called this “cancer in a box” and I could not agree more. The crusts taste like stale pita bread. Actually, it tastes like stale pita bread that was wet at one point and was then set in the sun to dry for a week. The sauce is oddly spicy, which I don’t think would appeal to kids, yet lacking any authentic tomato flavor.  Certainly the sauce was formulated with the concept of tomatoes in mind, but it doesn’t hit the mark of actually tasting like real tomatoes. The cheese for the pizza had the lovely essence of mold.

The chocolate frosting for the “dessert” pizza was pudding-like not only in texture, but also taste. The candy coated chocolate pellets were superfluous and oddly bland. (Also, who sends actual candy in their kid’s school lunch? One may be able to argue fruit snacks are candy, but at least a parent can convince themselves there is some fruit in there.)

The Capri Sun, of the fruit punch variety in my Lunchable, was admittedly delicious in a gross, super sugary way. On an embarrassing personal note…at the age of 27, I still was unable to stick my straw correctly into the pouch and ended up with a lovely fruit punch splatter pattern on my t-shirt.

Final verdict: Well, turns out my mom actually loves me. She was saving me from a horrific food crime, following her maternal instincts to protect my palette, as well as my young and sensitive digestive track. This was repulsive, a culinary horror show of epic proportions. I cannot believe people feed this to their children. I would not give this to my enemy, let alone my offspring. Is it that hard to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? I would only make my kid eat this as punishment; this is ten times worse than a time out.

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Lemmonex writes almost daily about food, life and her very special feelings on her blog, Culinary Couture.

22 Responses

  1. LivitLuvit

    Basically, you paid for digestive biscuits covered in Chefboyardee, and Ovaltine sprinkled with Nerds. And when I say paid, I don’t mean monetarily.

    Reply
  4. Hey Pretty

    I was raised by whole foods loving food snobs (Slow Foodies before it had a name) so of course I rebelled against this the minute I could by ingesting all sorts of disgusting packaged foods, namely Twinkies. I was soooo sad when I learned that Twinkies are in fact, completely gross and that my parents had done me a favor by sparing me from them.

    Reply
  5. Lemmonex

    Digestive biscuits are much better, LiLu.

    CH, I ate this in the privacy of my own home. Thank God, because there were some bad words.

    Hey pretty: Twinkies gross me out. Give me a funny bone any day!

    Reply
  6. Jessica

    Oh… sad. I haven’t had lunchables since I was kid, but I LOVED them. YUM. I don’t feed them to my kid though. It’s a lot of money for almost no food. And definately no nutrional value.

    Reply
  7. MamaBear

    MamaBear knows best. I’m glad you’ve finally realized that I wasn’t trying to scar you by not giving you what you wanted.

    Reply
  8. Aaronichi

    This one was a given.
    The adds even make them look gross.
    now, have you seen the Cheeseburger flavored Pringles yet?

    Reply
  9. Irish Lebowski

    Okay, I’ll give you the pizza Lunchables, but I actually LOVED the balogna, American cheese, and cracker Lunchables and have been known to eat them on occasion to this day, usually while drunk. Don’t give up on all Lunchables because of this one bad experience.

    Reply
  10. MT Eats

    I actually liked to have them ocassionaly, like a Big Mac, knowing of their plastic venner and highly processed past. I grab one about once a year, usually on a road trip, and take great delight in their gloriously fake nature. Anyone make an organic version of these?

    Reply
  11. Tina

    And yet my daughter begs for these things. I too am the mean mom that insiste she eat actual food instead of a foodish type product.

    Reply
  12. Caitlin

    Oh my god. I am nauseous reading about this. I too, was not allowed near a Lunchable, and that was back when it was crackers, cheese, and ham!
    (I was also the kid with the baggy of carrots and the Apple & Eve lunch box when everyone else had Oreos and KoolAid).

    Liv’s comment = PERFECTION

    Reply
  13. AuntLifeSaver

    Lem- I hate to break your culinary heart, but SuperBoy LOVES that lunchable. Pleads for it’s manufactured goodness every time we grocery shop. I’ve caved 2 or 3 times for special occasions. As he would say – I’m a pushover.

    Reply
  14. Garnold

    Who needs knives when god gave us cardboard? Add to the cardboard fun and just spread that sauce on with the box. Also, the picture provided made me throw up in my mouth. Sight indeed influences taste.

    Reply
  15. James

    I’m a big fan of good food … slow food, I guess. I really don’t care for that name. We need something better.

    Anyway, my preference in cracker toppings is usually the wrapped-in-black extra sharp Cheddar … not that I can buy that where I live now.

    Sometimes, though, I just want some spray-cheese-on-a-Ritz. I know, extra-strength polymers with flavoring and dye aren’t really food.

    But, still … sometimes …

    Reply
  18. Steven

    i love these and always will no matter what you say.. to me it seems like you have to fancy pants of taste buds to enjoy the simple awesomeness of the pizza and treatza.. plus i only ever knew 1 person tht would actually eat te treatza part.. we always just add the chocolate out of the package and ate the chocolates

    Reply
  19. Raleigh

    Those good days this was around, best lunchable ever. I am so pissed they discontinued this. Glad someone else here understands.

    Reply
  20. Y4123

    These were amazing! it was a shame they discontinued it D: it was so awesome to have the regular pizza Lunchable but with a dessert

    Reply

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