Favorite Snack As A Child

I used to spend my allowance money on Hostess cherry pies! Although my mom didn’t buy snacks (we just didn’t have money for extras), my brothers & I would save our meager allowances and walk to the corner store when there was enough for a fruit pie. I tried them years later, and they didn’t have as much fruit in them (or glazed sugar on them) as I remember. Good thing, I guess!

1 Like

I remember them from McDonald or some place like that because I didn’t buy them for home. My my treat when I was younger was root beer float, I used to live some place that was hot, very hot, actually, but dry heat.

1 Like

I loved the Hostess lemon pies:). A treat for us was my mom stopping at Maurice Lenell to get a box of their pinwheel cookies. I really miss those!

2 Likes

My Mom didn’t buy many packaged snacks. My most frequent snack was a whole apple. In cold weather I’d wrap up in a blanket and sit on the floor heating vent reading a book and eating my apple. I would even eat the core, because if I abandoned my spot on the heat vent my sister would swoop in and claim it.

5 Likes

I thought I was the only one (1960s) that sat on the floor with a blanket near the heat vent! I put my feet up to it. I used to turn up the heat when my Dad was not looking and he would say ‘who turned up the heat?’ but I think he knew I did it. My brother had no interest in the floor vent, so I had it to myself. Unfortunately, I could not eat a snack there in the living room but I did read a lot and watch TV.

Forgot raisins!

1 Like

This says something about my parenting skills😉

My daughter was sick and asked her boyfriend if he would make her can of Campbell’s chicken and noodles. But with only half a can of water she says. He had never had or knew how to make Campbell’s soup.

He also looks blankly at the mention of boxed macaroni and cheese, spaghettiO’s, (and the ensuing conversation of what was better, the meatball one or the one with franks) or pizza rolls.

Never had any of them.

4 Likes

@thumper1 The liquor store and 7 11 were the best places to buy snacks when I was a kid. Candy, chips, ice cream, soda all were and still are available in California liquor stores. I think liquor is the one item I’ve not bought at a liquor store.

3 Likes

On Friday afternoons I’d go with my grandfather to ‘do the errands’ and it always included a stop at the grocery store where I’d get a box of animal crackers (the box with the string, so it was like having a purse) and one Hostess treat. Almost always picked Snowballs, and especially the pink ones. I actually liked other Hostess treats better, but a allure of the pink snowballs was too hard to resist.

Poptarts weren’t a treat but a breakfast staple at our house.

4 Likes

Gas station treats are the best treats!

Coke Slurpees from 7-Eleven
Diary Queen small chocolate dipped cones
Ritz crackers with softened butter
popcorn with lots of salt and melted butter
an icy cold Tab with Lays potato chips
little frozen eggrolls with soy sauce - it was hard to wait on the baking time
small frozen shrimp cocktail cups - this had to be planned ahead to defrost
Valencia oranges (with a peppermint stick straw to slurp the juice as a treat when my grandmother visited)

3 Likes

I’d love that now!

1 Like

H and I first had Charles Chips in our 20s, after a coworker brought some to my office. I had a standing order for several years after that. Yum!

1 Like

I ate too many pop tarts. You’re clearly much younger than I am, because I was out of college before diet Coke was introduced. My daily drink in high school, college and beyond was Tab in the pink can/bottle. One summer in college I had a Tab for lunch every day. That’s all. In those days I was willing to starve myself to wear hip-huggers.

2 Likes

There was a restaurant on Main Street with a soda fountain and my big Saturday treat was going there with my father after picking up the mail at the post office and getting to order a lemon coke/vanilla coke/cherry coke while he had his coffee.

3 Likes

lol you got snacks?!

Same as @momofboiler1, we only had snacks at the grandparents house, where we were doled out a sadly small number of goldfish each. On the bright side, my grandmother always got the Kellogg’s snack pack cereals (back when they had names like Sugar Pops and Honey Smacks iirc), which was very exciting to children who knew only plain cheerios and - for a treat- raisin bran!

2 Likes

Maple long John donuts. Donuts were a very special treat.
Cinnamon toast
Homemade ice cream
Watermelon
Orange hostess cupcakes
Chocolate Soldier drink
My dads seasoned pecans
Sara Lee coffee cake

I don’t really remember many snacks as opposed to special treats when I was very young. We were pretty poor. I remember snacking on carrots and leaving the end part on windowsills, lol. Also snacked on raw cabbage - I really liked it. Thought I’d gone to heaven when I discovered cauliflower when I was much older. When I was desperate for a sugar fix, I’d climb up onto the counter and get spoonfuls of powdered sugar.

3 Likes

Like a couple of others have said, we really didn’t eat “snacks” growing up. My mother didn’t really buy stuff like that, except for mallow pies but they were strictly for our lunches. They looked like this but we called them “mallow pies” probably because I’m sure my mom bought the store brand. I wouldn’t call these a favorite but that was basically what my mom put in our lunch as a treat.

We otherwise didn’t have junk food in the house except for special occasions or when we had company. Once in a while she would bake cookies, etc.

Of course, once I was old enough to walk to 7/11, well, there was all kinds of goodness there!

1 Like

Oh Wow! I loved those too. I can taste them now!

So interesting the trends on this thread. To me, snacks and treats are sort of interchangeable .

But if I’m really getting technical, snacks were between meal foods and treats was something like going for a Sunday drive and stopping for an A &W Float. (Root beer) . Very occasional.

1 Like