I was talking to H. this morning and we
got on the topic of Lunchables. When I did an image search there
appeared all manner of Lunchables that I didn't know existed. Here is
a short history of them. “Lunchables was designed in 1985 by Bob
Drane, Tom Bailey, Jeff James, and Deborah Giarusso as a way for
Oscar Mayer to sell more bologna and other lunch meat. After
organizing focus groups of American mothers Drane discovered that
their primary concern was time. Working mothers especially were
pressed by the time constraints of fixing breakfast for their
families as well as packing something for their children to eat at
school. This gave Drane the idea of creating a convenient prepackaged
lunch featuring Oscar Mayer's trademark red meat. Crackers were
substituted for bread because they could last longer in grocery
coolers. The cheese was provided by Kraft when Oscar Mayer merged
with Kraft in 1988. The design of the package was based on the look
of an American TV dinner.”
So they wanted to sale more meat and
decided to give kids high blood pressure. When you read the
nutritional facts on these things you see that you get almost the
daily recommended amount of salts and sugars from one serving of
these. Granted, back then people didn't know as much or care as much
about health. I think folks were still getting used to the fact that
kids were living past years old and the bigger they got the more you
had to feed 'em. So while these were created in 1985 they didn't go
international until 1989. So I was 10 years old and ready to get my
meat, cheese, and crackers on! That is the perfect age to start shaping kids for good or bad. When you are that age you don't consider yourself a kid but know full and damn well you aren't a teen so every decision you make seems important.
