The nostalgic foods every Australian child in the 1990s took to school

From Devon sandwiches to Ovalteenies, 1990s children grew up with some interesting snacks in their school bags. We look at 11 nostalgic treats from the decade.

If you grew up in 90s Australia, there’s a good chance that you had at least a few of these schoolyard staples in your lunchbox.

Come with us on a trip down Nutritionally Questionable Lane.

1990s food

Fruity Metres

Roll Ups, Fruity Metres, fruit leather, it’s all the same. A world of sugar, a whisper of fruit and a bunch of kids dealing with a sugar crash after recess.

1990s food

Fruche or Petit Miam

Depending on what kind of health kick your mum was on at the time, there was either a ‘healthy’ tub of Fruche vanilla yoghurt, or a cute little pot of strawberry Petit Miam. It actually is French for ‘yum’ just so you know.

1990s food

Mamee Monster Noodles

Dried noodles, crunched up and sprinkled with white pepper and flavour enhancer 621, Mamee noodles were the bomb.

1990s food

Ovalteenies

The best lunchbox treat of the 90s came by way of these teeny little malty chocolate circles. Nothing compares to the satisfaction of dissolving the embossed face off before crunching down.

1990s food

Babybel

We’re using Babybel as an umbrella to refer to all weird individual cheeses here. String cheese, Laughing Cow, Babybel, Kraft cheese sticks, the list goes on. Same goes for Le Snak packs and the Franklins no-frills cheese and crackers.

1990s food

Dunkaroos

Dunkaroos were pretty fancy to be honest, and usually reserved for a particularly special packed lunch but there’s no denying that smug feeling we all felt when you whipped out one of these bad boys at lunch.

1990s food

Sesame Snaps

They may have tasted a bit like burnt caramel cardboard but we all hoed into these wafer-like nutty snacks like they were going out of fashion.

1990s food

Space Food Sticks

What even were these? Is it Soylent Green? Did astronauts even know these existed? In any case, we packed them, we ate them, we pretended to like them and never looked back.

1990s food

Devon and tomato sauce sandwiches

Whether it was pre-sliced from the deli, hacked at from a dense roll by Dad, or the slightly fancier ‘smiley’ cylindrical meat, devon and tomato sauce sandwiches were ubiquitous with 90s lunchtime. Served with margarine on white bread, accept no substitutions.

1990s food

Peanut butter and celery

Not to be confused with ‘ants on a log’ which had the very bougie addition of sultanas, peanut butter smeared on celery was a classic of the 90s lunchbox. The funnel of the celery ribs was the perfect canoe for a line of peanut butter. Editor’s note: wet celery is the enemy of this particular staple.

1990s food

Mandarins

The smell of rotting mandarin skins will forever be linked to primary schools. If you didn’t eat your mandarin the day it was packed, the hand-fruit would inevitably be found squashed at the bottom of backpacks the day before term starts again. Sorry Mum.

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Originally published as The nostalgic foods every Australian child in the 1990s took to school