Food and Snacks | Life | 80s
13 Snacks You Ate At Every 80s Birthday Party That You're Going To Start Craving Again
It doesn't matter that you can go to basically any grocery store and find a confetti cake mix. That's not the point. Never again will you be able go to Stacey Whatsherface's house and eat five cupcakes, a whole bag of a Cheetos, and a liter of fruit punch and have it bring you the same amount of joy.
Right? Birthday party food just tastes better. The same bag of Cheetos tastes just fifty times better at a birthday party. I don't know why, no one does. It's one of life's greatest mysteries.
Birthday party snacks are easily the highlight for all the guests. Sure, the birthday boy or girl gets a bunch of presents, but we get to destroy that snack table as though it's our job.
How many of these treats do you remember being excited for?
1. Funfetti Cake
Listen, we have to address the elephant in the room, but cake is the most important part of the party. It sets the tone for the day and you know that the kids will be satisfied and appropriately infused with sugar once the time comes. You could go with a chocolate cake, or even a plain vanilla, but there was no moment more exciting then the reveal of a funfetti cake.
Sprinkles literally make everything better, and when you're a kid those sugary little pieces are all you need in your life.
2. Pizza Rolls
After we were all confident in the cake, we could resume our excitement, and stuff our faces full of pizza rolls.
A little bite size pocket of scalding hot cheese and sauce, followed by another that was probably still frozen in the center, followed by one that had opened up completely. Really, it didn't matter what the inside held, because it was perfect.
3. Bagel Bites
Okay, some houses were a pizza roll house, while others were a bagel bite house. You can't really have both, but you absolutely had at least one. These pizza-inspired treats didn't hide their fillings, but they were all still so good.
Even though they were more of an open-faced situation, somehow they could still have frozen centers? I don't know, maybe it was just our oven, but burning outsides with still frozen centers has been the tragic tale of a lot of my Bagel Bite experience.
4. Hamburger Helper
If it was a smaller party and you guys wanted to have a more hearty dinner, Hamburger Helper was always a great choice. It was filling, fast, and pretty much universally enjoyed.
Kids didn't really care too much about how fancy anything was, so a fast and delicious meal that fed everyone for under $5 was ideal.
5. Cosmic Brownies
No snack table was complete without a stack of Cosmic Brownies. Sure, each one had about three sprinkles on it, but they were a necessity and they were DELISH!
Simple, no fuss, and absolutely a crowd-pleaser, I could easily eat 100 of them on my own.
6. Pixie Sticks
Tubes of sugar? PERFECT. That's what every kid needs. These high-energy scream machines needed even more energy and the best way to do that was to just let them eat straight sugar. Perfect.
7. Cheese Balls or Cheetos
Orange fingers go hand-in-hand with a birthday party. It's just a fact that parents have to accept. Their couches, door handles, and even the walls will be covered in little orange stains that are really hard to get out.
8. Jell-O
Jell-O in every color and shape was required to make any party an absolute bash. The jiggly snack was easy for our parents to cook up, and there was always the added bonus of us getting to help make it because it's not like we could really screw it up too much.
9. Ice Cream
Obviously even if there is cake, you need ice cream too. Yes, do we still eat some as often as we want? Of course we do. But it just doesn't have that same guilt-free pleasure that we used to have when eating ice cream. Now it's one of those things we know we "shouldn't eat" but it's honestly never stopped us before.
10. Nerds
The tiny little candies were somehow simultaneously the most delicious and the most painful treat. Sure, you'd eat a few, but then you'd get them stuck in your teeth for the rest of the day and it would be an absolute nightmare.
11. Soda
It was the only time a lot of us could get soda, so we really went all out. My personal favorite was when they had those packs of crush with the grape one, that's still one of my favorite treats. Although when you're a kid it gives you energy, as an adult it gives me heartburn. Still delicious though!
12. Kool-Aid
There would always be a few pitchers of Kool-Aid made up for those who didn't want the sugar content of a soda. The thing is there was probably just as much sugar inside a cup of Kool-Aid as there was in side a soda!
13. Microwave Popcorn
If you ever attended a sleepover birthday party, you know just how important that bag of microwave popcorn was. You needed to eat at least two or three bags while you watched whatever movie you had been dying to watch and it was the absolute best.