This Old-School Ritz Snack From The '90s Helped Define A Generation Of School Lunches

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There are a lot of 1990s snacks that you forgot ever existed, but Handi-Snacks have stood the test of time, albeit in a changed form. What Gen X or Millennial adult can forget the delectable (if sketchy) savor of plasticky cheese product scooped from a flimsy container to be delicately spread on crackers with a tiny, flat, red utensil? Looking back, it's really not any wonder that we're currently obsessed with cheese pairings and fancy ingredients for our charcuterie boards ... Handi-Snacks were a probable root of our collective mania for fromage and crackers.

On a Reddit sub dedicated to nostalgia, lots of grown-ups got all up in their feelings over a picture of vintage Handi-Snacks with the red spreading tool. Plenty of virtual ink was spilled recalling trying to ensure that the cheese spread was doled out equitably among all the crackers, while some folks recalled playing games or harassing siblings with the little red stick. "Remember what they took from us," one commenter wailed.

Although Handi-Snacks no longer come with the signature spreading tool, they are still kicking around. You can even buy them on Amazon, although they are now branded directly by Ritz as opposed to their old parent company, Kraft. (Don't worry, we won't tell if you use your fingers to swipe out the last particles of salty cheese from its little plastic well!) As adults, we also have some perspective on the remarkable history of Handi-Snacks, the story of which is probably older than you think.

The 1950s were a wild time — just look at old-school canned tomato soup cake, for starters. Indeed, the first food called "Handi-Snacks" was a convenience cheese product cooked up for harried housewives who wanted to dish up spreadable, cheesy appetizers without all the work of shredding and melting actual cheese. The addition of crackers and the marketing of Handi-Snacks as the perfect nosh for kiddos came about in the 1980s and really took off in the '90s, the decade during which Kraft spent a boatload on marketing the product alongside its other grab-and-go lunchtime fare like Lunchables and Capri-Sun juice pouches.

At a time when two working parents was increasingly the norm, store-bought foods that you could take from a package and put directly in your kid's lunchbox were a highly attractive concept. Over the years, Kraft tried to diversify the Handi-Snacks line. In addition to the two main varieties, which were identical save for flat crackers versus tubular breadsticks, the brand also expanded into peanut butter snacks, pretzel sticks, and even sweet versions with Oreo dippers and a vanilla frosting that were ostensibly meant to compete with Dunkaroos. 

Today's parents (including the same Millennials who ate Handi-Snacks) have slightly more elevated ideas about what belongs in their kids' lunchboxes, with American public schools leaning towards banning junk food. Handi-Snacks certainly don't enjoy the same popularity as they did a generation ago, but they aren't down for the count just yet.