A first-time Lunchables consumer reacts upon finally trying the controversial product
From November 29, 2018
Adriyan held his breath, hands at the ready, eyes gleaming in anticipation as he looked at the package in front of him. After 21 long years, the moment had finally arrived. He peeled back the iconic yellow wrapper, a nostalgic symbol of the social anxiety of his youth, and rapturously took in the contents of the little tray. Finally, he was going to eat Lunchables.
The name ‘Lunchables’ is recognizable to most people who have either been, or have had, a child in the past 30 years. A mealtime staple in elementary schools across North America, the popular product has taken over lunch hour. Oscar Mayer, the company that owns Lunchables, has gone through its fair share of success and market criticism over the years. Nevertheless, Lunchables has become a classic in the hearts and minds of children everywhere.
In 1988, meat production company Oscar Mayer was facing quite the setback in sales due to recent revelations about the link between red meat, high cholesterol, and obesity. It fell on the shoulders of Bob Drane, the Vice President of New Business Strategy and Development, to come up with a new, innovative product that would stimulate sales growth. After conducting market research, Drane discovered that working moms were pressed for time in the mornings and often found it difficult to prepare lunches for themselves and their families. He knew he wanted to include bologna and cheese in the product, but how? The product needed to have a long shelf life to survive in storage, so it couldn’t include perishable bread slices. Drane and his team ultimately decided on crackers as a sustainable addition to the meal.
Now, how to package the meal? After a few days of brainstorming, the Oscar Mayer team decided to go with the ‘Do It Yourself’ theme. They opted to display the food items in a TV dinner-esque tray and have the consumer assemble the mini meat sandwiches themselves. By designing Lunchables like TV dinners, which were already a huge success in the 1980s, Drane hoped to capitalize on the popularity of prepared meals. He believed working moms would appreciate the ease and convenience that Lunchables provided as a solution to their busy morning routines and to their stress over preparing lunches.
And boy, was Drane right. Upon initial release, Oscar Mayer saw such a huge demand for Lunchables that they couldn’t keep up with supply. The company made a whopping $218 million in the first year after the product’s release. Interestingly, all of their early advertisements were focused on selling Lunchables to mothers, as a convenient and easy meal they could take to work. It was soon discovered, however, that Lunchables appealed to kids the most.
By 1991, Oscar Mayer added a desert component to Lunchables to appeal directly to children. The company also extended their product line with variations, such as turkey and cheese, and even pizza. It became clear that children love the participatory aspect of Lunchables because it makes them feel in control. For children, the yearning for control and autonomy is a cornerstone in their deep-seated desires to grow up. Lunchables give children the opportunity for freedom and choice when assembling their lunches. It also gave them social power, and Lunchables became the envy of every other kid in the classroom with a homemade sandwich.
Upon first inspection of his Lunchables pepperoni pizza kit, Adriyan carefully takes in all its included contents: shredded mozzarella cheese, pepperoni rounds, hard crackers (dubbed “pizza crusts” on the packaging), and a packet of tomato sauce. He struggles a bit with opening the sauce packet and needs to use a pair of scissors—a supply that might not be readily available for an elementary school kid at lunchtime.
Momentarily staring blankly at the ingredients in front of him, Adriyan admits, “I don’t really know what I’m doing here. They don’t come with any instructions so it’s a bit confusing.” For someone who lived his childhood envious of the kids around him devouring their Lunchables pizzas, he seems a little clueless. Adriyan finally begins to spread the tomato paste onto the cracker in a decisive move toward the assembly of his pizza.
In terms of expectations, Adriyan says, “I’m not expecting pizza pepperoni, I’m kinda just expecting a cracker with cheese and some kind of, like, fake meat. But as a child, the pepperoni looked really realistic which excited me, and they just looked like a lot of fun to put together. It is fun to have control over your food, a bit more than I think I had as a kid. Just because for me it was like, onion and kielbasa sandwich every single day at school. So this is a welcome change.”
For kids, Lunchables is the best of both worlds: a game that they can eat! For moms, Lunchables is an easy way of supplying lunch for your child when you don’t have enough time to prepare something else. However, the product has become very stigmatized due to health concerns, and a lot of mothers, like Adriyan’s, avoid Lunchables in favour of healthier alternatives.
A study released at the American College of Cardiologists conference in 1997 issued a dietary warning about Lunchables. It stated that the extraordinarily high salt content in Lunchables composed nearly three quarters of the daily allowance for an individual’s salt intake. In response to these findings, Oscar Mayer claimed that the study results were not generalizable as the sodium intake test was conducted on rats who ate Lunchables every day. The company officially stated that “Nobody would eat a diet of all Lunchables, or any other single food,” in an attempt to justify the consumption of this salty meal.
Despite Oscar Mayer’s attempts to dismiss the scientific study, public skepticism grew and food critics began to denounce Lunchables for having too much fat, sugar, and preservatives. Sales of Lunchables flatlined in the mid-2000s as rates of child obesity in the United States also approached the level of a national crisis. The company released a new line in 2003 called Fun Fuel which replaced the candy with yogurt, but due to weak sales it was discontinued only two years later.
It seemed like a negative impression of Lunchables was taking hold in the minds of consumers. Some mothers would refuse to feed their child Lunchables because they thought it was too unhealthy. However, the unhealthy amount of trans-fats and added preservatives didn’t faze kids, who continued to envy their classmates and friends who showed up at lunch with the fun meal. Adriyan, a prime example of this childhood envy, says, “My parents thought that making my lunch was more healthy than processed food. But I always wanted Lunchables because my friends had them.” Lunchables became a source of social anxiety for Adriyan who felt like his homemade, Ukrainian-style kielbasa sandwiches were uncool in the lunchroom.
Even Bob Drane, the creator of the original Lunchables meal pack, has admitted to not feeding the product to his own children. In the book Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, author Michael Moss quotes Drane’s daughter who confesses, “We eat healthy” in her family. Drane admits to wishing that the product could be more nutritional, but he believes that the positive contribution Lunchables have made on people’s lives is more important.
In 2011, Oscar Mayer finally got its big break. After listening to concerns about children’s health and parental desires for a balanced meal, the Lunchables With Fruit line was released along with a $20 million advertising campaign. The meal now included a fruit cup, intended to satiate consumer desire for a full serving of fruit. After seeing new peaks in sales, the company released a Lunchables With Smoothie line that also included a full-serving of fruit and proved to be very popular. The brand now has 26 different varieties of meal combinations and is seeing a renewed increase in sales over time.
Lunchables appears to have overcome some of its stigma, and continues to dominate the convenience lunch food market. Kids still seem to thoroughly enjoy the taste of these processed meats and crackers. But after all that controversy, do they even taste good from an adult perspective?
For Adriyan, it’s not what he expected. “I kinda just got like...some kind of ancient biscuit covered in tomato sauce taste. I think the most disappointing thing for me was the dough—like I don’t know if it’s trying to be a cracker or if it’s trying to be pizza dough—it tastes like stale bread. The sauce too, it’s more like a tomato sauce than a pizza sauce. There’s this weird watery salsa aftertaste to it, too, like those Old El Paso kits. I feel like all of this should go in the oven— like I’m eating a pre-cooked pizza.”
In the end, Adriyan’s childhood idolization of the fun, participatory Lunchables didn’t quite live up to his high expectations. The taste, though, reaffirmed his mother’s avoidance of the product.
“My mom would always call them plastic lunch, plastic food, and I guess it kinda lived up to that expectation because the artificial taste definitely came through with that biscuit. I feel like now I need to go eat a strawberry or something.”
Clearly, the entertainment component of Lunchables is well established, but the taste and nutritional aspects could use some work.
