90s Kids’ Breakfasts, Ranked

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I’m not 100% sure what kids these days eat for breakfast, but according to the ever-so reliable source of Instagram, parents are a lot more concerned about healthy eating than they were in my day. As one of the many millennials from the good ol’ US of A who spent most of their childhood in the 90s, I somehow made it to adulthood on a sugar-fueled diet of cereal and Costco bulk items.

I’ve compiled a ranking of 10 common breakfast items that us 90s children had for breakfast. Before anyone piles on to brag that their mom made them scrambled eggs and pancakes every day, let me note that I have only included common PACKAGED items in this list.

10. Oatmeal

There were no lemon meringue pie overnight oats, or vanilla custard baked oatmeal, or any of that back in the 90s. Oatmeal came in little packages with alleged flavors like cinnamon with apples, cinnamon with no apples, and maple, perhaps with cinnamon. The fact that they were half sugar could not save them from being oatmeal. To this day, these little packets still exist in Holiday Inn breakfast buffets and office building micro kitchens around the country.

9. Toast

Toast was always a reliable choice, and versatile, considering the potential toppings: butter, raspberry jam, orange marmalade, apple jelly (what?! Some people like it), a Kirkland Signature tub of Adam’s peanut butter, just straight-up sugar, and so on. With that said, toast was not exciting. The bread was a processed loaf with brown coloring so your parents could pretend it was healthy and you would also be having it for lunch in the form of a PB&J sandwich.

8. English Muffins

English muffins were more exciting than toast, because you would not be having them for lunch. My family always got some off-brand from Safeway or Kroger, and honestly I’m kind of shocked any name brands made it through that decade because WHO in the Spice World was buying anything other than store brand? I certainly don’t know them. Anyway, you can put all the same stuff on English muffins as you can toast, but they are a little sour and have texture.

Fun fact: Apparently, English muffins really are an English version of a muffin. I always assumed they were something an American made up when they saw a crumpet one time and never did manage to get within 10 feet of it, but tried to replicate it anyway.

7. Granola Bars

*shudder*

I’m kind of torn on where to include this on my list, because on the one hand, we had Kudos bars, which were just candy bars with a filling that kinda looked like granola. For obvious reasons, they were amazing, and for the same obvious reasons, they don’t exist anymore. Nutrigrain were slightly more convincing at being healthy, mostly due to their name and not their actual qualities.

The granola bar category is dragged down significantly by the existence of Nature Valley, which is simultaneously the hardest and most crumbly substance on the planet. They are both dreadfully disgusting AND always made your mom super mad at you because they would end up crumbled all over the back of the car.

6. Yogurt

I always DESPERATELY wanted the sprinkle yogurt that was so often advertised during Saturday morning cartoons right before our weekly grocery store run, but my parents never let me get it. I had to be content with Tillamook. UGH. But seriously, Tillamook is pretty legit, and one of the few examples of brand loyalty in our household. 

5. “Healthy” Cereal

Let’s face it: every cereal was a damn sugar bomb in the 90s. But a cereal could be considered “healthy” and “suitable for daily consumption” if it wasn’t colorful and made of literal candy. I’m talking Honey Nut Cheerios, Honey Bunches o’ Oats, Frosted Flakes, Kix, and best of all: Life. The healthy cereals were always going to be found wanting just because they weren’t a bowl of cookies, but they were still all-around pretty good, except for the stale ¼ box of Kix in the back of the cupboard. 

4. Eggo Waffles

Eggos are waffle-shaped and that’s basically where the resemblance ends. My methods of eating them were either with such impatience that they were still frozen in the middle, or lovingly heated with a fun-size Peppermint Patty melted on top because apparently I’m a fucking psychopath.

3. Unhealthy Cereals

These bad boys aren’t even pretending to be healthy. They were just brazenly mocking our parents, being like, “WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO, HUH??? YOUR KIDS ARE OBSESSED WITH US!!!!” And then they would sigh and include a box of Froot Loops in the shopping cart, because that one seems like it might not be as bad as Lucky Charms or Cookie Crisp.

2. Pop Tarts

Pop Tarts were a special occasion breakfast treat and rarely made it into the toaster, due to 1. Impatience, and 2. The unreliability of the toaster. You only have to burn one precious rectangle of gold (aka the brown sugar cinnamon flavor) to learn the difficult, but necessary life lesson of toaster fickleness. 

1. Toaster Strudel

Toaster Strudel was worth the wait and risk of the necessary trip to Toaster Town. There were few packaged foods from the freezer section that were more delicious to the unsophisticated palate of a middle class 90s kid. A WARM pastry with a little packet of ICING?! Do the earthly delights ever cease?

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