Looking back, it’s funny what passed for luxury when we were kids. Less funny is the thought that, given how bleak things are getting, our kids may one day talk about cereal and sliced bread the same way.
According to the comments on this Reddit thread, that skewed sense of luxury wasn’t unique. Plenty of people remember growing up with the same inflated ideas about what counted as “fancy.”
Lunchables
If you, like most of us at the time, were a stale PB&J lunch kid, you probably remember the admiration and envy reserved for the rare classmate who showed up with a Lunchables. The plastic tray packed with American cheese slices, bologna, crackers, and a cookie launched in the late 1980s and quickly became the status symbol of elementary school lunches.
They cost about $1 at the time (roughly $2.61 today), and back then, nobody was side-eyeing them for their objectively trash components. On the contrary, they were considered a luxury item. Of course, this was also when groceries had normal prices (raises an eyebrow).
“I thought kids who had those were living the high life,” recalled one user on Reddit.
“The kids who had the Lunchables that came with a Capri Sun were basically trust-fund kids. My stale PB&J wrapped in pink plastic wrap was so embarrassing,” said another.
Waterbeds
I remember seeing “Edward Scissorhands” for the first time and being blown away by the waterbed, which felt like the ultimate invention — something so expensive you only ever saw it in movies. And while waterbeds really were pricey at the time, today you can buy a mattress for as little as $200. Apparently, my kid self wasn’t alone in idolizing this simple, rudimentary item as a symbol of wealth.
“Waterbeds seemed so sinful and luxurious when I was a kid in the ’80s,” one user wrote on Reddit.
“As a kid, I remember the waterbed store in the mall. Those seemed like such a luxury, especially the ones with columns of water built in, not just the balloon-like ones,” another chimed in.
Olive Garden
One of the clearest signs of how naïve your perspective can be as a kid is how monumental going to a restaurant like Olive Garden felt. What we now recognize as aggressively mid Italian-American fare was, at the time, treated like a special occasion — borderline fine dining.
These days, when going out to a restaurant feels increasingly expensive, Olive Garden has been firmly reclassified in the cultural hierarchy.
“I thought Olive Garden was fine dining,” one user shared on Reddit.
“My parents made it out to be the fanciest place they had ever dined — which may have been true considering how low-income they were,” another added. “We had to wear our nicest clothes.”
Frozen Dinners
It’s funny how what we now think of as a guilty pleasure — or a backup meal when we’re too tired to cook — used to feel like a treat. TV dinners meant you were living the good life. They came into existence after Swanson ended up with excess Thanksgiving turkey and turned it into a neatly packaged, modern solution meant to make life easier. And for a lot of people, it did — and still does, but at least now we know it’s not so much a luxury and more of a necessity.
“Eating on tv trays in the living room — man, that was the life!” shared a Redditor.
“With the little desserts in their foil container. Felt like a queen,” wrote another.
Viennetta Ice Cream
Commercials played a big role in creating childhood delusions about ordinary grocery-store food. And Viennetta cake commercials pretty much made it look like the kind of dessert only royalty ate. It looked rich. I mean, it’s a pampered, cake-looking ice cream with a vaguely European name.
“Absolutely peak luxury, I always requested it as my birthday cake, my parents got off so easy,” said one Redditor.
“I used to think it was the height of luxury. Slicing ice cream with a knife? That’s the kind of fancy dining only previously experienced by kings!” said another.
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Ferrero Rocher
To this day, I still feel like I’ve made it in life when I have Ferrero Rocher at home — something that usually only happens around the holidays. To be clear, it’s still not cheap candy. But then again, nothing is these days, so the difference barely matters.
“Thought I wouldn’t taste these until going to a black tie event,” shared one user on Reddit.
“Thought those things were like finest chocolate. Turns out you can buy them in bulk at the grocery store,” said another.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s was a big deal — and that’s probably why it became the largest fast-food chain in the world. It had a kind of magic when you were a kid. It felt rich!
“It was so exciting as we couldn’t really afford it. Now I realize it’s factory farming marketed to kids at scale,” shared one user.
“For the first decade or so of my life McDonald’s to me was this fancy place that was reserved only for birthdays. Outside of birthdays I think we only ever got food from there a few times when we were taken grocery shopping on a school night and my parents wouldn’t have had time to cook dinner before bed once we got home,” said another.
