You know you're getting old when...
...some of your favorite childhood treats are now marketed as "retro."

Joel's post about Tastykakes got me thinking about the treats my mom used to pack in my Snoopy lunchbox. For grade four and under, I got homemade cookies most days--ginger crinkles, snickerdoodles, tollhouse, peanut butter with crisscross fork markings. When I turned 10 and mom went back to work, homemade became rarer. Enter treats from the Strohman's bakery outlet and candy bars.

Strohman's made these luscious chocolate-dipped devil's food cakes with a cream filling. They were foil-wrapped and looked like a very thick hockey puck. I've no idea what they're called, but the memory makes me crave one something fierce.

The candy bars I remember most are some of the more unusual ones. First was the Zero bar, a weird all-white gooey thing (white chocolate, caramel, almond nougat, peanuts) that was perhaps too grown-up a flavor combination for my taste. "White chocolate" is something of an oxymoron in my mind, since the stuff doesn't have cocoa in it, only cocoa butter. You might as well call Tone soap chocolate if the only standard is to contain a cocoa plant derivative.

The weirdly named Whatchamacallit bar was another regular lunchbox find. These are sort of a chocolate-dipped peanut butter Rice Krispies treat. With caramel. Not so bad, though peanut butter and caramel are not exactly stellar together. While studying abroad in college, I discovered a British candy in a similar vein called a Lion bar made by Nestle UK. They're much more generous with the chocolate, lighter on the cereal and forgo the peanut butter altogether. Nothing quite like it exists in the US. Besides, American milk chocolate is frankly a little too milky compared to what you find in the UK.

My favorite lunchbox candy was the Zagnut bar. It's similar to the modern Butterfinger, but instead of a chocolate coating, it's coated with toasted coconut. Peanut butter and coconut seem a rather disgusting combination at first blush, but crunchy toasted versions combine surprisingly well.

Thanks to the Internet, I could get an entire box of any of these treats. Or candy cigarettes (to glamorize smoking) or bottle caps (to encourage kids to swallow small metal objects found in the trash). So much for nostalgia.