Fruit by the Foot
Three feet of rolled fruit snack that unspooled from a little coil, printed with jokes and trivia on the back. Not a Fruit Roll-Up — this was the long, skinny one you unrolled dramatically before eating.
General Mills launched Fruit by the Foot in 1991, a distinct product from the flat Fruit Roll-Up: a long, narrow strip of chewy fruit snack coiled into a roll that unwound to about three feet. Unrolling the whole thing in one theatrical pull — then eating it end to end — was the entire ritual, and the backing paper was printed with games, jokes, and trivia to read while you chewed.
Some versions twisted two flavors together in a single strip. Part of the same General Mills fruit-snack family as Fruit Roll-Ups and Gushers, it earned its own lunchbox identity as the long one, and it's still sold today.
Similar items
Fruit Roll-Ups
A paper-thin sheet of chewy fruit leather that peeled off its cellophane backing so you could eat it flat, roll it into a tube, or mummify a finger in it. General Mills' lunchbox staple that turned a fruit snack into an activity.
Gushers
Chewy hexagonal fruit snacks with a liquid center that burst across your tongue when you bit down. Fruit Gushers made eating candy feel faintly dangerous — and its ads made kids' heads turn into giant fruit.
Squeezit
A neon fruit drink in a soft plastic bottle you squeezed straight into your mouth, twist cap and all. Squeezit made a beverage into a toy — and its cartoon-faced bottles were lunchbox icons before it vanished in 2001.
Dunkaroos
Betty Crocker's kangaroo snack pack: tiny cookies plus a frosting cup for dunking. The ultimate lunchbox flex of the mid-90s, Dunkaroos were so coveted they became playground currency—until parents killed the sugar craze.