Combos are one of the best and worst junk foods ever created. Born in the Analog Age these snacks are a glorious tribute to a time when manufacturing pretzel tubes and squirting “cheese” into them was thought of as a good idea.
They are a paradox. See the very thing that makes them kinda gross also makes them that much tastier–the super salty artificial cheese powder. The moment you bite down and crunch that pretzel, causing the cheesy center to spill out you know that it’s a junk food–a real junk food.
Combos are the very definition of junk food. Junk food has to have something that’s bad for you to make it junk, but also super tasty for you to want more even after you finish the entire bag.
I even knew someone that made eating Combos and art form. She would eat all the pretzel covering first leaving just cheesy insides. When she was done eating the whole bag, she would have a giant mound of cheese left. That’s when she would sculpt a giant cheese ball and proceed to eat that.

I loved sucking all the cheese out of them and then blowing in the pretzel shell.

7 thoughts on “Artifacts of the Analog Age: Combos

  1. bob boyle says:

    I used the cheese sucking/pretzel blowing method too! Great stuff, Gabe!

  2. Savage says:

    I still eat these. I like the pizza flavor. I never considered them junk food though… since I eat healthy. 🙂

  3. Matt says:

    I remember I had constantly seen a commercial for Combos on a tape I had of Eureka’s Castle as a kid. Jump forward about 13 years I was working at a video game store and we got them as snacks for a midnight release. I always assumed I had just dreamed them but apparently they did, and still do, exist.

  4. Nick says:

    Man, I was just thinking about Combos the other day. So many fun ways to eat them, and they were actually filling. That cheese sculpture sounds gross.

  5. Lamar the Revenger says:

    I just had a bag last night. Cracker & cheddar… my fave!

  6. Sweety says:

    I only ate them as a kid, myself. Just the pizza kind, and only until I realized that the fake cheese product gave me stomach aches. XD It bred my love of extremely salty pretzels, though!

    As a note, I ate them by cracking the pretzel shell lengthwise, ate the part that came off, then kind of scraped the cheese out and ate the rest of the pretzel last. Kind of like how I eat Twix and Oreos, actually. o_o

  7. I ate these all the time, at my first job. No one bought them so they where free to employees, but the sad fact is I worked at a gas station so my combos had three flavors Pretzel, Cheese and Gas…. oh and I drank new coke as well, yum (another freebie).

    Thanks for the flashback.

    J

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