Great Moments in Videogame Dining

Okay, so when you think of videogames, you of course think of a dining experience, right? Anyone? Anyone? No? I'm the only one here? Okay, fine. Be that way, you uncultured people.


Yeah but seriously, there were some nifty videogame-related foods back in the day. And by back in the day, I mean MY "back in the day" which would be the mid 90s. You of course had to have your Donkey Kong fruit snacks, your Kraft Super Mario Macaroni and Cheese, and then there was my favorite: Sonic the Hedgehog Pasta with Tomato and Cheese Sauce. Or as liked to call it: Sonic Spaghettios. Probably every other school kid did too.

Now it just so happened that this time period was the peak of the Sonic's popularity. Sonic was just about everywhere. He was on t-shirts. He was on a weekday morning cartoon. He was on a Saturday morning cartoon. He was a huge balloon in the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade. So obviously, character-shaped pasta was the next logical step. This stuff was made of the same ingredients as regular Spaghettios, which tasted pretty good in itself. But when the pasta noodles were shaped like Sonic, Tails, and Dr. Robotnik; that made it taste like 100% awesome. Yes indeed, seeing your pasta in the shape of your favorite videogame characters makes it taste better. I must have eaten a whole truckload of these over the course of my early school years. Frankly, I'm surprised I didn't turn orange. A version came out later that had meatballs in it too, but I liked the non-meatball version better.

When it originally came it, it even had a coupon on the back of the label for a dollar's worth of free tokens at participating arcades. The list of participating arcades was a bit small. The nearest one to me was at the Disneyland Hotel which was actually quite a distance from where I lived at the time. But I did redeem a stack of those collected coupons on one of my annual trips to the Magic Kingdom. Aside from that small factor, it was just cool to think that I was being rewarded with the offer of free arcade games from eating my delicious Sonic Spaghettios.


As you can see in the photo above, it looks like the Sonic the Hedgehog Spaghettios lasted for quite a while from the Genesis days into the newer Dreamcast version of Sonic. I never had the two on the right myself, but I would have to say that it continued to be the most genius collaboration between Sega and a pasta company. I'm not sure if it's still around today since I've outgrown the desire to check the children's canned pasta section at the local market but I'll always remember the good times (probably unhealthy too) that I had with the old school Sonic Spaghettios.

Anthony.