The Lunchables Experience - Documentation

An unfiltered collection of notes

What does Lunchables mean to you?

The Lunchables Experience is an immersive art and performance piece that boldly delves into the cultural significance of food and American upbringing, and introduces a new perspective on food consumption patterns by deconstructing the American culinary icon, Lunchables.

In the late 1970s, Bob Drane, a former advertising executive, noticed his children assembling impromptu meals from various leftovers. Recognizing the potential for a convenient, ready-to-eat lunch option for children, Drane conceived the idea of Lunchables. He believed that by providing individually packaged, pre-portioned ingredients, children could easily create their own meals.

A revisitation of childhood, commentary on the present, and invitation to the future.

Lunchables as an symbol of childhood, assimilation, creativity, love, and agency.

• Origin
  • It was a cool, partly-cloudy morning that welcomed Leah, Jerome, and Austin, as they took to the trails of Bull Hill one autumn Saturday. This was the first time that the three of us had spent time togther. The trails were trailing, the nature was naturing, and the
    
  • halfway through our hike, we took a break to share our prepared lunches with each other. As Leah and Austin revealed their ordinary foods, Jerome unveiled a vessel of nostalgia previously stored deeply away in the memory banks of Leah’s and Austin’s minds. This inevitably lead to conversation about Lunchables’ presence in our childhoods,
    
• Team Reflection
  • Jealousy. Customization. Freedom. I remember seeing peers in elementary school having lunchable and being curious about that process of being the one to put together your food however youd like. I remember being excited the first time I was able to have it myself; it wasn’t filling, food was only decent, but fun nonetheless. 
    
  • Last memory was probably grabbing a few of them in middle school as a snack, for fun, with friends, half as a joke. 
    
  • I saw lunchables as an opportunity to plau with your food. Have control over it. Play with portions, play with different combinations. 
    
  • I don’t remember
    
• Purpose of gathering
  • Take advantage of the unique opportunity to re-establish connection with Lunchables in a positive light, while inviting acceptance, friendship, and childlike wonder.
    
  • In our journey to create a new association with this Concept, we were unavoidedly drawn to our original association with the food
    
  • An invitation to re-examine and redefine personal connections with Lunchables, and lightly examine the intersection of food and societal pressures defined by cuisine.
    • invite participants to reconstruct a new meaning of Lunchables.
      
• Process
  • Defining the journey
    • “What if we did a Lunchables Omakase?”
      
    • As we reflected on what Lunchabes meant to us, we realized the most logical way to dissect the concept was to break up the experience in to 3 acts
      
    • Meetups - applebees
      • even choosing planning spaces, we wanted to cultivate a sense of nostaliga to lead our event decisions in the right direction
        
    • Shout out Side Project Club - allowed us to safely exposure our idea to fellow designers and give us confidence to carry out the event in full
      
    • ACTS:
      1. Childlike glee, a feeling that many reflect fondly of, and one many spend countless hours and boundless fortune to seek and chase after. In this experience, permission is granted for adults to re-experience what it feels like to be a child - return to a state of mind, a place we all have once started. Starting at a grocery store, participants will embark on a small field trip, and feel happy and small in the big world they haven’t quite cared to grasp yet.
         
      2. An elevated experience featuring lunchables-inspired charcuterie and gourmetpizza as well as a wine capri sun tasting. Attendees are encouraged to mingle and reflect on social and cultural norms surrounding fine dining
         
      3. Act III welcomes in what your world once was, the best moments of our childhood, defined by curiosity and desire. Enter “mom’s lunchbox”, which we open to find a moment of home and belonging (like the moment in ratatouille?). Our backgrounds most likely lead to different comfort foods, and this act offers opportunities to relate with each of them, in a space of inclusion and newfound curiosity for those around us.
         
    • Once this outline was complete, it was time for designing the deliverables and various event assets.
      
• Defining assets
  • memory association with elementary public schools
    • gold stars
      
    • permission slips
      
    • manilla folders
      
    • yearbook signings
      
    • report cards
      
    • box tops
      
    • 3 ring binders
      
    • scholastic book fairs
      
    • school cafeterias
      
    • yearbook signings
      
  • Invitation
    • A full day of arts and crafts upcycling Lunchables packaging.
      
    • Ask everyone to share beforehand, one dish liked or often had during childhood (elementary school?) If liked, explain why, if often, explain if they liked it or not, and if they wanted something else
          - OPTION A: If liked or if they wanted something else, prepare that
          - OPTION B: In all cases, even if had often but disliked, prepare that dish
          - if disliked could be opportunity to revisit an old hate that may now be a like/appreciation from a new perspective, learn that they’ve come to deal with not always getting what you want, etc.
      
  • Website
    • Opening the doors to storing the event in digital infinitude
      
  • Video accompaniement for Act II
    • curating the environment of a surreal world, an America deeply rooted in captialist values, modern day events that could very well have been progressions of the same negative connotations that Lunchables had for some of us
      
    • to separate the Acts more deeply, displace guests, encourage discomfort
      
  • Final deliverable - Yearbook (s)
    • Weeks of reseraching the history of lunchables, designing how the book would be experienced, and compiling profile data from participants
      
    • Working with < name > to secure a series of Yearbooks from 1997 - 2004 from the same school, aorund the same time that most of us were in elementary school
      
  • Day-of
    • foods - participant quesitonaire
      
    • space preparation / location scouting

The Lunchables Experience

• The days leading to the event, we were all scrambling to craft the yearbooks together, gather food ingredients, and prepare the event spaces for acts ii and iii
  
• Basic Itinerary
  • Act I : “Field Trip!”
    • Meet with guests, have permission slips be filled out, go with everyone to supermarket to buy Lunchables for everyone
      
    • Take all guests to local botanical park/garden, and hand out curated worksheet for them to fill out
      
    • let them roam free and rest in the space
      
  • Act II : “One of the worlds we live In”
    • as a participant you have just enjoyed your outdoor time, having fun filling out the worksheet
      
    • group is led to the front of jerome’s apt, and our waiter leads each person 1by1 into jerome’s living room, handing them a wine glass
      
    • they will be lead to jerome’s living room into a pvc “cage” lined with white tablecloth/bedsheets (see fig. 1). this cage will help completely immerse the participants into a world that figuratively imitates a world decorated by fine-dining, capitalism
      
    • the cage will have a projector playing a short reel of clips overlayed on top of each other (see fig. 2-n), sourced from movies, animations, and historic events
      
    • each participant will have their namecard placed at specific points in the cage, so their attention will be pointed at a small table in the middle of the room, from which we will be serving 3 “courses”. edgy club music will be playing.
      
    • we will announce each course by entering and leaving the cage
      
    • after the final act, we thought about adding a little bit og final “paint” juice to each person’s glass, and ask each to splash their paint/juice onto the tablecloth walls of the cage, to signify a “release” from the act and what this mini-world represents
      
    • then we will lead everyone out of the cage into the prepared backyard for act iii, where “Kung Fu Fighting” is playing on a shitty speaker….
      
    • act ii plays more on the edge of taking you away from the pleasures, fun, and comfort designed in acts i & iii
      
  • Act III : “A Potluck from Home”
    • leave space and rest of time to be open-ended, and people can come and go as they please
      
    • Opened as an end to the event, we reveal a potluck of foods taken from every participant’s favorite or most commonly consumed food from their childhood, or food they wished they had
      
    • Bringing warmth