Reddit Is Loving This Budget 'Dunkaroo' Hack

It's not often a work-around substitute for a beloved snack food gets better reviews than the original, but that's what's happening on Reddit, thanks to one user's post about the price of Dunkaroos. Redditor VanGoghsSeveredEar posted a photo of Nabisco Mini Nilla Wafers next to a tub of Pillsbury Funfetti Vanilla Frosting along with the caption, "When they start charging 3$ a unit for dunkaroos."

In case you missed the memo, Dunkaroos were a wildly popular lunchbox staple back in the 1990s. According to Snack History, the portable snack pack consisted of kangaroo- and basketball-shaped sugar cookies and a dipping tub of sugary frosting. Dunking (as in basketball) kangaroo cookies. Dunkaroos. Get it? 

A snack of sugar cookies and frosting sounds like a kid's dream come true. Or maybe too good to be true? By the 2000s, the sugary snack was falling out of favor. Replaced, we're guessing, by healthier — but way less fun — lunchbox snacks. By 2012, General Mills had ceased distribution of Dunkaroos in the United States.

And then they were back. When social media pleas by celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Chrissy Tiegen, and Frankie Muniz started gaining traction, General Mills decided to embrace nostalgia and bring back Dunkaroos (via Newsweek).

Turns out the celebrities weren't the only ones craving their childhood snack. In February 2020, shortly after General Mills announced the Dunkaroo revival, Brad Hiranaga, chief brand officer for North America, General Mills, told The New York Times, "It's been years in the making, probably is a fair way to state it. We get literally thousands of consumer requests for the product, since it's not been being sold in the U.S. recently. We knew we wanted to bring it back for a while." 

Hiranaga also told The New York Times the company planned to follow the same recipe it used to produce the original Dunkaroos and promised they would be around for a while. "We're very committed to launching them. So you don't have to worry at this point about stocking them up and putting them in your zombie apocalypse locker. We should have them out there so you can buy them."

We're not sure where Redditor VanGoghsSeveredEar found Dunkaroos priced at $3 per single unit. A quick search shows single-serving packs available at Walmart for $1.84. But even if price isn't a deterrent, the Nilla Wafer-and-Funfetti Frosting combo looks pretty good.

In fact, some Redditors, including aquamarinemoon, preferred these faux-Dunkaroos over the original. "The cookies are more bland and the icing is way too sweet. And the icing could just be me being old but the cookies they have now in dunkaroos would not have flown with me when I was a kid lmao," they said. 

Redditor Poptartlovesyou also questioned the authenticity of the recipe being used today. "The cookies are no longer tiny little graham crackers. They're bland and crumbly and the icing is sweeter ... They ruined my favorite snack. I went out of my way to get it for a really long time before it eventually disappeared and came back as this abomination."

If you feel similarly about Dunkaroos, at least you have this easy DIY hack to offer sweet, sweet consolation.