As a kid (in the 80s), my brother and I used to say we were King Kong eating a bunch of tree trunks. So they were obviously tree-trunk shaped, i.e. straight, and our senses of scale weren’t so good.
I occasionally did the “threading noodles on fork tines” thing, too.
I’d forgotten about the fork thing! I did that, too.
So they haven’t changed shape over the years, but are the noodles themselves still technically elbow macaroni, even though the bend is minimal?
Okay, is there anyone who didn’t do this?
I ate Kraft Dinner in the late 80s/early 90s and the noodles were always a bit bent.
I remember noodles with about a 90 degree bend when I was a kid. I am not sure if it was Kraft or the store brand that we would get.
I don’t do it any more with elbow macaroni, but always with penne.
Got a box of what I thought was enormous spaghetti the other day from a salvage store.
Turned out to be Kraft Mac & Cheese noodles which were as long as spaghetti noodles. There was a hole in the middle of them, I mean, and they, noodle and hole, matched the diameter of KM&C. It was pretty cool. Went well with our Sherried Chicken.
Of course, I don’t recall what they were called. Something ending in “i”, I’m pretty sure. 
Ah! Found it! Perciatelli.
The Golden Grain I remember cost a quarter and came in a little plastic bag, but it had regular elbow macaronis. I need to comment on the Spongebob link- does anybody really pay the absurd prices on Amazon for stuff like that? That’s $2.20 per box!
I didn’t as I always used a spoon.
Heretic.
Nuh UH!!! If you use a spoon you get all the cheesey sauce goodness too! You can’t DO that with a stupid FORK!!! 
Uh-HUH! Only little kids use a spoon! Nanny-nanny-boo-boo!
I did find a Kraft ad from the 70s that shows them as straight.
However an earlier ad from the 60s shows the elbow bends.
Weird, I’ve always called that “bucatini.” Turns out that noodle’s got two names!
I just got some where the pasta was shaped like goldfish, don’t think it was Kraft.
Oh, wow! I’ve never had it before, just picked it up because it was the only not-100% whole wheat pasta at the Amish salvage store. About half way through, I looked down at a piece I’d cut with my fork and went, “woah! These are super long Kraft Mac & Cheese noodles!” They’re good, I’ll probably seek them out in the future. Nice chew, if a little difficult to spin.
Learn something new every day. I’m also familiar with bucatini, but not perciatelli. That said, the bucatini I’ve had were never as big as Kraft noodles–more like thick spaghetti with a needle-sized hole through it. (You couldn’t really thread them on the tines of a fork.) But they do appear to be the same thing from the pictures I could find.
Exactly. The second ad is an ad for the Deluxe Dinner. Note the can of cheese sauce - it used to come in little cans, not the pouches like today.
The first ad is for the kind that uses the packet of power mix that you add butter and milk to.
