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To appreciate these designers, you have to look past the metal box and harness the vision. Each lunch box is a perfect masterpiece, some more elaborate than others. In their truest form, these lunch boxes are now fine works of art, having long since used up their practical purpose.

Take a moment and get to know the people who made lunch box collecting so great. From lunch box pioneers to occasional freelance artists, a nice cross-section of artists and designers are represented.



Augustini, Sally
As an assistant to Robert Burton, Sally Augustini helped design scores of Big Boy restaurant interiors around Chicago during the 1950s and 1960s. Burton brought her into Aladdin, where she did the art for several girlish boxes such as Junior Miss and Miss America.


Bassler, Brenda
A Nashville freelancer hired by Aladdin to create the Pink Panther and Heathcliff kits in the early 1980s.


Bellerose, Mark
An artist colleague of Gene Lemery at the Boston firm of Gunn Associates, Bellerose created the art for KST's 1982 GI Joe kit.


Blackburn, Jim
A Nashville-based freelance artist, Blackburn was hired by Aladdin to create art for the U.S. Mail dome, U.S. Mail Brunch Bag, and The Archies kit in the late 1960s.


Boring, Wayne
Creator of the Superman comic strip during the 1950s, Boring also illustrated Universal's 1954 Superman lunch box. It was thought that a likeness of the comic character, rather than that of George Reeves the TV star, would promote better sales.

Gene Lemery [+] Zoom

Nick LoBianco [+] Zoom

Besides lunch boxes, Beverly Burge has created much of the art for a considerable amount of other Sesame Street merchandise. She left Aladdin in 1988 to pursue a wider career in commercial art.


Burton, Robert O.   [+] View Profile
Chicago industrial designer Bob Burton was hired by Aladdin in 1946 to improve product "look" and advertising for the then Chicago-based vacuum bottle maker. Beginning in 1949 with the Hopalong Cassidy kit, which he sketched out at his dining room table at one o'clock in the morning, Burton created most of Aladdin's lunch kits in the 1950s. Among his best kits are the 1957 Buccaneer dome-- which looks like one of his restaurants turned inside out, Chuck Wagon, Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, Disneyland, Annie Oakley, Robin Hood, Jet Patrol, Zorro, Paladin, Space Explorer, and Ludwig Von Drake.

A prankster, Burton painted himself as a space cadet floating above the moon's surface on the 1954 full litho Tom Corbett: Space Cadet box. This was found out and he was forced to remove his picture by an irate sales manager. Undeterred, a few years later Burton secretly painted his profile on several of the ten reale coins on Buccaneer.

Burton's gift for giving buyers what they wanted, whether garish restaurant decor or a compelling lunch box, "always enabled him to pull clients out of thin air," says a colleague at Aladdin. Burton's non-lunch box clients included the Big Boy restaurant chain, for which he designed interiors and waitress outfits for dozens of franchises across the Midwest; Kentucky Fried Chicken, for whom he designed the red and white logo; the City of Chicago, which hired him in 1958 to create a new lighting system for their State Street shopping mecca.

It was Burton who hired Elmer Lehnhardt to do finishing work on projects, including lunch boxes at his Chicago studio. As was the case with Aladdin's Star Trek dome, Burton often roughed out designs which Lehnhardt finished. In the 1960s, Lehnhardt succeeded Burton as art director for Aladdin.

Robert O. Burton [+] Zoom

Peanuts [+] Zoom

Caniff died in 1988. All his art and letters are housed in several file cabinets at Ohio State University's Library for Communication and Graphic Arts, located in Columbus. According to the curator, this trove includes a "mock-up" of the Steve Canyon lunch box with the original art affixed to the metal box and the thermos.


Cohen, Sam
A New York freelancer hired by Nick LoBianco to create art for KST's 1963 Corsage and 1964 MacPherson Plaid kits. Cohen most likely helped LoBianco with other projects during this time.


Cummings, Ann
A staff artist for Aladdin in the 1970s, Cummings created the Winnie the Pooh, Raggedy Ann & Andy, Robin Hood (Disney cartoon), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Mickey Mouse Club (1976), and Snow White (vinyl) kits.


Davis, Jack
Atlanta-born staff artist for EC Comics in the 1950s and MAD magazine through the 1980s, Davis did the finished art for KST's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. kit. His other artistic accomplishments include the "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" movie poster and 36 Time magazine covers during the Watergate saga.

KST threw out Davis' original U.N.C.L.E. art in 1986.

Hair Bear Bunch [+] Zoom

GI Joe [+] Zoom

After 1957, proving that their artists could do the job as well as Disney Studios, Aladdin did most of the art and design for Disney kits in their own art department. The exception was the Disney School Bus whose design was originally thought up by Al Konetzni, the Disney "idea man" in charge of the Aladdin account. The finished art was done by Elmer Lehnhardt.

Aladdin artists responsible for Disney kit art since 1957 include Bob Burton, Elmer Lehnhardt, Ann Cummings, Beverly Burge, and Bill Randolph. Nearly all of Aladdin's Disney art, including that for the two Zorro kits, is kept in the company's archives.

Information courtesy The Official Price Guide to Lunch Box Collectibles.
Additional information provided by Lunch Box Pad.

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