Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition - Lunch Box Memories Pictures taken by Jerry Turner at the Huntsville Museum of Art, June 21, 2003. Lunch Box Memories tells the story of the metal lunch box, from its humble beginnings in the 1860s to its demise in the 1980s. It follows changes in the appearance and design of the lunch box, from the strictly functional tins and pails of our agricultural past, to illustrated metal lunch boxes with dazzling treatments of contemporary media stars, to today’s plastic and vinyl containers. The exhibition also touches upon the 75-year rivalry between two major companies, American Thermos and Aladdin Industries.
  
Drawn from the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Behring Center, and various lenders, the lunch boxes featured in the exhibition include some of the most rare and most significant boxes available to collectors today. Among the most prized are: the Mickey Mouse Oval (1935), the first character lunch box; Hopalong Cassidy (1950), the first box based on a well known TV hero; and The Beatles (1965), the first metal lunch box to use pop music performers, embossed 3-D portraits, and individual signatures. Lunch Box Memories recalls the times and places, the heroes and heroines, the fads and fantasies of our youth—a time when we began to define our choices, our ideas, and ourselves.
--Smithsonian Institution (www.si.edu)
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