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There was heavy competition in the early days of boxing, with each company trying to out-do the other. In 1950, Aladdin put a Hopalong Cassidy decal on their box. American Thermos responded with a fully lithographed Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunch box in 1953.

Other companies, such as Universal, released some of today's most sought after lunch boxes. Superman (1954) and Bullwinkle (1962) are both Universal kits, and both are regarded as two of the top kits to own.

Over 120 million lunch boxes were sold in America between 1950 and 1970. That's one and one-half boxes for every boy and girl of the baby boom generation. This number can be attributed to post-war affluence and the addition of the television as a new staple in millions of homes by the early 1950s.

The steel lunch box and bottle continuously evolved from 1950 until its death in 1987. This was the "Golden Age." The most brilliant, awe-inspiring creations were born within this era, and they left a legacy than can be charted to this day. Thanks so much for the memories!



ADCO Liberty
A West Orange, New Jersey metal stamping outfit, ADCO Liberty manufactured steel lunch boxes between 1954 and 1956. The box lineup included The Lone Ranger, Howdy Doody, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and three Davy Crockett kits-- one being an "official" Disney kit. Mickey Mouse and the "official" Davy Crockett kit included a matching thermos bottle made by Universal (Landers, Frary and Clark). ADCO apparently stopped making lunch boxes after running afoul of the Disney organization for including Kit Carson, a non-Disney character, on two Davy Crockett lunch boxes. In late 1956, Disney turned over the license to make its lunch boxes to Aladdin.

Although the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Lone Ranger, and Howdy Doody kits were manufactured by ADCO Liberty, they were actually sold as part of the Universal product line-- as seen in a 1956 Universal magazine ad. Each lunch kit sold for $2.69-- also included were Superman, Gene Autry, and Authentic Scotch Plaid.

Much of ADCO's flat lunch box lithography was done by Pittsburg Metal Lithography in Fallsington, Pennsylvania. PML threw out all ADCO material in the early 1970s.

As of the late 1980s, ADCO made auto parts and disavows any knowledge of its earlier flirtation with lunch boxes. A few Davy Crockett proof sheets are in a private collection, but no original art or catalogs have been found.


Air Flite
At the height of Beatlemania in the mid-1960s, a series of Beatles vinyl lunch boxes appeared bearing the brand name "Air Flite." During the 1960s, the Bronx in New York City was the site of many fly-by-night vinyl "bag houses," and Air Flite was probably one of them. With one-color lithography based on Dezo Hoffman photography, these poorly constructed boxes were probably not licensed, although they bear the letters NEMS, one of the Beatles' licensing arms.


Aladdin Industries
From 1950 through the late 1980s, Aladdin and King Seeley Thermos were the Coke and Pepsi of the lunch box industry. Originally a maker of vacuum bottles, kerosene lamps, and stoves, Aladdin moved its operation from Chicago in 1949 to Nashville, Tennessee, taking advantage of the abundance of inexpensive natural gas-- a vital component of glass making. During the late 1940s, Aladdin had sold modest quantities of its plain steel/glass vacuum bottles with red and blue baked enamel lunch boxes, which were supplied by a manufacturer in Massillon, Ohio.

In 1950, in an effort to increase vacuum bottle sales, Aladdin attached Hopalong Cassidy decals to those plain lunch boxes, added a lithographed Hoppy thermos bottle, and transformed the lunch box industry. Sales jumped from 50,000 to 600,000 kits the first year.

American Thermos introduced the fully lithographed flat steel kit in 1953 and Aladdin adopted this innovation for its 1954 lineup. "We couldn't use the steel kits we were buying because under the heat of the welding, the litho would burn off," says Aladdin. "So we bought steel in sheets with the litho done by an outside firm." Embossing the front and back of the steel lunch box, an Aladdin trademark, was added in 1962.

In 1959, keeping pace with a similar move on the part of American Thermos, Aladdin introduced Bobby Soxer and other vinyl lunch boxes. Zippered, purse-like variations of the vinyl box called Brunch Bags were added in 1962.

Aladdin dropped the traditional steel/glass thermos bottle in favor of plastic in 1968. A denser, more narrow plastic bottle was briefly marketed in 1973. A new version of the plastic thermos was then introduced, and was used up until the time they stopped steel box production.

Aladdin began phasing out steel boxes in favor of injection-molded plastic in 1980. The first injection-molded plastic box marketed by Aladdin was a dome. Flat plastic boxes were introduced in 1983. By 1986, all production of steel boxes had stopped.

From 1950 to 1988, most of Aladdin's lunch kit artwork was created by the company's art department. After 1963, Chicago Litho was responsible for converting Aladdin's original lunch box art into four-color lithographic press plates. These plates were then turned over to Aladdin's lithographers, such as W. D. Hutchingson, American-National Can, and Heekin Can for mass production. The finished sheets were trucked to Nashville for cutting and stamping in Aladdin's own plant.

Thanks to the foresight of Aladdin's personnel, the company maintains an extensive archive that includes a nearly complete set of catalog pages, lunch boxes, and sixty percent of the original lunch kit artwork. The archive is not open to the public.


American Can
From the late 1940s until 1965, American Can produced all of American Thermos' (and later King Seeley's) steel lunch boxes in their Brooklyn, New York plant. Artist Ed Wexler, creator of the Roy Rogers, Davy Crockett, Boating, and Hometown Airport kit art, was an employee of American Can in their art department. By the mid-1960s, KST had bought the necessary stamping equipment from American Can to set up its own operation in Norwich, Connecticut.

In the 1960s and 1970s, American Can lithographed steel production sheets for Aladdin at its Birmingham, Alabama plant. In 1986, the surviving Aladdin remnants, including Paladin and The Jetsons production sheets, were sold to a scrap metal dealer who shipped them to Pakistan as roofing material. Today, only one set of lithographed Jonathan Livingston Seagull lunch box progressives survives as a display in the front office of American Can's Birmingham plant.

American Can merged with National Can in 1987 to become American-National Can.


American Thermos (see King Seeley Thermos)


Ardee Industries
Ardee Industries, a Hagerstown, Maryland leather goods company, produced a line of generic vinyl lunch kits for discount chains like Woolworth and K-Mart in the 1960s and 1970s,.

Founded in the late 1950s by Harold N. Taylor, a theoretical chemist who helped develop the Hiroshima bomb during World War II, Ardee continued in the business until the mid-1970s. Taylor says the name Ardee came from contracting the names of his kids Ronnie, Ricky, and Debbie.

During its life, Ardee made 10 to 15 million vinyl boxes at the rate of 250,000 to 750,000 a year. Most feature a paper lithograph behind a clear, TV screen-shaped vinyl window on the front of the box, and contained a plain "styro" bottle. The original art, which included one piece by Nick LoBianco, is lost.


Cheinco
In the 1980s, Chein Industries, a Burlington, New Jersey housewares manufacturer, produced a series of lithographed steel "carry-all" kits, including Donald Duck, Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Oreos, and The Chipmunks. Throw-backs to the two-handled pails of the 1920s and 1930s, these kits were too small to carry an entire lunch, but nevertheless turn up in lunch box collections.


Chicago Litho
This Illinois metal decorating firm was used by Aladdin from 1963 to 1986, and by King Seeley Thermos from 1974 to 1987-- creating the four-color lithographic press plates for steel lunch boxes from the original lunch box artwork. Chicago Litho usually lithographed one hundred test proof sheets for each lunch box before sending the plates to the lithographer for mass production. According to a company spokesmen, none of these proofs exist today.

Every Christmas throughout the 1960s, Aladdin presented a case of completed character lunch boxes to a Chicago Litho executive. As of the late 1980s, most of those cartons lay unwrapped in his Chicago residential attic.


Decoware
In the 1930s and 1940s, Decoware was a familiar name stamped on the bottom of many colorful oval or rectangular picnic basket-type pails such as Varsity Football or Train. Made of tin, usually with two stamped handles, these boxes had enough room for a pie tray insert but not a thermos bottle.

Nothing by way of blueprints, production sheets, or original art survives from this great lunch box line.


Geuder, Paeschke and Frey
From 1935 to 1937, Disney Enterprises licensed the Milwaukee tinware firm of Geuder, Paeschke and Frey to produce a small oval Mickey Mouse lunch kit. G, P & F pails were made of tin and none included thermos bottles. Expensive for the time (Depression), relatively few were made and even fewer were sold, making this item very rare today.

The company was still in business in the late 1980s, although it no longer produced lunch boxes.


General Steel Ware
Little is known about this Canadian company that had manufactured at least one steel lunch box, Sleeping Beauty, probably in the late 1960s. The Disney archives have no dates for its licensing and the firm has since gone out of business.


Graphic Arts
Not to be confused with Ohio Art, this Toledo, Ohio metal decorating firm created the four-color lithographic press plates for American Thermos' yearly lunch box line (King Seeley Thermos after 1960) from 1953 until 1973. The press plates were sent to Pittsburg Metal Lithography for mass production. Pittsburg Metal, in turn, trucked the production sheets to Brooklyn, New York (before 1965), and Norwich, Connecticut (after 1965) for cutting and stamping into lunch boxes.

Dissatisfied with Graphic Arts' poor quality reproduction of the original lunch box art, KST changed to Aladdin's metal decorator, Chicago Litho, in 1974.

Graphic Arts closed down in the late 1970s. No materials survive today.


Heekin Can
This Cincinnati lithographer manufactured the steel production sheets for several of Aladdin's lunch kits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Steve Canyon, Red Plaid, Junior Miss, Chuck Wagon, and the original Hopalong Cassidy bottle sleeve.

The company preserves a half dozen lunch box examples in its archives, but searchers have failed to turn up any other lunch box material.


King Seeley Thermos
American Thermos before 1960. Together with Aladdin Industries, KST has dominated the kids' lunch box market in America since the early 1950s.

America's first "thermos" bottle maker since 1907, American Thermos began selling its vacuum bottle in plain, black lunch boxes for workmen as early as 1911. Plain steel children's lunch kits were introduced in 1920. Sales of kids lunch kits remained modest until the introduction of the character kit in 1953.

Impressed by the success of Aladdin's original Hopalong Cassidy box, Thermos had American Can engineer a fully lithographed Roy Rogers kit in 1953. More attractive than Aladdin's Hoppy kit, it enabled Thermos to make deep inroads into the lunch box market. Sales in the first year exceeded two and one half million kits.

These flat steel boxes, made larger in 1954 and again in 1965, remained the meat and potatoes of the lunch box line until production was stopped in 1987. Decorated dome kits such as Red Barn were introduced in 1957. Metal box handles were replaced by plastic in 1957. All of the component plastic parts of Thermos' lunch kits, such as box handle, bottle stoppers, and cups, were manufactured by the Plastene Corporation, which was acquired by Thermos in 1952.

Thermos introduced vinyl boxes in 1959. These Ponytails kits were actually made by Standard Plastic Products. Munchies Bags, similar to Aladdin's Brunch Bags, made a brief showing in 1977, followed by "deluxe" vinyl boxes in 1978.

The shift to plastic began as early as 1972 when KST abandoned the traditional steel/glass bottle for the cheaper, molded plastic bottle with printed graphics. Injection-molded plastic boxes were introduced that same year.

Unlike Aladdin, KST never had its own inhouse art department, but instead hired freelancers, such as Nick LoBianco, to produce lunch box art. The initial conversion, between 1953 and 1973, of original art to four-color lithographic press plates was the domain of a metal decorating firm called Graphic Arts. After the quality of Graphic Arts' work fell off, Chicago Litho was given this job in 1974. All of KST's mass production lithography for lunch kits was done by Pittsburg Metal Lithography. From the 1940s to 1964, all of Thermos' lunch boxes were actually manufactured by American Can in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1987, KST closed down its Norwich, Connecticut assembly plant and moved its headquarters to Freeport, Illinois.

Although KST retains a complete set of yearly catalogs, all the original lunch kit art from the 1950s through the 1970s was thrown into a dumpster on a black November day in 1986. Some art from the 1980s is now in private collections.


Kruger Manufacturing Company
A Canadian maker of flashlights and fishing tackle boxes in New Toronto, Ontario, Kruger manufactured a steel Davy Crockett lunch box in 1955.

The company has long since gone out of business and the Disney archive is unable to document if Kruger made any other Disney lunch boxes or bottles.

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

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