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Brickell shows off some of his lunch-box collection. "If you study the detail, the color, the action on them," he says, "you'll find they're exciting pieces of art."

The gift of a domed, 1958-model Roy Rogers lunch box - metal, of course - two years ago gave Sean Brickell of Virginia Beach and his wife their taste for collecting.

To most of us, a battered metal lunch box without a sandwich in it is a worthless tin of stale air.

To others, it's a collectible.

"Great pop and cultural artists designed these things," maintains lunch box laureate Sean Brickell. "Dr. Seuss did one, Chic Young of `Blondie' fame did one, Milton Caniff of `Steve Canyon' did one. If you study the detail, the color, the action on them, you'll find they're exciting pieces of art."

Brickell, president of the Norfolk public relations firm that bears his name, is a certified paileontologist. He and fellow collector Allen Woodall have compiled "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Metal Lunch Boxes," a definitive 168-page treatment of the subject, just out from Schiffer Publishing at $29.95.

Pictured in full color are the fronts, backs and bottles of every one of the 450 metal lunch boxes created in their gustatory heyday from 1950 to 1985. If you carried one to school during those years, it's in this book. Davy Crockett battles a bear on his box; Dick Tracy consults his two-way wrist radio; Superman leaps tall buildings at a single bound.

"Our lunch boxes," says Brickell, 41, "were far more than a utilitarian vessel for food. No, they were our endorsement of something cool. And by association, we, too, informed the world we were part of a select group."

His personal preference was for Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys, whose 1958 "chow wagon" came with a domed top. A couple of years back, he was given one of these by a friend who came across it at a flea market. That did it.

Now Brickell and his wife, Robin, display scores of vintage boxes behind plexiglass in their bright Virginia Beach kitchen.

The major lunch box manufacturer, Aladdin Industries, was a Nashville concern that originally specialized in oil lamps. By 1950, even remote areas had electricity, and Aladdin was on the verge of bankruptcy. Some employee hit on the idea of embossing lunch boxes with the image of a popular person to see what would happen in the children's market.

It exploded.

The popular person was Hopalong Cassidy, and Aladdin sold 600,000 lunch boxes with Hoppy sternly brandishing his six-shooter.

"The Thermos company followed up with a Roy Rogers box that sold 100,000, and the war was on," Brickell says.

He puts the combined sales figure over the ensuing 20 years at $250 million.

The last metal lunch box to be produced was 1985's "Rambo." Sylvester Stallone sulked and flexed from behind a rocket launcher. Sign of the times; by then, lunch boxes had moved from depicting weapons to becoming them.

Some concerned mothers in Florida started a campaign that ultimately got the metal boxes banned because schoolchildren were whacking each other over the heads with them.

Now they whack each other over the heads with vinyl and plastic.

"I'm not into plastic," Brickell says. "The vinyl are collectible, but the plastic ones of today have no soul at all. They're just injected molds with a decal stuck on 'em."

Roy's chow wagon in mint condition brings a tidy $250 on the open market today.

Which is a fair response to those who would argue that Sean Brickell is out to lunch.

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