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It might have started with "Mork and Mindy." Or maybe it was "Mary Poppins." But then, it could have been Pac Man. Perhaps "Happy Days."

Bob Colleluori really isn't sure. All he knows is that it began with a quarter in some thrift shop one slow afternoon almost five years ago. Where it'll end is nothing more than food for thought.

Robert Colleluori, an admitted "brown bagger" from way back, collects lunch boxes. Not just any lunch boxes, either.

Colleluori goes after those old metal, kiddie jobs - the ones with a Thermos inside - that went the way of Dick and Jane.

A brown-bagger since his grade- school days at St. Monica's in South Philadelphia and later at Central High School, the 29-year-old bachelor never had a lunch box.

"But my cousins in the suburbs had them," Colleluori said. "I remember seeing them in the garage and laundry room. I thought they were kind of neat. I remember the Batman one the most. Now I have three of them."

Colleluori figures he has more than 300 lunch boxes, spanning six decades. They're all neatly lined up on floor-to-ceiling shelves in the dining room ("I designed the room around them") of his home in the Fairview Village section of Camden.

Many of the boxes are separated into categories: Science fiction ("Star Trek," "Buck Rogers" and "Star Wars"); TV shows ("Adam 12," "Bionic Woman," "The Rifleman"); Movies ("Rambo" and Indiana Jones) Western heroes (Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy) and Disney characters (Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Jiminy Cricket).

Also on the shelf are Snow White and "The Black Hole," Evel Knievel and "Charlie's Angels," Miss America and Captain America, and Batman and the Seven Dwarfs.

Despite the numbers, Colleluori's collection of boxes pales in comparison to other members of the lunch box crowd. "Some people have thousands," Colleluori said. "There are tons of them out there. I'm not alone."

Colleluori feels some boxes he purchased for a quarter are now worth between $75 and $100. The going rate for old Looney Tunes lunch boxes is between $400 and $500, he said, and a lunch box with the Partridge Family on the side recently sold at auction for $3,000.

Lunch box collectors have their own newsletter - "Hotboxing" - magazines, catalogs and price guides. They also buy, trade and correspond with each other. Colleluori doesn't know how many fellow collectors there are, "but I know I'm not alone."

There was a time, however, that he thought he was.

That was that October day back in 1986 when he moseyed into a thrift shop and spotted an old lunch box. As a boy, Colleluroi worked after school in his father's antique store at 22nd Street and Passyunk Avenue, so something old was nothing new.

"I'm not positive, but I think it was a 'Mork and Mindy,' " smiled Colleluroi, who owns an advertising agency in Camden. "I think I paid a quarter.

"After that, I started picking up a couple of boxes here and there, flea markets, garage sales, people gave them to me as gifts . . .," he added. "I really got into it. I didn't think anyone else collected them. Wow! Was I wrong."

By the time he got into lunch boxes, Colleluori was already knee-deep into his antique toy collection, particulary Donald Duck toys.

If it waddles, quacks and its first name is Donald, chances are Colleluori has it. "I always liked Donald Duck," he said. "I don't know why, but he was always my favorite."

Not only does Colleluori, an understudy at the Walnut Street Theatre, favor Donald, he talks like him. "I speak a fluent Donald Duck," he laughed. "My nephews and kids love it."

In addition to toys and lunch boxes, Colleluori collects sand buckets and shovels.

"I just love toys, old toys," Colleluori says. "I think they're fascinating. Old toys were so creative.

They did something. Toys today don't do anything. They're boring. They're cheaply made, too. They're junky."

They don't make lunch boxes the way they used to, either, Colleluori says.

"Lunch boxes today are plastic," Colleluori said. "They stopped making metal ones back in the early 1980s. The art work on them was incredible. The extent they went to to create (the characters) was amazing. Each box was a piece of art in itself.

"Nowadays they just slap a sticker on the side."

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