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Today's lunch boxes aren't the kits that adults remember.

The nation's two lunch-box makers, Aladdin and Thermos, produce plastic boxes with a paper picture on the outside and a plastic vessel for liquids on the inside. They replace the heavy metal, hinged boxes of the past four decades that included a metal thermos with glass insulation.

"But they're still tough: everyone knows they have to be because it's the only way to take care of a school bully - whack him with your lunch box," said Michael Schimmel, director of marketing for Aladdin Industries, the nation's top lunch box producer with 7.5 million boxes sold this August.

"In 1950, we were the first to put a licensed property - Hopalong Cassidy - on the cover of a lunch kit," Schimmel said. "We switched from metal to plastic about four years ago.

"Technology changed with high-strength plastic replacing the metal that would dent, and then rust. The picture is printed on a high-grade paper that we wet, freeze, bake in an oven, and it remains intact. We test it - it has to pass that way."

The pictures on the lunch boxes change every year to reflect whatever is popular, he said. The two big ones yet to be released this year are Batman and The Wizard of Oz, he said.

If you have a vintage metal box, hang onto it - a collector named Scott Bruce has started a national newsletter called Hot Boxing, set up to buy, sell and trade collectibles, Schimmel said.

To contact Bruce, call 1-617-492-5004 or write P.O. Box 87, Somerville, Mass. 02143.

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