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Bill Poole and his son A.J. have amassed a collection of more than 1,000 lunch boxes, which they keep in the attic.

Walk into the attic of Bill and Bonnie Poole, and the walls explode with reminders of television shows, comic books and school lunches of the past.

The walls are lined with hundreds of colorful images of television celebrities ranging from "Hopalong Cassidy" to the duo from "Adam 12" and the gang from "Hogan's Heroes." There, too, are Howdy Doody, Donny and Marie Osmond, and Buck Owens and Roy Clark from "Hee-Haw."

They're all there -- on lunch boxes. They fill the walls from top to bottom, and they fill the free time of Poole and his 11-year-old son A.J.

Over the past three years, the pair have collected more than 1,000 vinyl or steel lunch boxes, including about 400 different ones. The others are duplicates -- for trading.

The father and son team say they enjoy sharing the same hobby for the same basic reason -- the thrill of the hunt.

"When we see something we don't have, it's really a thrill," said A.J., a sixth-grader at Washington Elementary School.

Poole, 44, a co-founder of a hospital business consulting firm in Upper St. Clair, said the lunch boxes remind him of his youth. He says this "nostalgic value" attracted him to the hobby. While in Manhattan on a business trip three years ago, Poole said he tried to escape from a downpour by ducking into a bookstore. There, he started leafing through the pages of a book on lunch box collecting and came across a photograph of a Hopalong Cassidy lunch box just like the one he used to carry to school as a child in the 1950s.

"I was pretty much taken by all the nostalgia," he said. Soon afterward, Poole took home the first lunch box in his collection, a "Star Wars" one trimmed in black.

Since then, he and his son have gone to flea markets, garage sales and auctions to find lunch boxes to add to their collection. They find most of them at flea markets.

"Normally, I ask just about everyone at a flea market if they have lunch boxes," Poole said. He hands out business cards with a picture of a "Lone Ranger" lunch box on it.

"Everywhere I go, I always hand out my name and number and tell people I'm looking for lunch boxes," he said. They have gotten boxes by mail from people in Florida, Tennessee, New York and California.

The Pooles aren't the only serious area collectors. Dave Russell, a Wilkinsburg resident, has about 540 different lunch boxes, and Jerry Goebert of Penn Hills about 560.

The Pooles will stay in the hunt, simply for the fun of it, they said.

Poole said A.J., with his sharp eyes, is great to have along at flea markets. "He has a radar. He's able to spot a lunch box about three rows away on the table."

A.J.'s size helps him make the hard finds. "I have a pretty good view of things, because I can see what's on the table and underneath the table," he said.

A.J. said he spotted his favorite lunch box, "The Green Hornet," in the back of a pickup truck partially covered up at a flea market. "It's one of my better finds," he said.

Poole's favorites are "Hopalong Cassidy" and his 1954 "Lone Ranger." He carried ones just like them when he was a boy.

The father-son pair limit their search to steel and vinyl boxes -- no plastic. What makes that more challenging is that steel lunch boxes are not made anymore. The last one, made in 1987, pictured Sylvester Stallone as "Rambo."

They have that one, too.

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