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Oh, the memories of school lunch boxes. The aroma of brown apple cores, half-eaten peanut butter-and-jelly sand-wiches and spilled milk souring in the corner.

And how many times did your mother have to replace the glass liner in your thermos?

Those bent and beaten boxes, even ones with a broken handle, now fetch tens, and even hundreds, of dollars.

"Lunch kits are nothing but the history of television," said Larry Aikins, of Athens, Texas, author of "Pictorial Price Guide to Metal Lunch Boxes & Thermoses." "They start with the first television series 'Hopalong Cassidy' and then 'Roy Rogers,' 'Annie Oakley,' 'Daniel Boone,' 'Davy Crockett,' the whole series, to 'Charlie's Angels' and the 'Dukes of Hazzard.' "

By the 1960s, movies as well at TV shows were featured on lunch boxes. Today, even toys and books, such as the "Goosebumps" series, get cover treatment.

Metal lunch boxes were made from 1950 until 1985, when schools began to ban them. Now they are collectors' items, as are some of the hard plastic and soft vinyl ones that replaced them. Lunch kits, which include a thermos, are also in demand.

A total of about 600 designs have been manufactured by Aladdin Industries, American Thermos (now King Seeley Thermos) and a few smaller companies.

Aladdin, the first company to produce the boxes decorated with a theme licensed by a television show, is planning a special lunch kit for the Disney release of "101 Dalmatians" this fall.

The lunch box will have a dog-bone handle, according to Tina Rich, Aladdin's assistant production manager.

Aikins, 56, the author and lunch-box authority, is one of the largest dealers in lunch kits. He added a warehouse to his home to contain his collection.

Aikins will have some of his boxes on display and for sale at the Collectors Caravan Show Sept. 20-22 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis.

Though he has bought and sold thousands of lunch boxes, Aikins can't find ones like he used as a boy.

Aikins, 56, used to carry his lunch in a syrup or lard bucket with a wire handle. It was something other kids teased him about.

Although Aikins doesn't have any fond memories of lunch boxes, he understands the collecting passions of nostalgic baby boomers.

If he can't fill a customer's request from his collection of more than 3,500 lunch boxes, he sends out word to his worldwide network of scouts.

"I had a (recent) call from a person in Hong Kong who wanted me to overnight a lunch box with 'Charlie's Angels' on it," Aikins said.

"It cost $172 just to overnight it. The box itself was $160."

Aikins' most prized box is the prototype for the lunch box.

Aladdin had hired artist Robert Burton to paint "Hopalong Cassidy" in watercolor on the box to present to the board of directors.

The idea was approved, but that original box was left behind in a Chicago warehouse after Aladdin moved to Nashville, Tenn.

Aikins bought it for $3,500.

He said he turned down an offer of $16,000 for the box; he estimates it is worth $20,000.

"The first box was just a decal picture," Aikins said.

"Then they realized that the TV screen is rectangular like the lunch kit, and they needed to fill the whole front to make it look like a TV.

"Then all the kids had their little TVs with their favorite shows at lunch-time."

Aikins' hobby started by accident in the early 1980s. As a contractor, he had a cabinet shop in Houston. He started collecting antiques to decorate the large showrooms. He happened upon a few of the lunch boxes and liked how they decorated the cabinets.

He realized that he could find mint- condition boxes at five-and-dime stores, so he began collecting them. He enlisted the help of friends who were traveling salesmen.

"To this day, you can still find them in old stores," he said.

For Maggie Rose of Henderson, Ky., lunch-box collecting is "a blast from the past."

Mrs. Rose and her husband, Barry, stumbled onto the hobby while collecting memorabilia of "The Brady Bunch" television show.

"I grew up with 'The Brady Bunch,' " she said. "My life philosophy is if it didn't happen on 'The Brady Bunch,' it didn't happen in real life."

In the two years it took the couple to find a "Brady Bunch" box, they began to notice and collect others. Now their collection has 26 boxes, including "Family Affair," "Scooby Doo," "Partridge Family," "Hardy Boys," "Flintstones," "The Fox and The Hound," "Snow White," "The "Muppets" and "Captain America."

They found a "Brady Bunch" box and a thermos for $75 each.

Their best find, which came in a St. Louis antique shop, is a "Woody the Woodpecker" box they bought for a little more than $40, then told the clerk it was worth $100.

Aikins' collection has expanded beyond school lunch kits.

He also has leather kits from 1800s in England designed for buggie rides and cardboard lunch kits made during wartime.

According to Aikins' price guide, some of the rarest in the themed collection are "240 Robert," worth $1,800; "Toppie," $1,600; "Home Town Airport," $1,200; "Jetsons," $800; and "Star Trek," $525.

The market for sales of new lunch boxes is concentrated in a five-week period during back-to-school sales, said Aladdin's Ms. Rich.

The company averages sales of up to 5 million boxes each year.

The target market is children ages preschool to second grade, Ms. Rich said.

Related: Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Photos

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