Web Site News

Site Map

Contact Us

Home

For baby boomers, lunch boxes may have been their first expression of individuality.

Lunch boxes said a lot about the kids who used them for toting their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Oreos to school. With their colorful scenes and characters from popular TV shows, lunch boxes said:

"The Jetsons are cool!"

"Roy Rogers is my hero."

"I watch H.R. Pufnstuf and I'm not ashamed to admit it."

Or, "My Mom bought this for me and didn't even bother to ask if I minded carrying a Josie and the Pussycats lunch pail."

Perhaps that's why lunch boxes are now a hot collectible, particularly among baby boomers who are snapping up the metal vittles cans.

Folks who haven't seen their own "Hong Kong Phooey" or "Brady Bunch" lunch boxes for decades now haunt garage sales, flea markets, antiques stores and the Internet to reclaim a piece of their childhood. There are Web sites for lunch box devotees and books that help you figure out how much your lunch box would be worth today if your Mom hadn't tossed it in an organizational frenzy.

"I guess people just want what they had as a kid," said Bryan Los, who runs a Web site called lunchboxpad.com.

"They're works of art. They're colorful. For me it's a look back into history and the past," said Los, adding that the folks who frequent his Web site for the most part are 30 to 50 years old.

For collector Sean Brickell, lunch boxes are like miniature totable paintings.

"I think they're brilliant pieces of pop art," said Brickell, co-author of "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Metal Lunch Boxes." "There is also really a reminiscence factor. They haven't made (metal lunch boxes) since 1985. If you hated school, you at least liked lunch. It reminds you of happy times as a kid."

Some of Brickell's collection is now in the Smithsonian and he recently donated several dozen lunch boxes to a traveling Smithsonian exhibition called "Lunch Box Memories."

"I firmly believe that the lunch box reflected your perception of cool. My first one was Roy Rogers," said Brickell. "So with my lunch box I was making some sort of statement that Roy and I were tight. I think a lot of people saw the lunch boxes as something they believed in. It could be Batman or Miss America or a lot of things."

Many kids picked out their own lunch boxes but lots of Moms bought them, too. How else to explain all those plaid lunch boxes out there? Who would willingly carry his or her lunch in a box decorated like a bagpiper's skirt?

Lunch boxes were cool only up to a certain age. Once the age barrier was crossed, no self-respecting kid carried their lunch in a box if all their friends were either brown bagging it or standing in the hot lunch line.

Though the first lunch tins date back to the early 1900s - most featured scenes of picnics or kids with sailboats - the golden age of the lunch box didn't start until 1950. Disney came out with a Mickey Mouse lunch pail in the 1930s but not many were produced.

In 1950, someone working for Aladdin, which had been making lunch pails for awhile, wondered whether sales would get a boost if a sticker of Hopalong Cassidy was pasted on the side. The company produced red and blue versions and ended up selling 600,000 lunch boxes.

American Thermos noticed, came out with a Roy Rogers lunch box and the boom was on. Aladdin and Thermos accounted for about 90% of the lunch box market for decades, said Brickell.

"Each year, they would look at the coming shows and movies and see what would be the cool shows and they would get the licensing," said Brickell, whose most prized lunch box is a mint Yellow Submarine signed by Ringo Starr.

Among the most highly prized are the 1950s lunch boxes. A mint Superman box from 1954 sold for $11,999 on eBay two years ago, the highest ever paid for a box meant to carry sandwiches. But most boxes, depending on their condition and age, go for $10 to $350, said Los.

Many collectors specialize with themes like television westerns such as "Bonanza" and "Gunsmoke", rock 'n' roll like the Beatles or the Monkees, science fiction like "Star Trek" or "Lost In Space" or Disney characters.

Both Los and Brickell quickly named the Jetsons box, which was produced in 1963, as the coolest ever made because of the great artwork.

And the worst?

"Oh my gosh, some of the plaids," said Brickell. "They have a half dozen variations, red and brown, some were green. They were just plaid patterns. I mean - why bother?"

Among the rarest lunch boxes are those featuring television shows "It's About Time" and "240-Robert." Never heard of them? That's because lunch boxes were manufactured but then the shows were canceled before they aired or after only a few episodes were seen, said Los, who has 110 boxes in his collection.

With roughly 450 lunch boxes manufactured between 1950 and 1985, - when "Rambo" became the final vintage metal lunch box kit - most collectors don't bother to get every box and instead concentrate on a theme or ones that strike their fancy.

"The 1980s boxes are probably the best for starters," said Los, who carried a "Dukes of Hazzard" lunch box in the first grade. "$50 will get you a really nice box. As you progress to the '70s, '60s and '50s, the older you get the higher they will go."

Mint boxes from the 1960s go for $200 to $300 while lunch boxes in mint condition from the 1950s cost $300 to $500, said Los.

Jared Millen, owner of What's Fresh! Deli, 146 E. Juneau Ave., has more than 300 lunch boxes in his collection. Many of them hang from the ceiling of his business. His father started the collection 13 years ago and Millen occasionally acquires a few from customers or at garage sales.

Some folks come in to his deli to order a sandwich and never bother to look up, said Millen, but quite a few scan the ceiling and get excited when they see a familiar lunch box.

"A lot of people go, 'Oh, oh, oh I remember that show,' " said Millen in an interview at his delicatessen. "It's really neat. You see people come in here and you can see the flood gates open and they'll see a box they had and their hand goes to their mouth."

Overhead at What's Fresh! hang "Mork and Mindy," "Pac Man," "Return of the Jedi," "Knight Rider" and "Welcome Back, Kotter." They're not for sale though Millen often gets offers. Millen's favorites in his collection are a 1954 Lone Ranger box and Fat Albert. Neither are on display.

"They're a fun, whimsical thing to collect," Millen said.

Brickell said the condition of the box is important considering many lunch boxes were thrown around school buses on the ride home. And if the original bottle is still with it, the cost climbs even higher because most bottles broke or rusted and were given the heave-ho years ago, explained Los.

In the mid '80s, metal lunch boxes were phased out and replaced with plastic ones. Most lunch box collectors sneer at plastic lunch boxes and sniff that they don't last long and don't have the charm of metal boxes. Consequently, plastic lunch boxes are not very valuable.

Many lunch box collectors keep theirs on shelves out of sunlight so the paint doesn't fade. Other than occasionally dusting them, there's not much upkeep.

"Every few months I turn them around and it looks like a different collection. They're meant to be enjoyed," said Brickell.

Meg Jones is a Journal Sentinel reporter and lunch box collector who carried a Disney school bus lunch box as a child. She doesn't know what happened to it.

Comments or Suggestions?