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Long after the peanut butter sandwiches, apples, cookies and chocolate milk have disappeared, the mystique of the school lunch box lingers.

Terri Ivers is a collector, with nearly 300 of the rectangular metal boxes that often reflect the heroes of the era. Ivers is proud of a recent $200 acquisition, a lunch box featuring the popular characters of the 1963 television show, "The Jetsons." She says she'd pay that much for another one just like it.

The heroes of youth can be traced through the lunch boxes. The first metal, rectangular lunch box featured western movie star Hopalong Cassidy in 1950. Next came Roy Rogers, the popular star of Western flicks. Ivers says there were five versions of the Cassidy box and seven in the Rogers series.

Cartoon, movie and television characters, as well as singing groups, soon followed the mini-billboard metal lunch box trend. From the Flintstones to the Beatles, Terri has them covered.

She began her collection as a young woman with Gentle Ben, Adam 12, Lassie and Apple's Way lunch boxes. When she first began collecting, she haunted garage sales and flea markets. She still goes to those sales but mostly finds her collectibles at antique and collector's shows or antique malls.

In 1954, the first character lunch box made its debut with Howdy Doody. Next came the television show personalities Beverly Hillbillies, Batman, Partridge Family, and singing groups like the Osmonds, and as late as 1977 the KISS group was featured.

One of Ivers' prize boxes is one featuring the Beatles. A collector of Elvis originals, Ivers says there never was an Elvis lunch box and feels that's because Col. Parker didn't want to share the profits with the Aladdin company.

Lunch box thermos bottles are also collectables. According to Ivers, the change from metal to plastic thermos bottles came in 1968. Some folks find collecting lunch box thermos bottles more practical, storage-wise, than the lunch boxes. Ivers said the lunch boxes and the thermos bottles are not necessarily sold together.

About the collection, Ivers says, "It is enjoyable because you can look at the whole 40-year span from 1950 to 1990. You can pretty much see everything you used to watch on television or hear on the radio."

In addition to lunch boxes, she collects other older toys, including Breyer or Hartland plastic horses. She has an untold number of the horses, but has about 60 sets of riders and horses including the Lone Ranger, Tonto, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Wyatt Earp, the Rifleman, Brett Maverick and others. Sometimes she buys a horse, later finds a rider and matches them.

Ivers has a number of other old toys _ Texaco and Conoco trucks and wind-up robots. Much of her collection is stored.

Her husband asked her, "What good are they if you can't see them?" She answered like a true collector, "It's comforting to know I don't have to go hunt for it. I already have it."

Over the past year Ivers has been busy inventorying her collections, so she knows which boxes are duplicates and which ones she still needs. Sometimes she trades with other collectors, but mostly she buys. To keep abreast of the latest trends and finds, she reads antique trader magazines and price lists.

The highlight of her collecting career was attending the lunch-box collectors convention last year in Oakridge, Tenn. Besides seeing almost every lunch box ever made, about 2,500, she bought a T-shirt imprinted with a lunch box and the slogan, "Lunch Box Addict."

Perhaps Ivers' addiction to collecting is best summed up with a sign on the family computer: "The one who dies with the most toys wins."

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