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Businesses don't get much more seasonal than the lunchbox business.

Aladdin Industries, headquartered here, sells more than 3 million lunchboxes just before school begins each summer, and hardly any the rest of the year.

But all summer long the company's 1,200-employee plant has readied itself, cranking out about 20,000 lunchboxes a day.

The company has been selling kids' lunchboxes with pop characters on them since 1950, but this year is special. Aladdin's hottest seller for 1993 features characters from, you guessed it, the hit Disney film, "Aladdin."

"The movie came out in November, so this is the firt school year to start since then," says Mike Schimmel, director of marketing. "The business is 100 percent character-driven. If you have a lunchbox without the right character on it, you can't sell any."

Also hot for Aladdin this year will be Disney characters from the recently re-released "Snow White" and the 1991 film "Beauty and the Beast," he says. Others expected to do well are traditional favorites Mickey and Minnie Mouse, GI Joe and various "Sesame Street" characters.

Aladdin has been in Nashville since 1948, but the company was founded in Indiana in 1908 as The Mantle Lamp Company of America. Founder Victor Johnson, an Iowa salesman, developed a kerosene lamp with a pleasant light. It was marketed as the Aladdin Lamp and became the best-selling kerosene lamp in the country.

During World War I, the company started making insulated containers for soldiers to keep foods hot or cold. After the war it continued producing them for the consumer market through Aladdin Industries, then a subsidiary of the lamp company.

When the baby boom began after World War II, the company began developing more lunchboxes aimed at boomer children. It put the first character, Hopalong Cassidy, on a lunchbox in 1950 and sales skyrocketed.

Eventually the parent company was renamed Aladdin Industries and the lamp business (they can operate on electricity or kerosene today) became a tiny part of sales. Lunchboxes make up the second largest segment of Aladdin's sales, after its popular Stanley brand insulated bottles.

However, none are the metal lunchboxes Baby Boomers remember growing up with. In 1984 high-impact plastic was introduced and it has since replaced all metal boxes. Some soft-sided lunchboxes are made of insulated nylon, and are aimed at children ages 3-8.

This year's Aladdin lunchboxes go for $5 to $6, and come with about $5 worth of coupons for various products, such as orange juice and underwear.

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