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Sitting at the head of the cafeteria table, first-grader Raven Piecinsky eyed her classmate Madison Pendle, who was showing off her Bratz dolls insulated lunchbox.

"I don't have a lunchbox," Raven said, pushing her cooked corn around her lunch tray. "I used to have a Barbie lunchbox, but it got very old and had to get thrown out."

With the exception of Madison, none of the other first-graders at Raven's table at Annistown Elementary School in Snellville had lunchboxes, either. In fact, lunchboxes are nearly obsolete in school cafeterias these days, and when they do surface, they're usually of the vinyl variety with shapes and decorations hardly reminiscent of the trusty metal boxes carried by generations of schoolchildren.

"I don't see many of the metal lunchboxes anymore," admitted Annistown principal Calvin Watts, who easily recalls the lunchboxes of his youth: "Six Million Dollar Man," "Fat Albert" and one designed like a U.S. mail box. "I can't remember the last time I saw one."

The last metal lunchbox was produced nearly two decades ago and celebrated the exploits of the take-no-prisoners movie hero Rambo. Today, antiques dealers, collectors and museum curators ferret out prized boxes at yard sales, flea markets, even on eBay, where a pristine 1954 Superman lunchbox sold for $12,000 four years ago.

"The day of the metal lunchbox in schools, I think, is a day of the past," said Allen Woodall, an antiques dealer who has amassed more than 3,700 lunchboxes and thermoses for his museum in Columbus. "It's a great part of our history."

During the "golden age" of lunchboxes -- from the early 1950s to the late 1980s -- about 450 designs were created, and hundreds of millions were sold.

For Ruby Rice, Annistown's veteran cafeteria manager, explaining the disappearance of lunchboxes is simple: More kids eat cafeteria food today, so there's no need for a lunchbox.

Of about 520 students at Annistown, Rice and her staff feed as many as 450 a day. Throughout Gwinnett County Public Schools, 82 percent of elementary students eat school meals rather than bring a lunch.

"I remember it being a really big deal what lunchbox you had," said Sara Riney, marketing and public relations manager for Atlanta's Museum of Design, which is hosting the exhibition "Lunch Box Memories" through mid-February.

"I can distinctly remember being very disappointed with my Holly Hobbie lunchbox because it just did not fit me," Riney said. "My brother had Heathcliff, and I liked his. Sometimes, when he wasn't taking his lunch to school, I'd take Heathcliff."

A kind of urban legend is passed around by the lunchbox faithful regarding what led to the box's demise. Generally, the tale involves an angry group of Florida moms who denounced the steel boxes as dangerous and demanded they be outlawed. Somehow, this rowdy group was able to convince the right people -- a judge or politician, depending on which version of the story is told -- of the danger, and manufacturers were pressured into ceasing production.

More than likely, the metal box's fate was sealed by something far more mundane: plastic.

First produced in the late 1970s, plastic lunchboxes were cheaper and easier to make, not to mention easier to clean and decorate.

Lunchboxes are cause for such nostalgia that the Smithsonian Institution began compiling its own collection, part of which is on display at the Museum of Design. "Thirty years is quite a long run for any object, especially in the juvenile world," said the Smithsonian's David Shayt, curator of the "Lunch Box Memories" exhibition. "That's worth acknowledging."

Shayt began collecting the boxes as "an afterthought" when he was assembling an exhibition for the 50th anniversary of television in 1989. At the time, he was trying to show the impact television had on everyday life. Lunchboxes depicting characters or scenes from popular TV shows were a fitting example.

Today, the Smithsonian has 250 lunchboxes in its collection, with the earliest -- a tin-plated, sheet-iron box resembling a textbook -- dating from the 1860s.

Now Shayt is planning an exhibit for the National Museum of American History (to open in April), a Web site and a catalog devoted to the humble box.

Seven-year-old Raven can't profess to know the long, storied history of the lunchbox, but she does know she'd like a new one.

Why?

" 'Cause," she said matter-of-factly, "I like it when my mom makes me stuff."

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