Web Site News

Site Map

Contact Us

Home

When sandhog Patrick Langan breaks for lunch, the Watertown resident dives into a gray, soft-sided sports cooler. When Joe Rodrigues gets hungry, the Fall River laborer reaches into his molded blue-and-white plastic Igloo.

Their Chinatown construction site is hardly unique. The black, steel-sided lunch bucket, once a blue-collar icon, has vanished.

"I've always had plastic," said Langan, 49. "And I'm probably one of the old-timers."

It's the same story in schools, where molded-plastic boxes and insulated nylon bags long ago expelled illustrated metal containers from the cafeteria.

The best place to spot the durable steel totes may be the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, which opens a new Smithsonian traveling exhibition, "Lunch Box Memories," this Saturday.

What boomer didn't head off to school with a "Star Trek," Disney "School Bus" or "Fat Albert" box - complete with matching Thermos bottle?

"You had it every day," said Hilary Anderson, the museum's director of collections and exhibitions, who once carried a plaid lunchbox to school. "It was a part of your routine."

The first metal containers appeared during the Industrial Revolution, when factory workers who couldn't make it home for the mid-day meal packed food in empty biscuit or tobacco tins.

The American Thermos Bottle Co. rolled out the first workman's lunch kit in 1911. A working stiff who carried his lunch in anything less was soon known derisively as a "brown-bagger."

Although Mickey Mouse decorated a kit in 1935, manufacturers didn't truly think outside the box until 1950, when Aladdin Industries slapped on decals of TV star Hopalong Cassidy.

During the next 30 years, manufacturers produced 450 designs -everything from cartoon characters and movie stars to space rockets and pop-art flowers. The Beatles had a box; so did Kiss. From "The A-Team" to "The Monkees," "Bonanza" to "Hee Haw," any self-respecting TV show had a lunchtime tie-in.

(Today, a mint-condition "Man from U.N.C.L.E." box can fetch as much as $1,200, according to Steve Higgins, owner of Outer Limits, a Waltham memorabilia store.)

The containers reflected a child's identity, said exhibit curator David Shayt of the Smithsonian Institution.

"It was a form of self-expression," said Shayt, who once owned a submarine-themed lunchbox. "It's risk taking . . . To parade that (box) around, it was almost like a totem or a trophy."

But the lithographed steel containers gradually gave way to molded plastic. Urban legend has it that a group of Florida mothers got their local school board to ban the heavy metal kits after a child was walloped.

More likely, it was a combination of lifestyle and materials developments, explained Mike Moskwa, director of the Johnson & Wales College of Culinary Arts' Miami campus.

"The number of people taking food to the office has diminished," said Moskwa. "School lunch, unfortunately, has been taken over by fast-food chains. And it's easier for mom, too, who's now working."

The steel boxes, which were costly and time-consuming to manufacture, didn't have the novelty of modern, lightweight plastics. In addition to injection molding, modern containers now come in space-age Mylar/nylon fabrics.

In 1998, Thermos Co. began making metal boxes again. Several manufacturers now produce limited-edition boxes with images such as "The Lord of the Rings" or "X-Men" for adult collectors.

"Once in a while a kid buys one," said Higgins, "but it's usually a guy in his 40s. The boxes run from $15 to $20. They cost $2 more if there are homemade brownies in them."

Let's do lunch

1765. John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, orders slices of toast and roast beef brought to his gaming table. The sandwich revolutionizes the midday meal.

1800s. Factory workers use empty tobacco and biscuit tins as lunch pails.

1892. Vacuum bottle created by English scientist James Dewar.

1904. German newspaper contest dubs vacuum bottle the "thermos" (from the Greek word therme, or "heat").

1911. American Thermos Bottle Co. makes first workman's lunch kit with thermos bottle.

1920. American Thermos makes first children's lunch kit.

1935. Mickey Mouse appears on first licensed character kit.

1939. Side-opening "suitcase" lunchbox debuts at New York World's Fair. Design becomes industry standard.

1950. Cowboy Hopalong Cassidy is first licensed TV character kit; sells 600,000 decaled boxes in first year.

1957. First decorated dome kits.

1959. First vinyl lunchboxes.

1980. Aladdin debuts injection-molded plastic boxes.

1987. After release of King Seeley Thermos Co.'s "Rambo," steel-box production ceases.

1998. Thermos Co. begins production of collector-oriented metal lunchboxes.

2000. Mint-condition 1954 "Superman" lunchbox sells for record $11,999.99 on eBay.

Source: LunchBoxPad.com

Comments or Suggestions?