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It's not the most expensive back-to-school item on your list, but what receptacle your kid totes around his or her lunch on the first day of school certainly makes a statement. And these days, lunch boxes have come a long way from the simple metal pail circa 1900.

"At the time, a lunch pail wasn't chic -- on the contrary, it was a sign you were far enough down the pay scale that you didn't have time or money for a decent hot noontime meal," write the authors of "Paileontology: A history of the lunchbox" in Whole Pop Magazine Online about the "heavy-duty metal thing made from a toolbox-grade metal that would protect the working man's noontime meal from anything less powerful than a small bomb."

The Golden Age

It wasn't until Nashville, Tenn.-based Aladdin plastered Hopalong Cassidy along side of a lunch box that it became a hot, pop-culture item. In recent years, vintage lunch boxes -- especially from the "Golden Age" (1950-1980) -- have become collectible. Collectors can snag a vintage box for as little as $20 or pay as much as a few thousand dollars, says Bryan Los, who runs Lunch Box Pad, a content site which contains all sorts of useful information about lunch boxes, including a glossary, a timeline, biographies of lunch box artists and a thermos anatomy lesson.

Superman (1954) and Bullwinkle (1962), made by Universal kits, are regarded as two of the top kits to own, according to Los, who has more than 100 pails in his collection and says the most he ever paid was $1,500 for a 1954 Superman lunch box a few years back.

A 1978 Star Wars lunch box, however, trumps the 1978 Superman box at LunchboxCollector.com, where the boxes were selling for $975 and $650 respectively. Collectors also hawk their wares at auction sites, such as eBay.com, where a 1968 Jungle Box lunch box recently sold for $463.26.

Serious lunch box collectors may want travel to Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, which houses an exhibit called "Taking America to Lunch." A sampling of the lunch boxes in the 75-piece collection is on view at the museum's Web site. The collection includes several old miners' pails from the late 19th century.

From superheroes to anything pink

Fortunately for back-to-school shoppers, new lunch boxes cost a lot less than the vintage variety. At Lunchboxes.com, lunch boxes average about $13 plus shipping, says company spokesperson Mike Dobbs. The one-stop cyber shop stocks more than 130 styles of three types of pails -- metal, hard plastic and soft-insulated plastic. The least expensive item is a small-sized snack box for $7.65. The most expensive pail is the black dome-and-thermos set for $22.50 -- "a throwback to the old construction worker lunch boxes from the 1950s and 1960s," says Dobbs.

Not surprisingly, the most popular motifs for school-aged kids, from kindergarten to about third grade, are cartoon, television and movie characters. Boys still favor superheroes, such as Spider-Man and Superman.

Girls seek out anything pink, from the super-sweet Strawberry Shortcake to the fashionable-yet-sometimes-controversial Barbie. Characters or themes from hot summer blockbuster films typically cross gender lines, such as Harry Potter, Hulk, Scooby Doo and Star Wars.

A relatively new trend is non-traditional shaped lunchboxes, says Dobbs. For example, the Scooby Doo Soft Mystery Machine lunch box, made by Thermos, is shaped like the microbus that the kids drive around in the cartoon, he says. The bright turquoise lunch box sells for $13.95 at WBShop.com.

In contrast to showing off your favorite pop-culture icon, some lunch containers are "aspirational." Many of the soft-sided lunch bags from children's accessories manufacturer Wildkins feature themes related to "when I grow up I want to be a ...," says Peter Hart, the company's managing partner. Fire trucks, ladders and Dalmatians cover the fireman lunch box. The astronauts' lunch box features pictures of the Earth and the moon, American flags and space capsules.

Wildkins lunch bags are sold at specialty stores nationwide, the company Web site for $14.95, BabyUniverse for $11.99 and eBags.com for $14.99. Some shops stock matching backpacks, sleeping bags and duffels.