Pop Culture Lunch Boxes

The lunch box has most often been used by schoolchildren to take packed lunches, or a snack, from home to school. The most common modern form is a small case with a clasp and handle, often printed with a colorful image that can either be generic or based on children's television shows or films. Use of lithographed metal to produce lunch boxes in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s gave way in the 1990s to use of injection-molded plastic.
Lunch boxes have been manufactured using various materials. Typically, children's school lunch boxes are made of plastic or vinyl, while adult workers' lunch boxes are commonly made of metal, such as tin or aluminium, due to the greater need for durability. The aluminium variant was invented in 1954 by Leo May, a miner in Sudbury, Ontario, after he accidentally crushed his tin lunch box.
While television was experiencing amazing growth during the 1950s, manufacturers saw a potential for sales
The first use of plastics was the lunch box handle, but later spread to the entire box, with the first molded plastic boxes produced during the 1960s. Vinyl lunch boxes debuted in 1959.
During the 1960s, the lunch box had few changes. The vacuum bottle included in them, however, steadily evolved during the course of the decade and into the 1970s. What was originally a steel vacuum bottle with glass liner, cork or rubber stopper, and bakelite cup became an all-plastic bottle, with insulated foam rather than vacuum but they were soon replaced with plastic.
In 1971-72, a concerned group of parents decided that metal lunch boxes could actually be used as weapons in school-yard brawls. With petitions signed they marched to the Florida State Legislature and demanded safety legislation be passed. It eventually was passed and other counties in Florida adopted this legislation, which eventually was accepted in other states.
The last steel metal lunchbox was a Slyvester Stalone's Rambo model, produced by KST in 1985.
But when i was in school we still had them the last year that i can rember them leting us use the metal lunch boxes was about 85 - 86.
From then on i had to use them crappy bags or had to use a vinyl one with foam insulation

In 1935, Geuder, Paeschke and Frey produced the first licensed character lunch box, Mickey Mouse. It was a lithographed oval tin, with a pull-out tray inside. It had no vacuum bottle, but did have a handle.


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In 1950 Aladdin Industries created the first children's lunch box based on a television show Hopalong Cassidy. The Hopalong Cassidy lunch kit or "Hoppy" quickly became Aladdin's cash cow. Debuting in time for back-to-school 1950 it would go on to sell 600,000 units in its first year alone


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Square boxes were great for their TV screen-like dimensions but much of the highest artistry went onto the "domes" with rounded tips which aped the shape of the original workingman's lunch pail. Ironically though now much sought-after for their designs they were begun as a cost-cutting measure.
The cost of buying rights to licensed characters and TV shows some of which would be canceled before the box had a chance to sell was becoming astronomical. Aladdin decided to create some generic-subject boxes and decided the new shape would be a novelty selling point. Its artists rose to the challenge given a bigger canvas and freed of the tyranny of having to please temperamental producers and stars.
Aladdin's first dome, "Buccaneer" in 1957 capitalized on a pirate craze that had been spurred on by Peter Pan and other movies of the era. It was a huge success. From there, domes featured other whimsical patterns some of which like the VW Bus and the Disney Schoolbus, which at 9 million units was the biggest seller of all time used the shape of the boxes to brilliant effect.

The vinyl lunchbox was a trend that was as short-lived. Described by an industry insider as "a piece of shower curtain plastic, heat-sealed over cardboard," the vinyls were usually colored pink and aimed at girls
In the 1960's and 1970's discount chain stores like "K-Mart" and "Woolworth's" manufactured and sold vinyl lunchboxes.
Their lunchboxes were cheaply constructed, and few that were manufactured have survived. As a result, they are prized by lunchbox collectors.

Lunchboxes had had a good run, selling about 120 million between 1950 and 1970, but the box boom couldn't last. ADCO stopped making in 1956; Universal in 1963; Ohio Arts in 1985.What happened?
Well the kids did not want them no more and went on to other things to beg for.
The manufactures who in 1972 began switching to plastic molded--inferior in every aesthetic way to metal-- to cut manufacturing costs.
Then kids like me would start fighting with them in the school yards and then mothers got all up in arms & went to legislators who began passing legislation to ban metal as dangerous assault weapons.
The last steel metal lunchbox was a Slyvester Stalone's Rambo model in the pic shown here
Even with plastics, Aladdin announced that it was giving up the lunch box business completely in 1998, leaving only Thermos standing tall.

Despite the death of the Lunchboxs they're slowly coming back.
Thermos last season started to remake a few metal boxes into their lunch lines.
If you take a look around department stores and gift shops you might just find some nostalgia metal boxes by little-known names.
Some are reissues of classic designs of the past, others are new but with a retro look.
One thing is that some of the new aren't so bad but too many are still just a standardized plastic box with a sticker slapped on it
The metal boxes still seem aimed squarely at aging Baby Boomers.Could it be that the lunchbox as a form of popular art will rise again one day among elementary school trendsetters?