Hello Hivers Today I bring you to one of the exhibits I seen at the Durham Museum in Omaha, Nebraska that brought me back to my grade school days. I know decorative lunch boxes are a thing in the United States and some European countries. I don't know if they reached around the globe though.
Early lunch goers who wanted to bring their lunches to work used whatever they could find to keep their food so it could be edible later. The used various tins that once contained cookies, biscuits, and even tobacco tins like the one pictured above. Of course some kids wanted to be like there parents so they did as well.
The first school lunch box was manufactured by Thermos LLC (pictured far right 1st picture). It sold for $3.50 in 1914 which would be about $104 in today's dollar. I can't imagine many kids brought this to school. In the second picture were some other Thermos lunch boxes that were manufactured later in the early 20th century
In 1935 the first licensed character showed up a lunch by a Wisconsin based company. The character was Mickey Mouse. This happened 15 years before licensing took off in the United States.
The 1940s brought some television to some homes. The networks ABC and NBC brought television shows. Those shows brought on advertising. This would soon lead to TV shows on lunch boxes.
The 1950s brought cartoons and television shows to the lunch boxes. Aladdin and Thermos in my opinion really have the market share on lunch boxes. Since licensing was a thing now Aladdin secured the Disney contract which must have been big back than.
I had a Superman lunch box but not this one. The 1954 Superman lunch box is the most valuable lunch box, one sold for $16,000. This decade showed some subject matter I was familiar with. My father watched the Lone Ranger when he was a kid and I did to as they had re-runs on TV. I remember seeing some dome shaped lunch boxes but I never was interested in them. The shape of the boxes (square and metal) remained the same all the way to the 1986. My mother was a garage sale shopper and sometimes she would pick up some lunch boxes for cheap. Usually kids want different subject matter for the new school year. I didn't care if it was used or was a hand me down as long as the subject matter appealed to me.
I'll have to say I didn't realize they had vinyl lunch boxes this early. I don't remember any boy subject matter but I know some of the girls had them in school.
The 1960s brought the first band to be featured on a lunch box, the Beatles. Not surprising they were a big time band. The landing on the moon and Neil Armstrong's first step landed the Astronauts on the lunch box. Many of the lunch boxes I had during my grade school years had the images embedded in them. It's Pretty cool to know when it all began.
The 1970s brought plastic lunch boxes. As a kid I wasn't a fan of them I liked the metal ones better. I remember having one, it wasn't long I broke it. I sat on it on the school bus on the way home and it cracked. So it was the first and last one I had. I do remember them being more spacious. It was a Star Wars lunch box that had R2-D2 on it. I get why they started to produce them because they were cheeper to manufacture.
Oh the early 1980s was my lunch box days. I had movie boxes like Star Wars and Super Heroes like Superman and the Incredible Hulk. I don't know for sure but I think this Pac-Man lunch box (1980) was the first or one of the first video games featured on a lunch box. I got carried away looking at others and forget to take a picture of the information board next to it.
So I believe my last lunch box I had was in 1983 or 1984. I was 10 years old when I last had one I think. It wasn't cool to have one once you reached about 6th grade.So the phaze out of metal lunch boxes I don't remember because it didn't affect me until I got older and looked for one for my son. Than I realized it, I had to buy him a soft sided lunch box.
The old kid in me thought this isn't cool or no fun to play with. Hey you can't put this on your lap and pretend to play the drums. This soft sided lunch box was packed inside his school bag. It only seen light at lunch time. Hey there would be no sitting on it as it would mean squashed food, haha. It use to be cool to carry and have your friends see them. Very much was part of the first day of school. New clothes, new shoes, and a new lunch box!! It was very trendy but those golden days of lunch boxes are lost in history.
The wall of lunch boxes depicted various lunch boxes from the 1940's to today. I had to take two pictures because I couldn't capture them all in one shot. It brought back so many memories as I had some of them or seen so many of them during lunch hour at grade school. Some of things depicted on them brought back good times as well. Especially the movie and TV genre. Lunch boxes were very much part of pop culture if you think about it. Anything that was a trend or popular showed up depicted on a lunch box.
I decided to take some pictures close up of the ones that reminded me of things of the past. I grew up watching some TV shows and went to the movies often. I've seen all the shows and movies of all the above pictured lunch boxes. I also had a few of these. I totally forgot about the TV show "V" I was glued to that show each week in the 1980s. They brought it back about about 15 years ago but ABC cancelled it after one season :( Oh the "A Team" I loved that show, tough Mr. T who was scared of flying, hehe. I found the super hero section interesting because I had a few of them. Seeing all these lunch boxes was like a walk back into my childhood.
It was interesting to see blue prints on what was all involved at the beginning of process. The designs were detailed and including sizes of the front, back and sides of the depictions that went on the lunch box.
There is a community of lunch box collectors out there. Oh if I could be young again and go on those garage sale runs with my mother. I'd probably pick all of them up regardless of the content on them, haha. Much like sports cards they are graded on a scale 1 to 10. Very cool how they show the differences between the grades and use actually lunch boxes to show you.
Well all this lunch box viewing has got me with mixed feeling. Do I want to watch a classic movie or do I want to eat a sandwich with chips and a juice box? haha. This is all I have for you today with my visit to the Durham Museum on Friday. This isn't it though I will have more from this amazing museum. Take care, be safe and enjoy the week ahead.
