Enjoy a nostalgic treat

Like many children, my nine-year-old daughter prefers to take a lunch to school. So each morning I put a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into a soft thermal bag that is pliable enough to fit into her backpack.

Sometimes, as I pack her lunch, I glance up at an old lunchbox that sits above the cabinets in my kitchen.

When I was my daughter’s age, in the late 1960s, I carried my lunch to school each day — usually a PBJ or bologna sandwich cut into quarters — in a cheerful plaid, square metal box, with matching Aladdin thermos, that banged against my leg as I walked to school.

On the inside of the lid of the box was a printed “Safety First” reminder written by the National Safety Council.

I loved that lunchbox. Everyone else carried something decorated with the image of a popular television star or a character from the movies. But I liked the way my little plaid suitcase looked with my book bag, which was also a bright red plaid.

As an adult, when lunchboxes become one of the hottest collectibles, and prices started to climb, I thought about my old lunch box and started looking around flea markets and auctions for one like it.

Not because it’s worth a lot of money today. It isn’t. Vintage 1960s plaid Aladdin lunchboxes, like mine, are among the most inexpensive on the collectibles market.

But the feeling the lunch box evoked, the powerful nostalgic pull we feel toward so many things remembered from our childhood, led me to look for one like it as I shopped.

Eventually, I found one in a booth at an antique mall, for the right price, and brought it home.

Now, when I pack my daughter’s lunch in the modern, practical, thermal bag that is guaranteed to keep everything cool and fresh, I often glance up to the “plain Jane” plaid box that decorates my kitchen.

It serves as a way to connect with my daughter, because even though her world is vastly different from the one I lived in when I was a fourth-grader, the happy chatter of children over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a school lunchroom hasn’t changed all that much.

Metal lunch containers, from sturdy tin lunch pails, to the ubiquitous black-domed box still carried today, had been around for 100 years when the first Mickey Mouse box was made in 1935.

But it wasn’t until 1950, when the Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox was made by the Aladdin Company of Nashville that the craze for colorful and decorative lunch boxes took off.

In 1953 the image of Roy Rogers graced the first lithographed lunchbox made by the American Thermos Company of Connecticut.

Aladdin countered by manufacturing stamped, 3D boxes and in the late 1950s added domed boxes, beginning with the “Buccaneer” lunch box in 1957. Others styles, including the popular Disney “School Bus” lunchbox, and the red barn dome-style lunch box, soon followed.

Metal lunch boxes featuring popular icons from television and movies were sold until the mid 1980s.

By that time many manufacturers had switched to plastic, which was less expensive. (A lot of the information about vintage lunchboxes says that another reason metal lunchboxes fell out of favor was that they were seen as potential schoolyard weapons and a group of mothers in Florida led the campaign to have them outlawed from schools. I couldn’t find anything to substantiate that. It could be the stuff of lunchbox urban legend.)

Sylvester Stallone’s 1985 “Rambo” character lunchbox was one of the last made.

A quick check on eBay shows a plaid Aladdin lunch box like mine, in mint condition and with the original thermos, selling for around $20. That’s a good deal.

Interestingly, a vintage “Chuckwagon” domed lunchbox with the original thermos, all in good condition, was selling for $75 with three days left in the auction.

The same lunchbox listed for nearly $300 in the 2000 Kovel’s Collectibles price list. (It could be that, as in so many other collectibles markets, eBay is bringing lunch box prices down a bit, or at the very least keeping them steady.)

If you are trying to determine the value of a vintage lunch box, keep in mind that rarity, condition and demand all determine the current value. Lunchboxes that include the original thermos are worth considerably more.

There are reproductions on the market, so look closely before you buy.