Anyone who has ever been caught up in the fun of collecting knows that sharing the collection with others is one of its greatest rewards. It’s obvious Allen Woodall feels this way about his massive lunch box collection. Woodall established the Lunch Box Museum in Columbus Georgia where he shares his collection with the world. He also shares the knowledge he’s gained in the book, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Metal Lunch Boxes, which he co-authored with Sean Brickell. I had the pleasure of visiting the Lunch Box Museum recently. It’s a down-to-earth place tucked away in a delightfully overstuffed antiques shop called The River Market Antiques.
To be honest, it’s a little overwhelming at first! There are rows and rows of vibrantly colored lunch boxes—all clamoring for attention. But it doesn’t take long to spot familiar characters, TV shows, cartoons and bands from the past.
Wandering through the aisles, it becomes apparent that the most noteworthy lunch boxes are displayed in glass cases with small labels.
For instance, here’s a 1969 lunch kit (ie a lunch box with a matching thermos) featuring one of my old favorites The Archies.
Other than carrying one to school for many years I didn’t know much about lunch boxes before my visit. I’ve learned lunch boxes have a rather interesting story to tell. According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, “Parents 100 years ago often gave their schoolchildren an empty tobacco or coffee tin to carry some fresh-picked strawberries and bread, a wedge of cheese, and possibly a handful of shelled hickory nuts. Other children carried a fancy store-bought lunch pail, a paper sack, or no lunch at all.”
Those “fancy store-bought lunch pails” took on a life of their own in 1935 when the below Mickey Mouse lunch box was introduced. It was the first lunch box decorated with a famous licensed character. Experts report this lunch box sold for about 15 cents back in 1935. Today, they are quite rare and are estimated to be worth about $2,350 USD.
But the rarest and, I assume, one of the most valuable items in Woodall’s collection is the Toppie lunch box. Toppie, short for “Top Value Elephant”, was used by Kroger grocery stores to promote their Top Value Stamp program. Customers could collect stamps in Kroger’s stamp books to earn merchandise such as alarm clocks, toy cash registers and the below 1957 lunch kit. Nowadays, lunch box collectors estimate that only a dozen Toppie lunch boxes still exist. Reportedly, one sold on eBay a few years ago for $6,287.50 USD. A lunch box with a matching thermos is even more rare and valuable.
Illustrated metal lunch boxes, such as the Toppie lunch box, had their heyday between 1950 and 1980. Over 450 decorated models were created during this time period and the Lunch Box Museum is reported to have them all in its 2,000+ piece collection. Woodall also has a number of duplicates which he sells at the museum. I didn’t notice any with a six thousand dollar price tag but I did find a few surprises. Check out this Space Shuttle lunch box with a cool $115 USD price tag.
In amongst all the flashy, brightly-illustrated lunch boxes, the Lunch Box Museum includes a few old classics like this 1960s workman’s lunch box.
Here’s one for my Canadian readers, a well-used coal miner lunch kit from the 1940’s.
One of the most interesting stories I’ve learned about lunch boxes concerns a fierce competition between two rival manufacturers—Aladdin Industries from Nashville, Tennessee and American Thermos from Norwich, Connecticut (called King Steely Thermos (KST) after 1959).
As the story goes, in early 1949 Aladdin Industries was struggling financially and company executive were actively looking for ways to increase sales. Metal lunch boxes were durable and lasted for years so demand was limited. Then someone came up with the idea of putting decals on their plain red and blue lunch boxes. The idea evolved to using a TV character and with astonishing speed they closed a deal to feature Hopalong Cassidy on their lunch kits. Hopalong Cassidy was a fictional cowboy hero who starred in a series of books, movies and television shows. The Hoppy (as the Hopalong Cassidy lunch kit became known) was a huge success. Sales jumped from 50,000 units per year to 600,000 Hoppys in the first year. This led to the realization “that if you could develop kits with favorite TV characters, you’d create a bonanza! Overnight, the mundane, boring lunch box trade became Big Business.”
But the story gets better; Roy Rogers, the famous singing cowboy whose 1952 box office ranking placed him as the most popular Western star for 10 consecutive years, was reported to be jealous of his TV rival’s success and wanted his own lunch box. When he approached Aladdin Industries with the idea, however, he was reportedly told “One cowboy is enough”. So he approached the American Thermos company. Apparently, it took some effort to convince American Thermos that character lunch boxes were not merely a fad. But after his third try, Roy Rogers closed a deal with American Thermos. The resulting Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunch box was released in 1953 to an unprecedented success—over 2.5 million lunch kits were sold in the first year.
It’s worth noting that the Roy Rogers lunch box design was a step up from the Hoppy. It capitalized on the lunch box’s likeness to a television set and featured full-picture lithographed steel.
Here are a few more lunch boxes that caught my eye at the Lunch Box Museum. According to the experts, this 1954 Superman lunch box, in mint condition, could fetch as much as $13,000 USD.
Many lunch boxes, such as the Zorro lunch box pictured below, carry the mark of their previous owners. Keen collectors prefer lunch boxes without scratches, dents, rust or markings. But, interestingly, Woodall reports that years ago when he sold The Smithsonian about 20 lunch boxes and thermoses, “They wanted the ones with wear and tear … If a kid had actually scratched their name on the box, it made it even more valuable.”
Here’s another example of proud ownership. I doubt young Della Abell took future collectors into consideration when she carefully wrote her name on her 1972 Miss America lunch box.
All good things must, of course, come to an end. And the metal lunch box craze was no exception to the rule. The story of how metal lunch boxes fell out of favor is as interesting as how it began. Numerous online sources report that in the early 1980s there was a growing concern about the safety of these containers. Students were reportedly using metal lunch boxes as weapons and, as a result, a group of mothers in Florida lobbied successfully to have them banned. Other states followed suit and the heyday of metal lunch boxes came to a screeching halt. But the plot thickens!
A 2021 NPR (National Public Radio) article, Were Metal Lunch Boxes Really Banned?, debunks the story, declaring “it seems to be only an urban myth: NPR’s investigation found no laws on Florida’s books banning metal lunch boxes in schools.” The article goes on to explain “So what brought about the end of kitschy metal lunch boxes? … the late ’70s saw the first plastic and vinyl lunch boxes, which were cheaper for companies to produce than metal boxes. Soft and flexible plastic lunch boxes were easier to squash into overloaded school backpacks. And so we said goodbye to the metal lunch box.”
More Info
See the Lunch Box Museum website for more information about this entertaining attraction located at The River Market Antiques in Columbus, Georgia, USA. You may want to give yourself time to browse around the antique shop—not only is it stuffed with interesting vintage objects but if you make a purchase your admission fee to the museum may be waived.
Numerous online articles and blog posts feature or reference the Lunch Box Museum including:
. Roadside America: Lunch Box Museum
. Atlas Obscura: Lunch Box Museum
. History.com: Nine of the Most Collectible School Lunch Boxes, 1935 to Now
. NPR: Beyond The Pail: NPR Unpacks The History Of The Lunch Box
For a deep dive into the world of metal lunch boxes, you may want to check out the book The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Metal Lunch Boxes written by Allen Woodall (curator of the Lunch Box Museum) and Sean Brickell. It is available from a number of online sites.
This is the link to the NPR article: Were Metal Lunch Boxes Really Banned?
If you like quirky attractions, you might also enjoy the FanningSparks’ blog post Counting Buttons Instead of Sheep about the Button King Museum in Bishopville, South Carolina.
If you’re interested in collecting, check out the blog post Decorating With Collections.
Today’s Takeaways
1. Sharing your carefully-curated collection with others is one of the greatest rewards of collecting.
2. Quirky, specialty museums can be entertaining and informative.
3. Consider taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane at the Lunch Box Museum in Columbus, Georgia.
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