DUI Lawyers in Bogota, NJ

What's in school lunchboxes is important.

But what's on school lunchboxes was — once — more so.

Were you a "Muppets" kid? Or was "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" more your style? Were you the kind of little girl who proudly toted a "Holly Hobbie" lunchbox? Or did you insist that mom pack your sandwich, carrot sticks and apple in an NFL NFC/AFC conference container?

Remember those old metal lunchboxes? Remember the matching thermoses? Remember when they were as basic to any back-to-school shopping spree as new clothes, crayons, three-ring binders, and pencil cases?

No more.

Today's parents will be sending their kids back to school, this month, with sleek vinyl totes, or lightweight plastic cases. More likely, they will be sending them to school with no lunchbox at all.

School cafeteria lunches are routine, now. And what mom or dad has time, before a job, to julienne celery, heat tomato soup for the thermos, and wrap sandwiches in Baggies?

'Mister Lunchbox'

"Mothers are going to work," said Joseph T. Shuler, a former Bogota councilman. "By the time kids are ready for school, the moms have already gone, and left instructions: 'Don't forget, I'll be back at 4 o'clock.' Times have changed. The need for a lunchbox has gone out the window."

But if the old metal lunchboxes are gone, they're not forgotten. Not by Shuler. And not by a small coterie of fans who find them a highly nostalgic collectible.

"I'm known in this town, probably not as a councilman or a politician, but as Mr. Lunchbox," said Shuler, 91.

On his office walls, floor to ceiling, packed as tightly as commuters at rush hour, are lunchboxes. "I have probably 350 boxes," he said. "I have 100 here, and the balance in storage."

"Peanuts." "Yellow Submarine." "Fireball XL5." "Gentle Ben." "The Empire Strikes Back." Johnny Lightning. Hot Wheels. Superman. Roy Rogers. Mickey Mouse. Mary Poppins. "The Brady Bunch." The Archies. "The Six Million Dollar Man." Indiana Jones. The Care Bears. "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Popeye. Spider Man. Heathcliff. Lassie.

Expressing themselves, one lunchbox at a time

These boxes were not just sturdy and appealing, with grabby graphics and eye-popping colors. They also allowed kids to express their individuality.

After all, what's in the lunchboxes didn't, as a rule, vary much. Sandwich. Hard boiled egg. Brownie. But my Incredible Hulk lunchbox couldn't be more different than your Strawberry Shortcake. Amid the uniformity of the school day, they personalized the lunch experience.

"They're colorful, they have a nice handle, and they're a symbol of prestige," Shuler said. "Like, you have a lunchbox, this other kid has a paper bag. And then, you could hold a sandwich, a piece of fruit, in there for a long time, without it rotting, or smelling."

He's had lunchboxes that sold for as much as $400 — and he knows some that have gone for $1,000.

Most of the boxes in his collection, as the themes suggest, are from the '60s and '70s, through there are a smattering of '50s and '80s specimens. That's not by accident. Roughly 1960 to 1980 was the golden age.

"In August, drug stores and all kinds of stores would be selling lunchboxes, to get people to come in and buy back-to-school stuff," Shuler said.

Factory feast for vintage lunchboxes

The first commercial lunchboxes had not been for children. They were for factory workers and mill hands, the Ralph Kramdens of the world, who were rarely afforded a cafeteria — or any clean space — to drink their coffee and eat yesterday's meat loaf. These began appearing as early as the 1860s, and Shuler remembers them well. He grew up in the Pittsburgh area, and once worked in a steel mill.

"You'd see people going to the mill with these lunchboxes," he said. "You had to have them, because the mill was very dirty. You had to have something to protect your food from the smoke and the dirt."

Such lunchboxes were severely utilitarian. Generally black, with a rounded lid (this was the compartment to hold the thermos). It wasn't until 1935 that the first children's lunchbox with a licensed character — Mickey Mouse — came on the market.

And it wasn't until the 1950s that the familiar, rectangular school lunchbox made its appearance. Hopalong Cassidy was the first: Nashville's Aladdin industries introduced it at $2.39 and it became the hit of the 1950 school year. Some 600,000 of them were sold that year alone. Other companies joined in the windfall: notably Connecticut's King-Seeley Co. Aladdin's images were printed in raised, embossed metal; King-Seeley's boxes had a smooth face. But both were eye-catching, Shuler said. And in the 1960s, they really took off.

"In the 1960s, they discovered kids really liked them," Shuler said. "And the '70s was the big era." That was the time, he says, when movie-themed boxes became a big seller: "Star Wars," "Close Encounters," "King Kong." There were also boxes dedicated to pop idols: Bobby Sherman, The Partridge Family. And some less likely themes. One box in Shuler's collection is dedicated to the metric system. "They were pushing that, then," he said.

In the 1980s, rather abruptly, they vanished. Not because kids liked them any less. But because adults started having concerns.

Weaponizing the lunchbox

"In the early 1980s, in Florida, some of these PTA mothers were complaining that these kids, when they had these metal lunchboxes loaded with an apple and a couple of sandwiches, they were fighting with them," Shuler said. "I think a kid's jaw got broken. He got hit in the face. So they said this is no good, and the companies started making them out of plastic."

That, at any rate, is one story, widely reported. Others say that the plastic ones were simply cheaper to manufacture. Whatever the case, it appears that Rambo, in 1985, was the last character on the last metal lunchbox.

But the plastic ones just weren't the same. Not to kids then. Not to collectors now. "They weren't very durable," Shuler said.

Shuler has been collecting lunchboxes for a long time. Since about 1970, he says.

"I came upon a lunchbox dedicated to Vietnam, in the Vietnam era," he said. "And my brother was a lieutenant in Vietnam. It showed a military fighting scene. And I thought, that would make a nice hobby. And a way to honor him. And I said something — I should really have it tattooed on my arm — 'These are the collectables of the future.' I never knew how right I was."

So you might reasonably ask, which lunchbox did Shuler have? Which is the one he gripped, by the convenient folding handle, every morning when he boarded the school bus?

Actually, he says, he never had a school lunchbox.

"I lived maybe half a mile away from school," he said. "So I used to come home for lunch."