Lunch Box Brief

I came across this old ad from a 1950s Sears Catalog for Roy Rogers/Dale Evans costuming for children and began to wax nostalgic.I remember watching his tv show when I was a kid, though now I think they were probably reruns, as I hadn't been born yet when the show first appeared. I'm guessing this was one of earliest marketing campaigns driven by a tv show.

I had a Roy Rogers lunchbox I used to take to school during the winter. I wondered if I could find one for sale but when I saw what was available I found I couldn't remember exactly what my lunchbox had looked like. I think it was the one I've picture here, which doesn't seem to be the original design.

The bidding for this rusty box on ebay starts at $32, while the original design goes for about $400.

Then I started looking for the Yellow Submarine lunchbox I took with me to high school. My friend CT had an identical box and every day we would sit in the lunchroom at Kimball High and flip open the metal lids of our matching tin boxes and extricate our matching yellow thermos bottles. I was making my first foray into vegetarianism as I hated sandwiches almost as much as standing in line for the awful cafeteria food peculiar to schools in those days. I would bring raw pieces of coconut in baggies to serve as my protein.

This version of the Yellow Submarine box goes for about $300 on ebay.

If you wax nostalgic over old lunchboxes, check out The History of Lunchboxes or Whole Pop Magazine's Pailentology page. Another interesting site is Wendi's Lunchboxes, which has many vintage lunchboxes for sale.