Boxed in: Lunch boxes revered as an American tradition

Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2001 | 8:23 a.m.

The rite-of-passage for tykes is in full swing.

It's annual new-lunch box season. Traditional nine-month schools begin the new school year on Aug. 30.

Meanwhile mothers and students are standing in the aisles of department stores staring wide-eyed at the array of containers available for those peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

So many choices.

There are hard boxes made of plastic and metal. There are soft packs made of various synthetic materials. Every character imaginable adorns the boxes.

What box is hot? What's in? What's out? Will the child have graduated this year from Winnie the Pooh to "Jurassic Park" or "Star Trek" or to one of hundreds of other licensed characters, TV shows and movies that appear on "lunch kits" (the term used by industry officials)?

Gary Martin, assistant manager of the Kmart at 4500 N. Rancho Drive, says those questions only arise during a child's earliest years in school.

"(Lunch boxes are) an elementary-school thing," Martin said. "In high school, it's not cool to carry a lunch box. Most teenagers carry their lunches in back packs."

Bill Speckman, the store manager, says licensed lunch containers always sell well to the younger students.

The children's literary character Harry Potter and the movie "Jurassic Park III" are among the favorites this year, he said. Also, Barbie never grows old. Pokemon has been solid for years.

"The trend is toward the soft cases," Speckman said. "About 70 percent of what we sell are soft containers and 30 percent are plastic boxes.

"Our company discontinued selling metal boxes several years ago. A corporate decision was made not to go back to metal. We stick with plastic and soft containers."

Wal-Mart on East Lake Mead Drive in Henderson also sells a lot of soft kits.

"They hold up better," Deb Boruschewitz, a department manager who oversees back-to-school items, said.

Pokemon and Powerpuff Girls are two of the more popular licensed kits this year at Wal-Mart.

'N Sync kits disappeared from the shelves after the popular group's recent concert at Sam Boyd Stadium.

"The kids bought everything with 'N Sync on it," Boruschewitz said.

Thermos stats

The Thermos Co. in Schaumburg, Ill., produces the most school lunch boxes. It is a $100 million-per-year business for the company.

"Our market share is 75 percent of the licensed or character-type lunch boxes," John Lanman, vice president of marketing, said. "We have most of the very popular licenses -- with Superman, Pokemon, Harry Potter to Barbie and lots in between."

About 25 percent of Thermos' business is in producing lunch kits. Of that, 45 percent is aimed at the children's market and 55 percent at adults.

"Both segments, licensed and non-licensed, are growing," Lanman said. "That is primarily a function of the fact that people seem to be taking lunch to work more frequently.

"There are a number of societal reasons for that -- people are not eating out as much at lunch time because it costs more money and is not as healthy. Also, they are bringing in kits simply because they don't have time to get out and eat."

Lanman said about 80 percent of the school lunch boxes are sold between June and September. Most of them are bought for children ages 2-8.

"It's a rite of passage for going back to school," he said.

While there have been changes in lunch boxes made for children -- most notably the popularity of soft kits -- perhaps the most dramatic change has been in the children themselves.

"One of the trends we see, kids are getting older younger -- it's called 'age compression,' " Lanman said. "Whereas a child might have been interested in a particular character years ago at (age) 10 or 12, typically they are now not interested in it after 8 or so -- Bugs Bunny and Spiderman, for example."

Youngsters are also becoming more style-conscious at a younger age.

"Carrying a character kit after a certain age doesn't thrill them anymore," Lanman said. "The kits need to be much more fashion-oriented to attract that child, to keep them interested. The licensed characters are more subtle (on the stylish kits)."

The challenge for the industry is to keep children interested in lunch kits after age 8.

"The 'tween' consumers -- between kids and teenagers -- are a challenge," Lanman said.

Novelty kits are becoming more popular.

"They are more involved than just a standard hard box with a label," Lanman said. "Typically, it may be a soft fabric with some special play value or fashion design -- it may look like a handbag or back pack, something more interesting than just a lunch kit."

The all-time favorite lunch-kit license is Barbie.

"Barbie is always hot," Lanman said. "Harry Potter is a new publishing property for us. And we're getting calls for Scooby-Doo."

Thermos has a licensing manager with whom Lanman works in selecting the characters that will appear on the company's lunch kits.

"We track up-and-coming licenses. We have relationships with all of the key licensors," Lanman said.

Choosing a character to put on a lunch box is not an exact science.

"Batman and Spiderman have been around for years and are hard to excite kids with," Lanman said, "especially when there are so many other options, like movies that are coming up."

With a movie featuring the TV-cartoon character Scooby-Doo to be released later this year, Lanman expects to see renewed interest in Scooby-Doo lunch boxes.

It may be easier to sell Spiderman when the movie about that comic strip character is released next year.

History lesson

According to Whole Pop magazine (wholepop.com), in the 19th century children used simple pails to carry their lunches.

The first true children's lunch container was manufactured in 1902, according to Whole Pop. It was shaped similar to a picnic basket with pictures of playing children lithographed on its side.

The modern age of lunch kits began in 1950 when Hopalong Cassidy, one of the first Western heroes to have a television series, licensed his image to appear on a metal box produced by the Aladdin Company of Nashville, Tenn. The company's second license was of the TV show "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet."

Movie star Roy Rogers, who had been licensing his name on a variety of products since the mid-1940s, didn't jump on the lunch-box bandwagon till 1953. That year he and his wife, Dale Evans, signed on with Thermos and the lunch boxes embossed with their images quickly ate up competing characters.

All school lunch boxes were made of metal until 1972, the year plastic began being used as a means of cutting costs and also in response to safety concerns.

A group of Florida mothers, who claimed the metal containers were being used as weapons, lobbied for the removal of the lunch boxes from the marketplace, and in 1972 they were banned in Florida.

Lanman said the industry quit making metal boxes all together in 1985, but three years ago Thermos began making them again in limited quantities.

"There was a demand for it," he said, "primarily a nostalgia thing. The trend is toward retro. A lot of people collect metal lunch boxes."

Boxes for adults

In a 1998 article by Greg Davis and Bill Morgan in the Collector's Guide to TV Toys and Memorabilia (at tvtoys.com), the authors said lunch boxes are one of the hottest items in the collector's market, driven by adults who associate character-oriented lunch boxes with fond memories of their youth.

Also, illustrations on the early boxes are being considered works of art.

Boxes from TV's "The Fall Guy," "The Muppets," "Mork and Mindy," "Mr. Merlin" and "Strawberry Shortcake" are not rare, yet are worth at least $25 -- more than five times their original retail price, according to the authors.

Many collectors will pay up to $100 for boxes depicting such TV-cartoon series as "Super Friends," "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters," "Scooby-Doo," "Lidsville," "Land of the Lost," "Hong Kong Phooey" and "The Road Runner Show."

Depending on their condition, boxes touting TV westerns from the 1960s may sell for upwards of $200. Among the more expensive kits are "Davy Crockett," "Zorro," "Daniel Boone," "Gunsmoke," Rogers and Cassidy.

Lunch boxes have become such an important part of American culture that last year a company in Los Angeles began selling them exclusively.

"We had collected lunch boxes for a long time and thought it was really cool and we just thought it would be a fun thing to get into," said Mike Dobbs, one of the co-founders of lunchboxshop.com, which sells lunch boxes online.

"Business is up and down," Dobbs said. "Obviously, this time of the year is a little bit busier. People that come to the site appreciate the convenience."

Dobbs described lunch boxes as "quintessential America, a real part of American pop culture."

They have been popular from the outset, he said, because "paper bags are so boring. Lunch boxes have a lot of personality. It allows people to express themselves and the boxes have a functional use. Basically, it's fun, and that's what American pop culture is all about."

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