Star Wednesday: The Empire Strikes Back Lunchbox

2016-03-03 06.08.31

What better way to publicly pledge your allegiance to the Empire as a kid in the 1980s than by carrying a Star Wars brand lunchbox to and from school every day? Sure, other kids might have Star Wars toys at home, but with a Star Wars lunchbox, you could represent Star Wars all day!

The lunchbox you see above is the one I carried to school for a couple of years in the early 1980s. The picture shows our four heroes (Chewbacca, Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker) standing on Hoth with their guns drawn and pointed toward the camera. This isn’t a scene from the film — in fact, I’m 90% sure it’s multiple pictures spliced together.

The first lunchbox designed for children was the Hopalong Cassidy lunchbox, released by Aladdin in 1950. The trend caught on, and for many decades, an important part of back to school shopping was picking out exactly which lunchbox you wanted to carry and to and from school all year long. This was no light decision; make the wrong choice and you could be a cafeteria pariah!

Like most kids (and collectors) I prefer the metal lunchboxes of the 50s-80s to the plastic ones (like this one from The Empire Strikes Back) that began to replace them in the early 1980s. A popular theory is that the lunchbox industry switched from metal to plastic because kids were using metal lunchboxes as weapons, but the reality is the plastic ones were cheaper and quicker to develop and manufacture. That’s a shame, because the metal ones, with their embossed graphics and artwork that wrapped around all six sides, were truly awesome. The plastic ones were essentially all the same, save for a single sticker affixed to one side.

2016-03-03 06.08.40

Here are a couple more Star Wars lunchboxes I’ve picked up over the years. Neither of these were ones I carried my lunches in, but I remember seeing other kids with them. There are two or three other vintage Star Wars lunchboxes I would like to add to my collection, but the ones I consider to be affordable (~$30) are all dented and rusted, and I can’t bring myself to pay the $75-$100 price for average looking ones. I’ll keep searching.

Interestingly (or perhaps not), these all reside with my “lunchbox” collection, rather than my Star Wars collection. The force is strong, but the smell of old milk in a Thermos is stronger!

1 comment to Star Wednesday: The Empire Strikes Back Lunchbox

  • You lunchbox collection is amazing. Living up at that time my parents were BRUTAL. After I begged and pleaded to have a lunchbox from the Dukes of Hazard (I lived in Fairfield Texas, Dukes was a very popular show there) they got me a metal lunchbox of generic clip art images of sports players. I hated sports but I kept that lunch box for 2 years until I got an even greater failure of box for my lunches – a brown Tupperware plastic lunchbox in the shape of a purse!” Your food will be more fresh!” my parents said. I was in complete utter devastation for I had that lunch box all the way until it wasn’t cool to have lunch boxes.

    At least now I get to have a few of them to collect.

    I do have to disclose I saw many a fights with the metal lunchboxes. I think we used to think they were like the metal chair slammed around during World Wide Wrestling matches.

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