Three New Lunchboxes in Three Weeks

Over the past three weeks, I’ve added three new (vintage) lunchboxes to my collection. I recently began looking for some wall shelves for my future office. Hopefully I can get them made and on the wall soon; I’m dying to get my lunchboxes out of storage and put them back on display!

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National Airlines (1968) – $45
Released as a promotional item in 1968, this lunchbox features a National Airlines crew standing in front of a plane on one side, and a National Airlines plane in flight on the other. The women in this picture are wearing some kind of goofy tinted visors, which apparently was part of their uniform from 1968 to 1972. The sides of the lunchbox are covered with the names and logos of multiple airlines, including Northwest Orient, Pan Am, Lufthansa, Continental Airlines, and Western Airlines International.

I found this lunchbox at an antique show in Tulsa priced at $60. I rarely spend more than $50 for any single lunchbox, but the seller dropped her price to $45 so I decided to pick it up. I’ve never seen another one of these for sale in the wild. It’s in really good condition, which is not surprising as I can’t imagine any kids carried their lunch to school in a lunchbox covered with airline logos and a flight crew. As this was a promotional item it did not originally come with a Thermos, although there is a wire arm inside to hold one just in case.

Mr. Merlin (1981) – $25
Mr. Merlin was a television show that ran for a single season back in 1981. I wish I could say it was a favorite program of mine, but I barely remember it, and I haven’t been able to find any full episodes of it yet (the one that’s on YouTube is in French). In the show, Merlin is played by Barnard Hughes, whom you might remember as the grandpa in Lost Boys or Dumont in the original Tron. Like most metal lunchboxes of the 70s and 80s, this one features several characters and scenes from the show.

Even though I’m not super familiar with the television show, $25 for a metal lunchbox in this condition is a good deal, especially since it came with the Thermos. I hope to track down some episodes of the show in the future and see if it’s as entertaining as this lunchbox makes it look — but as the show only ran for a single season, I’m tempering my expectations.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) – $10
I ran across this lunchbox for sale on Craigslist, and it looked so good in the picture I had to double-check to make sure it wasn’t a modern reproduction! Thermos released four metal lunchboxes for the original trilogy of films, and this is the only one I didn’t already own. It’s in really good condition and features lots of characters and scenes from the second Star Wars film. One thing I found interesting is that the snowspeeders featured on the side of the lunchbox don’t look like the ones in the film, and seem to have been based on pre-production artwork. I can only assume that means the artwork for this box was created before the film was released.

The seller told me he received this when he was two years old and it went on his grandparents shelf shortly after that, where it has been sitting ever since. I paid $100 for my 1977 Star Wars lunchbox and it’s in nowhere near as good condition as this one. I don’t know if it matters to the seller or not, but the guy who bought this one will take good care of it for many years to come.