When getting ready for the day, most people think about what they will have for lunch. Some might go out with friends or co-workers, while others will pack their lunch into a plastic tote. Today, there are many options for carriers of our lunch, but that was not always the case. 

Lunch boxes, or lunch pails, were made of metal and started around the 1800s. These models were not created by any company but by reusing tin containers. These often were reused tobacco, cigar, and cookie tins; and used by adults and kids. Looking at the accompanying photo, Canadians would even use old syrup tins as lunch pails. It was not until the 1920s that companies started producing lunch boxes. It caused a unified design (silver in colour and plain) and removed the need to make your own. The first company to manufacture this was the Thermos Bottle Company. 

The first market-produced children’s lunch boxes started production in the 1920s. Children’s lunch boxes still featured colourful designs of generic scenes and characters. Some of the earliest children’s lunch boxes were made by the Ohio Art Company and looked like little picnic baskets. The first trademark character to be featured on a lunch box was Mickey Mouse in 1935. This idea led other companies to create lunch boxes featuring celebrities, film and television characters and picturing famous events and scenes. These lunch boxes would last until 1985 when the United States would ban metal lunch boxes from their schools (with Canada following suit), as they were considered dangerous weapons. One of the last characters featured on a metal lunch box was Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo. With the ban in place, companies started to produce lunch bags out of plastics and cloth (for adults and children). The first known characters featured in this new era of lunch carriers were the Peanuts (Charlie Brown and friends). 

Metal lunch boxes did not disappear from the market. Today, certain lunch boxes featuring well-known characters are sought after by collectors. Some can be worth over a thousand dollars, depending on the condition and who is on the box. Even industrial metal lunch boxes are still favoured by those who work in intense environments like mining, construction, and lumber. One Canadian example of this is the L. May Manufacturing, which created the “The Miner’s Lunch Box.” Leo May, the founder, worked in the mines in Sudbury, Ontario. While Leo was in the mines waiting for the elevator, he needed a place to sit, so he decided to use his lunch box. While sitting, he crushed his lunch box, which gave him the idea to create a lunch box that could support the weight of a human. The idea worked, and now the company sells the product worldwide.