Paileontology:
A history of the lunchbox
Before the Age of Steel
Before
the lunch box was the lunch pail (and before the lunch pail there were
oiled goatskins, but let's not go THAT far back). The lunch pail wasn't
really a pail; it was a latching, heavy-duty metal thing made from a
toolbox-grade metal that would protect the working man's noontime meal
from anything less powerful than a small bomb.
At
the time, a lunch pail wasn't chic — on the
contrary, it was a sign you were far enough down the pay scale that
you didn't have time or money for a decent hot noontime meal. Still,
children in the 1880s created their own school "lunch pails" out of
the colorful tin boxes that once housed biscuits, cookies and tobacco.
From there,
it was a small step to a box specifically made for that purpose, and
in 1902 the first true kids' lunch box came out. No, it didn't feature
turn-of-the-century pop culture idols like P. T. Barnum, Buffalo Bill
or Sousa's Band — it was shaped like a picnic
basket with pictures of playing children lithographed on its side.