Rebecca writes:

"Favorite? Definitely the Strawberry Shortcake Box in the First Grade. And this even though it was pink (my signature color at six was blue). Unfortunately, there was an incident involving some Strawberry Yogurt that somehow exploded between the bus and lunch which just wouldn't wash away. Plastic apparently retains odor, and after another couple of months, I had switched to brown bagging.

"I forgot all about the lunchbox until a year ago, when two friends of mine decided to go to a costume party as (you guessed it) Strawberry Shortcake and Blueberry Muffin. I was enlisted to help make the enormous blue hat — and I started to wonder, what would those scented figurines be worth today? What about that lunch box? Still wondering.... Nobody keeps a lunch box as a potential object of monetary value; the only reason to hang on to it would be sentimental pack-rat tendencies. Interesting how sentimentality turns into something collectible. And how little sentimentality would be worth if people only had the forethought to keep what they will eventually want again in the first place! "