Scooby Doo Lunchbox, Where Are You?

In grade school, much of your personality could be summed up by the lunch box you carried, if you could afford the luxury.  It was also a status symbol.  Lunchbox kids looked down on the brown baggers, at least it felt that way to me.

I had a lunch box in First Grade.  It was a plastic Snoopy's doghouse lunch box.  One day after school, I absentmindedly tossed it on the ground after school and the lid broke off.  That was end of my lunch box days.  I was a brown bagger there on out.

During lunch I would covet the other kids' lunchboxes, particularly those that featured cartoons, TV shows or movies I liked.  There were Marvel Superheroes, Peanuts, Batman and Robin, Happy Days, Superman the Movie, and numerous others.  But one that always stood out to me was the 1973 Scooby Doo lunch box, both for the artwork and the theme: it featured The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow on the front, and a Haunted House on the back.  How can you get better than that?

Like Disney's The Haunted Mansion from yesterday, "Scooby Doo, Where are You" turned 50 this year.  It took me almost as long to find his lunchbox. I believe it was an estate sale find and I'm sure I paid up for it.

The sides feature the kids in the Mystery Machine hot on the tail of a car,

Shaggy and Scoob hiding from a mummy,

Shaggy about to be murdered by some hidden creatures,

and Scooby about to be mauled by a lion.

It didn't have the thermos, but I found one on eBay to complete my set.

 The odd thing about this lunchbox is, The Headless Horseman didn't make an appearance on Scooby Doo until the 1976 series "Scooby Doo/Dynomutt Hour".

The first metal lunchboxes were heavy metal pails used by workers simply trying to protect their lunches from job site hazards. Children soon emulated their parents by re-purposing tobacco and cookie containers to carry their own school lunches.  In the 1950's, the Aladdin company realized the potential sales boost in featuring popular cartoon and television stars such as Mickey Mouse or The Lone Ranger on their lunchboxes.  They knew with the fleeting popularity of TV shows, they could guarantee children wanting a new lunchbox every year.

Metal lunchboxes were retired in 1987 due to kids using them as weapons against their schoolmates. Ironically enough, the last metal lunchbox featured "Rambo".