The essential idea of a lunch box has been around since the 1900s, but it wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s that they became a marketable product. Television transformed the once ordinary lunch box into the hot collectible that it is today. TV introduced hundreds of popular characters and soon these characters were showing up on lunch boxes. The lunch box that every child carried are now highly collected due to their colorful design.

The golden age of lunch box production was from 1950 to 1987. Baby-boomers with nostalgia for their childhoods trivia enjoy this unusual popular collectible. Lunchboxes bring back a lot of memories, and that's why people respond to them. Most of the 120 million boxes sold between 1950 and 1970 were decorated with images from popular television shows.

The first lunch box to feature a popular character was the Hopalong Cassidy box released by Aladdin in 1950. This lunch box was an immediate success and quickly led to the release of other character lunch boxes. Popular TV stars from western to space heroes and cartoon characters were depicted on lunch boxes.

Aladdin and Thermos were the two main manufacturers over the years. The first lunch boxes were made of steel up the mid 1980s when plastic boxes became the norm. Some of the more popular lunch boxes include: A-Team, Adam 12, Addams Family, Annie Oakley, Archies, Astronaut, Barbie, Battlestar Galactica, Bee Gees, Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, Brady Bunch and Buck Rogers. Prices for these boxes range from $20.00 to $400.00. Condition is important to value. Rust, chipped paint, dents, scratches and missing latches or handles reduce their value. Lunch boxes with the original thermos bottle adds value.

Before the Internet, collectors looked for vintage lunch boxes at garage sales, thrift stores, and antiques shops in search of lunch boxes featuring Happy Days, G.I. Joe, Zorro and Disney characters. But with Web access, tracking down your favorite lunch box takes but a few mouse clicks with online sites such as eBay.