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My mom sometimes put spaghetti in my thermos. People thought it was weird but I liked that better than the sandwiches... I had Snoopy, Peanuts, maybe G I Joe (when she wasn't paying attention and switched mine with my brother's)... I had Sanrio ones as well before Sanrio was cool... bah.

I still have lunchboxes... only now we call 'em bento and I try to put as little food as possible in to them, lol. http://feistybento.blogspot.com :)

@Susquehanna: I had the same Mork and Mindy lunchbox, but in orange. This was 1981. In Grade 2 I got a Thermos brand Garfield lunchbox and then in grade 4 the cool thing was to have an insulated bag. The first one I had was red and white but then I got a silver coloured one with "Survival Kit" printed on it.

A typical lunch was saltines w/butter or pb for morning snack; pb and honey sandwich, cut up apple wrapped in wax paper and either homemade baking or two Dare Chocolate fudge cookies. With the hard plastic lunch boxes I usually got apple or grape juice in the thermos but by the time the insulated packs came along, I was buying a carton of milk at school. 40 cents, either white or chocolate. That was the only thing you could buy at school; the milk guy would drop off a couple of cases and someone would set up a table in the foyer every day.

Then in grade 7 we moved and I was only 2 doors down from my new school so I could go home for lunch and eat Zoodles and watch Gummi Bears on TV!

@britt and Chelly: I had the NKOTB lunchbox as well! It was orange and tacky as hell. Man, I looked cool with it though! My best friend and I will be seeing NKOTB in KC, MO this November. After nearly 20 years I finally get to see them in concert!

I had a purse lunch box too! It was Josie and the Pussycats,and predictably, the thermos broke right away. I was so sorry when my mom switched to brown bags - I had to carry the same one for about a month. My mom also re-used the tin foil she wrapped my sandwich in (or should I say, half a sandwich - she was obsessed with our weight) all week. She always gave me homemade cookies, but they got smooshed into crumbs, and the crumbs got lost in the wrinkles of the old tin foil. And there's that distinctive, strange smell of lunchboxes that is oddly acrid...

I grew up in the 60's. I had a metal Jetsons lunchbox filled with a Velveeta and mayo sandwich (no crusts) or brunschwager and mayo. I'm surprised I'm still walking around with clear arteries! I resorted to packing my lunch after "the incident" in my Cathelic school cafeteria. We had to take everything offered in the lunch line and HAD to eat all of it. I couldn't stand the Spam surprise, so I stuffed it into my half-full milk container. Fr. Ken was standing at the tray deposit area shaking milk cartons to catch sneaky little girls like me who were throwing out food. I finished my lunch that day under Fr. Ken's scrutiny. You haven't lived until you've eaten Spam poached in milk! I carried my lunch from that day forward.

I think I had a Holly Hobby metal lunchbox, then a bright nylon sack in the shape of a paper bag from the Container Store, then, in high school, a soft-sided Winnie the Pooh lunch kit that I carried as some kind of act of defiant dorkiness. In lower school the bag had a plain peanut butter on wheat sandwich, an apple, and maybe as a treat Fun Fruits. Sometimes a thermos of Campbell's Soup, which I loved. In upper school, tuna fish sandwich and an apple.

On Halloween my amazing mother would carve my apple to look like a jack-o-lantern!

For preschool I has a Rainbow Bright plastic lunch boc and in First grade I had a Care Bear don't specifically remember what my mom packed for me, but I do remember the sandwiches were typically soggy from either jelly, lettuce, or tomato.... AND I also remember that no one wanted to trade with me.

I had a Disney school bus lunch box just like this. I broke the thermos early on though. :-(

I always had a piece of fruit, a handful of chips or crackers in one of those old fold-lock baggies that never worked and a sandwich. The sandwiches were varied, thankfully. Turkey after Thanksgiving, left over roast beef, tuna, pb&j, bologna or egg salad. Sometimes there was leftover fried chicken or (rarely) a slice of pizza wrapped in foil. Sometimes my thermos had soup, tomato was my favorite. I can relate to that awful thermos smell, though.

I always got my milk from the cafeteria for a nickel. School hot lunches were a quarter when I was younger and forty cents by the time I was in eighth grade. The lunches were only five cents for a while after we were declared a federal disaster area after a flood. Luckily, we lived in a house on stilts and the water was a foot shy of coming in.

Oh, I also had a lunch box that looked like a giant pickle when I was in junior high. It was plastic, olive green, weird and I loved it-- but not as much as my Disney school bus! (BTW, I still have that lunch box!)

@britj8585... I GOT NKOTB TICKETS FOR THE CLEVELAND SHOW!!!! YYYYIIIIPPPPPPIIIIEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

alas, we were too poor for me to bring my own lunch - I qualified for free school cafeteria lunch, but had to work in the cafeteria (this is fourth and fifth grade mind you) one week out of every two months or so. On the rare field trip day when I *had* to brown bag it, I remember being mortified that mom insisted on wrapping my bologna sandwich (NO MAYO!) in wax paper instead of buying sandwich baggies like the cool (aka normal) moms did. Such were the trials of being raised by a single hippie mom.

I make up for this now by having a spiffy original Muppets metal lunchbox gleaming proudly on top of my desk hutch, and by carefully preparing Americanized Bento boxes for my husband and myself most days.

@holdthemayo - I LOVE meatloaf sandwiches. You've tempted me to make meatloaf tomorrow just for the meatloaf sandwiches. I'm defrosting ground beef as we speak.

@ouelk - I remember my mom having a partial mental breakdown at the grocery store once and letting me get lunchables. I was thrilled, you have no idea. Then about a week later she came out of her funk and actually looked at what she was serving me for lunch. Sigh. I still remember the brownie-like dessert cup.

Dawn doll lunchbox. Roast beef and butter on Wonder bread, a Mars bar, a small plastic thermos of Mrs. Grass's noodle soup, canned pudding and 3 cent white milk. AAhhh, the 70's.