Sack that smelly old lunch box

Published 6:56 pm Tuesday, August 21, 2007

For boys, it was between G.I. Joe and Star Wars. For girls, My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake.

A generation later, the back-to-school ritual of selecting a new lunch box involves much more than choosing among pop culture icons. Upgrades in style, storage and technology — not to mention changes in eating habits — have redrawn the lunch box landscape.

Will it be a soft-sided, multipocketed tote, variants of which are pushed everywhere from Wal-Mart to Pottery Barn? Would your budding gourmet prefer one of the fancier bento box-style carriers, long popular in Asia but now catching on here? Maybe your tyke is ironic enough for the retro metal box of your youth, albeit with some upgrades?

This year, Americans will spend some $18 billion on back-to-school shopping, with more than $3 billion of that going to school supplies, the retail category that includes lunch boxes, notebooks and folders, according to the National Retail Federation.

But lunch boxes no longer are just a back-to-school industry. In part because of healthy eating concerns, more adults and teens are packing lunches, and that has forced manufacturers to rethink form and function, says industry leader Thermos. The results can be elaborate.

Consider the new Zojirushi Mini Bento Stainless Lunch Jar ($48 or $52): It includes a vacuum-insulated main bowl, two smaller lidded bowls, chopsticks and chopsticks holder, all in a metallic blue or cheerful avocado-colored print bag.

Tupperware last year introduced the Meal Solutions to Go (regularly priced at $30), a set of four stackable blue containers in a stylishly coordinated brown and blue bag. At Lands’ End, it’s all about compartments, with the soft-sided Hot Stuff lunch box ($29.50) offering three storage areas, a mesh pocket and an insulated soup or beverage canister. The Container Store sells a soft messenger baglike Lunch Tote ($12.99) intended to be filled with their line of small plastic containers.

Until the early 1990s, most lunch boxes were aimed at children. The gaudy metal or plastic boxes offered little insulation and even less protection for their contents. (Raise a hand if you remember hating sandwiches and chips smooshed by drink bottles.) Manufacturers also had to bet on what character would sell well — harder today with more media-savvy kids.

“These days, once kids get past about the second or third grade, they don’t want to be seen with a licensed (character) lunch box. It’s just not cool,” says Andy Birutis, director of marketing for Toronto-based lunch box giant California Innovations.

Character lunch boxes now make up only one-third of the market, when once they had dominated it.

And so came the rise of the universally appealing soft-sided lunch tote. These souped-up brown bags were insulated, adult friendly and decreased the school yard weapon factor of the hard boxes.

But now it’s gone well beyond just a bag, as lunch boxes must accommodate all manner of previously uncommon foods, from sushi and giant water bottles to Lunchables and special veggie-and-dip cups.

Those new designs can help make food, especially healthy food, appealing to children, says Jennifer McCann, a Kennewick mother who blogs about the lunches she packs for her son in the multiple compartments of a bento box-style container.

“It makes it easier to make a well-balanced meal,” says McCann, whose blog is called Vegan Lunch Box. “You are compelled to get a little bit of something in each of those compartments. So you’ll have a fruit and a veg and a whole grain and a protein.”

Many newer lunch boxes include a mesh pocket for holding a freezer pack, as well as an adjustable strap to secure drink bottles. And don’t worry about the milk money; some lunch boxes include zippered change pockets.

With all those compartments and containers, plus room for prepackaged meals and afterschool snacks, lunch boxes are getting bigger.

“These things take up much more space than peanut butter and jelly in a plastic bag,” says Mary O’Flahrity, merchandise manager for children’s luggage at Lands’ End, which offers five new lunch box models this year.

They look a lot cooler too. The office chic aesthetic now favored by many manufacturers is mostly age and gender neutral, meaning parent and child, as well as brother and sister, can easily (if sometimes unfortunately) swap lunch boxes.

But there is plenty of room for a style statement.

The Built NY-designed neoprene (that’s the stuff wetsuits are made out of) Lunch Bag ($24.99), resembles a stylish purse and comes in a variety of snazzy prints. Lands’ End offers to personalize lunch bags with names and embroidered emblems for extra fees. Pottery Barn markets sets of food storage containers for its lunch bags with pink, blue or black lids ($15 for a set of three).

And while characters may be less popoular than before, Rolling Meadows, Ill.-based Thermos still offers hundreds of character-based lunch box styles, including a Superman tote ($9.99) complete with red cape and separate change and sandwich compartments.

Everyone promises they work better too.

Thermos’ new FUNtainer food jars and beverage bottles ($14.99), for example, keep contents cold for seven hours and hot for five hours. Even retro boxes are not immune: California Innovations still offers metal box-style options, but now they are lined with padded insulation.

Thanks to recent concerns, virtually all lunch boxes sold this year will be lead free. Many will be labeled as such.

Compatibility with other gear also is important. Lands’ End and Pottery Barn Kids lunch boxes are designed to attach to the outside of the companies’ backpacks, freeing up little hands without consuming valuable real estate inside.

And clean is key. Lands’ End lunch boxes have no hard-to-clean creases. Some California Innovations models have dishwasher-friendly removable interiors, others are impregnated with an antimicrobial.

“If you’ve ever taken a whiff of a kid’s lunch box halfway through a semester, you’ll know why it’s important,” Birutis says.