Most of us use lunch bags of different versions such as insulated lunch bags; carry on lunch bags, organic lunch bags and imprinted lunch bags. In our everyday lives we carry our lunch to school or to work, 365 days a year. It has become such a part and parcel of life that we seldom take not of the origins of the lunch bag. Rarely do we stop to ponder how mundane objects and items such as can openers and tote bags, zippers, door knobs and shoelaces came about. Where lunch bags are concerned, many of you would be surprised to know that lunch bags have their very own share of pioneers looking for more inventive ways to make our human lives much better.

Geuder, Paeschke and Frey could be considered the pioneers of the first licensed lunch box way back in 1935. This lunch box had a character printed on it. The character lunch box featured the ever famous Mickey Mouse. The box was a lithographed oval tin that came with a pull-out tray. Although it had no vacuum bottle, it did come with a very convenient handle.

In 1954, the world was introduced to the aluminum variant of lunch bags that was invented by Leo May, a miner from Sudbury, Ontario. In those days, miners used to carry their lunch in tobacco boxes as they were more durable and the idea hit him when he accidentally crushed hit tin lunch box. The next invention of imprinted lunch bags came in 1950 from Aladdin Industries who created the first children?s lunch box, inspired from the hit television show of Hopalong Cassidy. Known as the ?Hoppy?, this Hopalong Cassidy lunch bag became a popular item and sold to about 600 000 units in its first year alone with a price of $2.39 per unit.

Due to the success of hoppy and the fact that television was experiencing a tremendous growth in the 1950s, more and more manufacturers and marketers realized the potential of sales generated using television shows. From ADCO Liberty to American Thermos, Kruger Manufacturing Company, Landers, Frary and Clark (Universal), Okay Industries and many more, jumped into the bandwagon of imprinted lunch bags and other items through the 1980s.

In 1959, vinyl imprinted lunch bags were introduced. The use of plastics in lunch bags was first introduced in 1960 as the handle but in no time, the use of plastic was used to produce the whole bags as it was more light weight, in the form of molded plastic boxes. During this time, the lunch box went through minor changes as manufacturers were looking for more and more ways to make it convenient and practical.

It started with the vacuum bottle which then evolved in the span of a decade into the 1970s from steel vacuum bottles with glass liners to cork or rubber stoppers, to plastic Bakelite cups and all plastic bottles, and bottles that were insulated with foam rather than vacuum. Aladdin Industries, in the 1970s produced the glass liner bottles which were then rapidly replaced by the plastic versions. As time went by, printed lunch bags evolved into what we have now- lunch bags that are easy, lightweight, functional, practical and environmentally friendly.