Since they rarely carried a meal, the few metal lunch pails on the market were mainly for tradesmen and factory workers. After World War II, a bunch of changes reshaped schools — and lunches.

Lunchboxes have come a long way from the metal pails of yesteryear. ... The precursor to the lunchbox was the working man’s lunch pail, which became popular in the 1880s.

First, a little history. At the turn of the 20th century it was workmen, not children, who carried lunch boxes--mostly plain, metal lunch pails or collapsible metal boxes.

To be sure, lunch boxes – or kits or pails – were not just for children. The iconic black metal box, with a vacuum bottle tucked in its vaulted top, has been a longtime staple of the hardhat lunch ...

It’s not the most expensive back-to-school item on your list, but what receptacle your kid totes around his or her lunch on the first day of school certainly makes a statement. And these days ...

City kids, on the other hand, went home for lunch and came back. Since they rarely carried a meal, the few metal lunch pails on the market were mainly for tradesmen and factory workers.