Susan had a business meeting last week in Ft. Worth, so I decided to take some vacation time and spend the week with her down in Texas. I’m not sure why they decided to have a meeting in the one place that’s hotter than Oklahoma right now but they did, so during the day while Susan was at work I decided to cool off by visiting some of Ft. Worth and Arlington’s thrift stores and antique malls.

Ho-ly crap! Ft. Worth and Arlington have some amazing thrift stores and antique malls! After two days of shopping I made myself stop because I was finding so many awesome things. Tomorrow I’ll share some of the toys and other things I found, but today I thought I would share the lunchboxes I found.

First up, Mr. Michael Knight — a.k.a. the Knight Rider.

When I first started collecting retro lunchboxes, plastic ones were $10 and metal ones were $20. That price included the thermos. Over the past ten or so years those prices have doubled, although occasionally you can find good deals if you look long enough. This Knight Rider lunchbox isn’t in great shape. Although the pictures are forgiving, one side is faded, the handle is broken, and it didn’t come with a thermos. Fortunately, the price reflected all of this. Even though it’s not in great condition it’s a good 80s piece.

Next up, baby Muppets!

I never cared for The Muppets Take Manhattan, but I sure did like the Muppet Babies cartoon when I was a kid. I liked the adventure aspect of the show and all the movie parodies they used to throw in. Catch me on a good day and I will perform the theme song for you … in character.

This lunchbox has a space theme on one side and a fairy-tale castle on the other, with more movie parodies (like Indiana Jones) around the edges. The thermos didn’t come with a lid but I had a spare that fit it.

And speaking of Muppets…

I’ve seen similar Sesame Street lunchboxes for sale before but they’re usually marked around $60 with a thermos (I got this one for half that). The characters on the lunchbox are repeated on the thermos in a school-like setting (which makes sense). I like how not even being on a lunchbox makes Bert happy. Oh, Bert.

The current lunchbox collection now looks like this:

I did a bit of rearranging with the new lunchboxes. I moved all of my Star Wars lunchboxes to the bottom shelf and placed them next to the Photon one. I also made a Jim Henson row with the Muppet Babies, Dark Crystal, the Muppets and Sesame Street. I thought about moving Road Runner, Jungle Book, Dragon’s Lair and He-Man all on the same row for an animation theme, but I like Super Mario and Dragon’s Lair being together for a video game theme. Maybe I’ll move Pac-Man down there too. I just realized I have too much free time.