I'd never seen this Secret Agent lunch box before when it was auctioned last month on the Bay. I saved the images for the blog. The effective artwork is just great, especially the dark blue rocket with the red sky background.
By King-Seeley this thermos set is dated 1968 from the very heart of the spy craze. I suppose spies had to eat lunch as well so why not a tin snap box and a thermos flask!
The combination of spies and rockets is interesting. Two storylines spring to mind, a Star Trek episode episode about espionage around the Saturn V I think and a comic story involving an agent called Gary Seven, maybe TV21. Ring any bells?
Anyways, these spies are getting far too hot around this flask so here are the pictures.
Did you have a thermos and lunch box as a kid? Got any now?
No one in Britain would have had these, prior to Thatcher and the last 45 years of endless Tory cuts, everyone got fed at school by the Dinner Ladies? A proper meal, with a pudding, none of this op-in/op-out, pay-as-you-go, poverty voucher crap they have to jump through the hoops of now with regional/classist means-testing, everyone got 'dinner' . . . I can still taste the pink custard if I close my eyes!
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Dinner and Secondary School was dominated by Prefects at mine. One on every table in charge of the jugs, gravy and custard. If you hated skin like me then that's what you got! I learnt to keep my mouth shut! I miss sausage meat pie a lot!
DeleteWith you all the way at the barricades H.
ReplyDeleteNo one at my school had a packed lunch either. Why would you when we had (as we should) FREE school meals.
But from a 60s ephemera perspective, these are a cool lunchbox and drinks cup.
Yep, I always had a hot school dinner. At primary school we had jubblies of milk mid-morning distributed by nuns!
DeleteI do not know if there is a link, but Secret Agent was the American title of the British Danger Man TV series with Patrick McGoohan.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if that was meant to be a Soviet rocket. I had a book that made the N-1 look larger than it was in real life—similar to the art here.
ReplyDeleteI wondered if it was a missile?
DeleteMaybe it was to with Danger Man Paul, yes. There was a song called Secret Agent Man as well I think.
ReplyDeleteI always went home for lunch, even from secondary school. It was across town, but I was a fast walker! School dinners never formed part of my life. Even when teaching I always avoided the dining room!
ReplyDeleteha ha! Currently, fights are a feature of dining halls and I'm trying to avoid dinner duty! Not sure students can leave at home time now Kev. Post-16 can.
DeleteYeah, different world now. When I was a kid, I would sometimes get sent into town to collect teachers' dry cleaning!
ReplyDeleteThe song Secret Agent Man, by Johnny Rivers, was the theme to the US version of Danger Man, known as Secret Agent in America. It was released in 1966. A video of the song can be found on You Tube.
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