I never had a “cool” cartoon or movie character lunchbox. I was a brown-bagger for most of elementary school, but for a while I had a Tupperware one with its own strappy-foldy handle. I thought it was neat, but really it yelled “give me a wedgie please.” I was a pretty consistent PBJ kid, but had to buy milk. The lunch-lady window (or was it a cart?) was in the corner, to the right of the stage in the cafetorium. 
When I first started school, I kept my seven cents for a milk in a blue-colored leather coin wallet. One of those Boy Scout craft-project ones with the plastic ribbon through the holes. I liked chocolate. I recall quite a stir when the price went to ten cents. By the time a milk cost fifteen cents, I was old enough to want two of them. The real glory of double-milk money was that I could afford to skip the milk completely and afford the twenty-five cent coconut-covered, red twinkie called a Zinger.