If you showed up for the fourth grade thirty years ago, your school-supply kit probably included #2 pencils, erasers, glue stick, Magic Markers, notebook, stapler, and a Dukes of Hazzard lunch box.
And today? Other than a few cosmetic changes, things have stayed surprisingly the same. The Magic Marker is now a Sharpie, and the lunch box is a little lighter and with nary a Duke or Charlie’s Angel in sight. But other than that, it’s pretty much the same old, really same old -- the notebooks, staplers, and the Ticonderoga #2. Maybe the biggest change is that kids pack all their gear into the classroom and out of the classroom on their back.
We checked in with Webster’s Fine Stationers on Lake Avenue to see if they had some fun school supplies for the younger set, and found a pretty cool notebook series, designed and manufactured by a local LA company called Skullastic. If the notebook illos and unique take on the ever-popular Pee-Chee folder (a Cree-Pee folder) isn’t sufficient enticement, consider this: Skullastic donates 10% of their profits to private and public schools.
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One more word on the lunch boxes (which Webster’s doesn’t sell, by the way). The innards of the box have taken on a new twist over the years.
As one PUSD mom said, her daughter likes, ”individual bento boxes, which I order from some Japanese company online—straight from Japan—because of the cute little creatures on the outside...but perfectly acceptable to use Glad plastic boxes too. Or, for PCB-free, there are metal tiffin containers for sale at Whole Foods (yes, Moms go nuts over these issues...).”
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And about the Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox. They sell at local flea markets for anything from $25-$50; even, and this is just a personal observation, those boxes to which the years and the elements have not been kind. So check what you’ve got stashed away in the attic, in that old trunk back in the corner. What you find might buy some Sharpies for the student, or a nice bottle of wine for the adult. You decide.
