Back to School

A look back at the first days of school

It's that time of year again. Notebooks and pencils have filled the shelves, in anticipation for the upcoming school year. Even though I am well out of Elementary School, it's always fun to think back on those dreaded days of returning back to the bricked jail house. So comb your hair, brush your teeth, and put on your LA Gears...it's time for school!

As summer began to come to a close, rumors of starting school began to float about my house. Like a lot of kids, I wasn't a fan of school. However, I always looked forward to going shopping for new school supplies. My mom took it upon herself to take me to the store, in order to get all the things I would need throughout the school year. As kid greed kicked in, I wasn't satisfied with the normal 'ol supplies, I wanted the real goods.

Let's start with the lead pencil. If I wasn't working my fingers to the bone, I was grinding one of these babies so I could actually write with it. There wasn't any mechanical lead pencils to be had in Elementary School, just the good 'ol No. 2! Pencils were pretty boring, but in my kid years, there was something a little more interesting hanging about the shelves.

That's right, it Yikes! pencils! These highly decorated pieces of wood were a hot commodity back in the day. Yikes! had neat colors and cool erasers, and were fun to trade among my friends. Yikes! made other items besides pencils (I had a folder at one point), but nothing compared to the pencils...nothing.

Whether you chose to color inside the lines or out, crayons were always a school supply must! Coloring was always a personal favorite, and there was nothing like a brand new fresh box of crayons. The Crayola Big Box was a school yard legend, for it featured 96 varieties of the colored wax we have come to love. However, whenever I wanted to enjoy endless color options, I would have to find somebody who actually had a Big Box. My mom insisted that the Crayola Big Box was rather unnecessary, and with that said, we left with this...

Beggars can't be choosers I suppose. Even though I wouldn't experience colors yet to be discovered by man... needless to say, I was happy with any crayons I could get my hands on... although I still have my eyes on that Crayola Big Box.

In my opinion, glue is a tad overrated. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed glue as much as the next kid, it just didn't live up to its hype. You would think that glue would be a little more adhesive, but I suppose you can only trust kids with a certain level of adhesiveness. While pouring glue on my skin, letting it dry, and peeling it off was pretty fun, normal white glue became rather boring. However, the folks as ELMER'S saw this crisis coming and tackled it head on with the awesome blue gel glue! Even though the blue glue isn't much different than its original form, it supplied enough satisfaction to hold its place in my pencil box.

With pencils, crayons, glue, and scissors to keep up with, a kid had to have a little assistance. Some genius saw it fit to market plastic boxes, and call them 'pencil boxes'. With many different character varieties, a kid had to choose his or her pencil box carefully. You could always count on a Batman, Ninja Turtle, or Marvel pencil box to grace my desk. On a side note, did anyone ever find it strange that the Batmobile featured on the Batman Returns pencil box looks more like a steam train than the Dark Knight's vehicle of choice??

Although I never had a Five Star notebook, I always envied those who did. Even though there was no difference in a Five Star and the plain five subject I used, Five Stars had a inescapable appeal. Maybe I thought they would make me cool, or older, who knows...Five Stars ruled the notebook aisle. Even today, Five Star notebooks are going strong. However, I can plainly see why my mom never bought one, they are completely overpriced. It is officially safe for me and my crummy notebooks to sit back and laugh it up, for Five Stars are over rated...right?....

Trapper Keepers were kinda like Five Stars to me, I never really had one, until I was way to old to be carrying one. If you are not familiar with Trapper Keepers, the concept is pretty simple. Basically, it was a huge folder that kinda helped kids to organize their school papers and stuff. While they were not necessary to function in school, if you had one, it didn't hurt your status any. Trapper Keepers came in all sorts of designs and colors, and showcased various themes too. The one you see above is rather simple, but it gets the point across. Of course they had commercials dawning these things to be better than life itself, but I wasn't fooled; I was perfectly content with my Batman and Gobots folders. Wait a second, did I just say Gobots....

While I consider Gobots to be pretty old, this guy steals the show. If your school was anything like the schools around here, your classrooms were filled with inspirational and all around corny Garfield posters. Perhaps Garfield would encourage you to do your best, or maybe he just wanted to state that he "lived for Saturdays". All in all, it seemed like all those posters were good for, was collecting spit wads. Now I would be lying, if I said I never had a Garfield notebook or folder...I did. It was just part of life, to obtain Garfield and Snoopy folders as a kid. However, that doesn't excuse those posters, nope, they are in a league of their own.

Although I already briefly touched on lunch boxes in a previous article, it won't hurt you to sit through it again! I loved getting new lunch boxes, it was always exciting to me. Although I had many different lunch boxes over the years (Transformers, Batman, etc..), the Ninja Turtles lunch box seen above was always one of my favorites. I loved to pull out that thermos and see a smiling turtle, only to close the box and see shredder looming over the battle ready heroes. I took that thing everyday, and inside, my mom would pack pure magic. However, the star of the lunch box would have to be none other than the Lunchables. I consumed so many of those things as a kid, and they never seemed to get old. The combinations were endless, well, as endless as a thirty minute lunch would give me. Lunch boxes were great, from character themed to the "Arctic Zone" I carry to work today, they never seem to get old.

Every time I think about going back to school, Adam Sandler in Billy Madison always comes to mind. Not that he has anything to do with this article, I just wanted to fit that picture in here somehow.

As kids polished up their apples for the teachers, going back to school had its ups and downs. Obviously for me, buying new school supplies was a plus. However, taking school pictures, waking up early, and smelling coffee laced teacher breath definitely stood as some of the negative sides of the school days. Looking back on it, school wasn't as bad as I made it out to be, but at the time, you couldn't have told me any different. I hope you enjoyed going back to school, and as a closing question...did kids ever actually give their teachers apples??...I never saw such kindness! Until next time, take care!

Thanks to everyone I borrowed pictures from, you helped make this article possible!

Comments

I was cracking up the whole time reading this, because it basically sums my experience in elementary school to an exact T (besides the Lisa Frank notebooks and such, but you're of the male persuasion so I can understand). My mom would never let me have the Crayola Big Box, either...which was really an atrocity, as "Orange" and "Red" by themselves simply don't get the job done unless you're coloring a piece of fruit or a fire engine. So what if the Big Box was notorious for those countless "frivolous" shades such as "Red Orange" and "Orange Red"? They're completely different colors...

Yikes Pencils! YES! Mine always broke at the rigged part though. I also remember the funky lil guys on the picture for them...I never had 5 star anything but I had note tote and the binders that had zippers. I also once had an arctic zone lunch box with a zippered compartment on the bottom for sandwiches and came with a thermos for my juice. I had a Buffalo pencil case... Laurentian brand Pencil Crayons... Blue gel glue...Never had lunchables but I never really liked 'em. Ahh elementary school.. what fond memories...

Do they still make trapper keepers? LOL
I remember the commercials for them. A kid would have crap full of junk fall out in the hallway while "the cool kid" explained that having a trapper keeper would hold all of your crap together AND it'd be organized!

Oh, yes, I remember purchasing school supplies as well. As for the Crayola Big Box, I recall my mom letting me have one for home (as you recall, those were considered as 'luxuries' back then.), while the standard, 8-color box was for school (originally, there was a FIVE color box, but during the First Grade year, it was decided eight gave a better plethora of choices).

Trapper Keepers and Folders were a mainstay, but in all honesty, I rarely used them for storing schoolwork, because when you were a kid, the last thing you wanted to store was things you did at school. Regrettably the novelty wears off after kindergarten when they start GRADING your work.

Lunchboxes were the coolest in my time, because the Thermos company originally produced over many made of metal and based on popular icons. Right about the time I started going to middle school, they were replaced by plastic with stickers due to the whole, lead-paint scare which ironically did not come from the original lunchbox. But instead, with the McDonaldland glasses, which led to the investigations also indicating the lunchboxes were also painted with the same paint.

Which was odd, because whereas you drank from the glasses, I never saw anyone put a lunchbox in their mouth. Unless you were a Tazmanian Devil.

The funny thing about glue was, there was a year when schools discovered kids were starting to sniff it to get high or consume it. So one year in Texas, they insisted kids not buy Elmer's Glue, but paste. The problem I recall was with paste as opposed to glue, it did not keep well, and was far messier using than glue itself. Thus, it was replaced by the glue sticks and glue tubes were you glided on the paste.

Elmer's different color glue was genuinely made not as a means for curing boredom as once erroneously believed. Instead they altered the formula where the glue was not only odorless, but it didn't stick to skin and instantly adhered only to paper. Naturally, this brought about the decline of purchasing glue soon thereafter.

Lunchables I recall was strange, because originally they weren't meant for school kids. They were designed for office workers who didn't have time for lunch, as well for people who just wanted a quick snack between meals. But they quickly became a staple of school lunches in the Eighties when working parents started using them as a 'quick substitute' for the standard lunch.

Immediately Oscar Mayer caught on with the sensation and started making school lunch versions of Lunchables for kids in 1985. Ironically, since they were aimed at elementary and middle school kids, you rarely saw a high school kid consume them.

Yet, today many college kids use Lunchables as an alternative to the 'quick-Ramen' lunch, as well as office workers stuck on a limited budget.

Funny how we can remember things like back-to-school. Even more strange, how we miss those days, even though back then, school wasn't what we considered fun.

I miss all that! I had that Ninja Turtle lunchbox too!! Preparing to go was fun and so was the first day, but by the end of the second week I was sick of school. I feels weird now that I graduated from college that this fall I have no need to shopping for anything.

Reading your article definitely took me back to my elementary school days (1983-198

. When I first started going to elementary school, I had a Superman lunch box that was made of tin. However, by the time I got to the 4th grade, it was getting rusty so my mom bought me a Transformers lunch box made of plastic. I used that through 4th and 5th grades. When I got to junior high, I started buying my lunch - those types of lunch boxes would get your butt kicked. lol

I definitely hated the 1st day of school. The summers just seemed to get shorter and shorter. Looking back, though, I do have some great memories that I am forever grateful I can still remember. When I feel like reminiscing, I just go back to those days when the only things we had to really worry about was getting home in time to watch the afternoon cartoons.

The steam train-esque Batmobile featured on the pencil box is actually the ejected "cockpit" of the completed vehicle. In Batman Returns, Batman jettisoned the sides of his car in order to make a narrow escape from the cops through a tiny gap between two buildings.

...Not that I'm assuming anyone cares. :/ Nice article.

Dude dont get me started on back to school crap, Good Article though.
Reminds me what will happen in 2 weeks

shopping for school supplies was the highlight of my year!...i always used to co-herse my folks into buying me stuff i didnt need..mostly cos i liked the look of them, lol!..though parents can be so damn mean..my mom wouldnt buy me a super tin of 80 colouring pencils..no matter how much i told her i needed them for "art"..i ended up with 20 assorted colours every year..grrr! i didnt care..i was the queen of pencil cases!..i bought a new one practically every month from my allowance!
i had a few diffrent lunch boxes..mostly diffrent peanuts/snoopy designs..i loved them!
no, no kids ever gave an apple to a teacher in my school..i think thats an urban legand!!

Great article, i can totally relate. I never really liked going back to school, but I loved shopping for school supplies.

Man, I just graduated in June. So I never have to go back! But I actually kinda started liking school a bit. In just the past 2 years, its gotten kinda fun. The classes of grade 11 and 12 were sooo slack, i could basically do whatever i wanted and still pass. I still haven't gotten a job yet, hehe. the only good thing about not going back to school now is not having the dread of the wait.

I completely forgot about Yikes! pencils until now! I had a few of them but they've been lost to the ages. They were awesome.

i like the article too. good stuff.

Oh man you bought back the memories of Garfield posters! I remember them well throughout elementary school.

Great article, I was actually planning the same thing. I forgot all about my Yikes! pencils, they were awesome. Count me as one of the idiot kids that bought Five Star supplies, they were totally overrated and colorless.

I always wanted one of those Japanese pencil cases though, does anyone else remember them? They had all these pop out pencil sharpeners and scissors, they were like James Bond's pencil box.

man school sucks! i have like three weeks till i go back vive me a break

I found the last of my Yikes! pencils a few months ago, with about half of it sharpened away. I've used it for every college test I've had since. With one more semester to go I plan on taking my last ever school test with my last ever Yikes! Pencil. How's that for a glorious end to my school days? By the way, even in college, having a Yikes! pencil is a good way to make classmates jealous, not to mention quite a conversation starter.

I used to have the Crayola 96 pack too. I got it when they were doing the "Name The New Color" promotion. Basically 16 of the crayons didn't have catchy crayola names, they were just named "Name Coming Soon" or something like that. Kids could enter a contest to name the colors. I wonder if those colors are still around.

My parents were cheap, I almost always had the store brand glue and cryons. My pencils and pens were from my parents job.

Did anyone school use the Big Chief paper in first grade. I just remembered this for the first time in 25 years reading this. I hated it becuase the paper would come apart when I tried to erase something. I just looked it up they stopped making it in 2001

Woo this reminds me of the elementary school years! I rmemeber having LA Gears they were some cool sneakers back then XD
That blue gel glue brought back some crazy memories btw...

Im in College now, and i still feel the same way before i go back to school. I remember with my brand new crayola 64 pack, and i was pimpin', now they got 128! its nuts on how much kids got it better than we did, and its only been a decade lol

A couple of years ago I found a box of Go-Bots crayons at a thrift store but now I dunno where they are

Gobots? Not sure what that is....I liked the crayon box with the built in crayon sharpener!

Thank you Crayola!

i used to take my eraser to the covers of my cheap 49 cent ringed notebooks and write my favorite band names and sports teams by rubbing the ink til it blurred white.

the anarchy symbol was a popular choice. rock on!

Great article, I had all of those things u mentioned. Thanks for bringing back all those good memories like shopping with mom

I always hate the day before going back to school. Its that time where you have to squeeze in everything you posibly can, to make up for the days when you sit around on your ass.

When I was in school back in elementary we used to put our marker insides into our elmer glue bottles. I a few days you would have colored glue. And the metal lunch boxes with movie or tv themes. Good times great memories. Nice article thumbs up!

Ahh, the ol' elementary school and middle school days...I still remember going into grades 1-5 first thing in the morning to down a pint of milk with my big sis and nab my lunch ticket. What I don't miss is sitting at those long wood tables with classmates to your left, right, and adjacent to you. Although if you were lucky enough to be sitting with at least one of your playground chums, there was much giggling and nary a bit of learning going on. As soon as teach left the room, a pall of silence befell the class, anxiously awaiting the brave nine-year-old kid who would leap from his/her chair and perform a daring act of defiance in the teacher's absence, only to inevitably get caught! Good times.

Nice article, I remember them days.

Going back to school always sucked but for some reason I always looked forward to buying the stuff that I would need. I made sure I was always with my parents when they picked up the various glue and notebooks I needed. Of course no one picked out a back pack other then me. Nice article, thumbs up.

Great article,I still smell crayons to take me back to the good old days.Funny how things we dreaded as kids we can look back with fondness.